BadAtGender

LOK 4 > LOK 3 > ATLA 2 > ATLA 3 > ATLA 1 > LOK 2 > LOK 1 Book 2 isn't more inconsistent than 1. It has a weaker written villain, but it does follow a clear arc, unlike 1, which has some really uneven pacing. It also has a much stronger ending. I'd argue that many of the problems with Book 2 are because of issues with Book 1. Had they not felt the need to wrap everything up, they could have gone into Book 2 without returning everyone's bending. That then allows them to set it up where Korra's still the Avatar, but she can only airbend and NEEDS to find a connection with the Spirit World in order to fix this problem. That then makes her desperate to try anything that works, even falling to Unalaq's schemes. Plus Book 2 has some much better secondary character moments. All the stuff with Varrick is much better than anything having to do with Pro Bending.

Book 2's weakness is Unalaq. Among the four main villains, he's easily the poorest in concept and writing. But other than him, there's a lot of cool meaty stuff there. Books 3 and 4 combined are among the best TV ever.

The first season is probably the weakest. They thought it was going to be a one-and-done season, so didn't really plan ahead for future arcs and development. Additionally, all the writing was done by Bryke. They are pretty masterful showrunners, but they have weaknesses as screenwriters that were pretty apparent. Once they hired on a writing staff for individual epsodes, the quality tended to improve.

Yup. No. Women are sexualized more, but men are allowed to have sexual agency. So much narrative about lesbians is how they only need some "good D" to get them fixed up. While there's the view that girl on girl is hot, it's nearly always presented in terms of appealing for straight men. And the women involved are described as experimenting and not really gay. (To say nothing of the belief that bisexuals don't exist, period.)

Those numbers from WB and Sony still feel like estimates.

Okay, this is a bit stupid math, but assume that BH6 opened over Thanksgiving and had the same OW size. It's somewhat coincidental but it's OW gross was almost exactly 3x its Thanksgiving Weekend gross. Then assume that the percentage drops remained the same, despite the larger size of the grosses. Big if, of course, but it's a simple switch. So tripling everything from The Wedensday before Thanksgiving onwards gives us: Actual Adjusted Total Pre-OW Friday 7,198,486 21,595,458 21,595,458 Week1 21,015,479 63,046,437 84,641,895 Week2 9,761,770 29,285,310 113,927,205 Week3 7,698,414 23,095,242 137,022,447 Week4 8,199,155 24,597,465 161,619,912 Weekend5 5,006,485 15,019,455 176,639,367

The strength of BH6 over the past few weeks has been really impressive. A Thanksgiving release might have put $250m in play for it.

It's worth noting that LOK isn't significantly shorter than ATLA: 52 eps vs. 60. And ATLA did have a few that were pure filler, which can't really be said about LOK. But the split of discrete storylines is a notable difference. It does highlight that ATLA was an external plot arc while LOK was an internal one. That discussion aside, Forbes had this neat article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/12/28/netflixs-next-original-series-should-be-a-new-avatar-show/ (Although it seems like Amazon Prime would make more sense, since that's where you can get ATLA and LOK in streaming formats at the moment.)

Would Korra have gone up in the rankings if the finale had aired before the votes had to be in?

If you can, make the movie good. Failing that, at least make it entertaining. Failing that at least make something about it interesting. Exodus, from all that I can tell, doesn't do any of these things. That is why it fails. It's pretty clear from Noah that you can play with the Biblical source material and still come out okay. But if you make a film that appeals to nobody, then there's no saving it.

It's the only Paul WS Anderson film I've seen that I've really enjoyed.

I think there's probably some comparson that can be made between ATLA/LOK and the HTTYD series. ATLA is a simpler story. It's mostly just a quest, where all the pieces are laid out fairly early on (learn the bendings, get to the right place at the right time, defeat the Fire Lord). And because of that structural simplicity, it allows for a bit of breathing room that can be left to play around with the characters and world. So you get a bunch of character developmental arcs that are really cool. One added bonus is that villain arcs are allowed to play out over multiple seasons. Zuko's shift over the course of the series is obvious, but Azula's is also well worth mentioning. Like HTTYD2, Korra had the difficulty of needing to a) connect to ATLA in a number of ways but also be entirely different. It's the classic sequel problem. As such, the themes, politics, and character arcs they did decide to grapple are considerably more complex. There is very little that's black and white. Almost all the villains have viewpoints that make sense; you can see where they're coming from and why they do what they do. (Unalaq is a possible exception.) None of them are as unrefined badness as Ozai was. Neither series is perfect, in the sense that every piece and plot is in the right place and there's nothing wasted or done incorrectly. But that's an impossible situation with serialized stories that have multiple creators. Some things aren't going to quite fit. Perfect isn't ever going to exist. That's why we have fanfic. Still, when you allow for that, you do get two really different results. Is ATLA's simpler plot with longer character arcs better than Korra's thematic complexity and singular focus? That's really up to individual opinion. Combined, though, I'd say there's an argument that ATLA/LOK are the best TV show made.

That would need it to earn about $80m over the week from the 29th to the 4th. It's probably not doing quite that much.

What?!? I'll not have you disparage it.

I always whoop a bit and point out the artist at Disney who used to work at my company. Good fun.

Just for S&Gs here's the performance of just about every animated film on Christmas day over the past several years. I've also included, for comparison purpose, the best and worst jumps in the top 10 for non animated films in those years. Thu, 2014 13 6 Big Hero 6 BV $1,291,000 +54% +220% 2,065 $625 $195,079,000 49 - 7 Penguins of Madagascar Fox $775,000 +13% +54% 2,033 $381 $67,729,000 30 Top 10 High - Exodus: Gods and Kings +218% Top 10 Low - The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies +118% Wed, 2013 7 2 Frozen BV $6,354,222 +33% +255% 3,335 $1,905 $210,412,773 34 12 8 Walking with Dinosaurs Fox $1,732,940 +66% - 3,231 $536 $11,526,065 6 24 20 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 Sony $71,230 +27% +824% 303 $235 $115,961,806 90 - - Free Birds Rela. $30,548 +112% +313% 243 $126 $54,156,547 55 - - Despicable Me 2 Uni. $20,125 +14% +46% 175 $115 $367,573,535 176 Top 10 High - Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues +189% Top 10 Low - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug +77% Tue, 2012 9 9 Monsters, Inc. (3D) BV $1,456,311 +76% - 2,618 $556 $8,542,888 7 12 4 Rise of the Guardians P/DW $1,185,412 -22% +61% 2,055 $577 $82,224,011 35 16 10 Wreck-It Ralph BV $354,365 -31% +5% 913 $388 $172,611,821 54 - - Hotel Transylvania Sony $66,864 +36% - 301 $222 $144,380,651 89 - - Ice Age: Continental Drift Fox $4,967 -11% +26% 64 $78 $161,066,331 166 - - ParaNorman Focus $1,278 +130% -37% 23 $56 $55,980,775 131 Top 10 High - This Is 40 +189% Top 10 Low - Skyfall +26% Sun, 2011 7 5 The Adventures of Tintin Par. $3,765,778 +55% - 3,087 $1,220 $17,729,016 5 19 7 Arthur Christmas Sony $298,393 -60% -74% 1,524 $196 $43,541,321 33 21 19 Puss in Boots P/DW $136,530 +46% -11% 389 $351 $143,661,774 59 - - Happy Feet Two WB $63,204 -2% -83% 525 $120 $59,852,155 38 Top 10 High - New Year’s Eve +185% Top 10 Low - Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked +58% Sat, 2010 11 6 Tangled BV $2,074,178 +20% -45% 2,582 $803 $141,063,978 32 19 14 Megamind P/DW $109,180 -1% -64% 764 $143 $142,548,484 51 - - Despicable Me Uni. $32,810 +26% -57% 193 $170 $250,748,225 170 - - Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole WB $14,258 +29% -69% 158 $90 $55,324,323 93 Top 10 High - Little Fockers +194% Top 10 Low - Yogi Bear +17% Fri, 2009 8 5 The Princess and the Frog BV $1,955,703 +35% -43% 3,475 $563 $56,630,382 31 13 6 A Christmas Carol (2009) BV $465,998 -48% -51% 1,245 $374 $135,062,386 50 - 16 Fantastic Mr. Fox Fox $96,438 +1% -41% 197 $490 $18,039,850 43 - - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Sony $47,166 +28% -28% 276 $171 $123,308,889 99 Top 10 High - Did You Hear About the Morgans? +132% Top 10 Low - Alving and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel +76% Thu, 2008 10 2 The Tale of Despereaux Uni. $1,971,040 +30% - 3,104 $635 $18,561,965 7 15 6 Bolt BV $676,609 -19% +21% 1,923 $352 $99,045,758 35 23 10 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa P/DW $150,918 -57% -42% 808 $187 $173,939,363 49 Top 10 High - Seven Pounds, +225% Top 10 Low - Four Christmases +84% Generally, straight animated films do tend to perform worse than anything else (even live action/animation hybrid family fare). It doesn't matter how well the animated films have been performing up to that point, or how long they've been in theaters. The increases on the 25th are more muted. If they have a Christmas theme, they tend to fare even worse.

Nope. It's typical for animated films. They tend to have somewhat suppressed Christmas Days. Last year Frozen was #2 on the 24th, increased just 33% on the 25th and fell to 7th. On the 26th it jumped 43% and rose back to 2nd. Wreck-It Ralph and Rise of the Guardians actually dropped from the 24th to 25th.

Last year earned something on the order of ~500m total from the 25th to the 31st. The two biggest movies in that span were Frozen and DOS. Wolf of Wall Street was the biggest Christmas Day opener. It seems like this year should be bigger than that. It won't be enough to catch up with last year, but it could close the gap some.

10x OD isn't a bad estimate, yeah. From 2008: Marley & Me 14.4m OD, 142.2m DOM Benjamin Button 11.9m OD, 127.5m DOM Bedtime Stories 10.6m OD, 110.1m DOM Valkyrie 8.5m OD, 83.1m DOM The Spirit 3.8m OD, 19.8 DOM So long as you avoid pulling a Spirit, that is.

Most things decreased in 2008, though. Actually this year feels a lot like '08. There's a broad slate of films and while none are breaking out huge, there seems to be enough business to make a number of them successful.

There are some things that ATLA did better. It had a lot more where characters gained levels in badass, especially with regards to bending. The ending as a whole really showcased this, where everyone had their standout fights in the final episode. In Korra, the only other character who really gets that sort of power development is Bolin. I feel like many of the stumbling points in the series came from them being very unsure if it would get more than the first season. Had they known ahead of time it would be longer, they could have done things like a) slow burn the romance(s), switch the S1 and S2 villains, c) allow for some changes in development (like maybe Mako learns lightningbending at some point instead of just having it in the first ep.) But with that said, the series really was trying to do something different. Since it starts from an older baseline (late teens instead of early teens, and all relatively more established), that shifts what the story is going to attempt. A lot of ATLA is showcasing "Hey, look at this cool world we came up with" while Korra is more about doing the journey of development for a single, very multi-faceted character. And that's largely why I think LoK is elevated above AtLA. The first series had some amazing development across the board, but Korra stands as one of the best characters and character arcs ever created on television. The fact that she's a queer woman of colour, which is an exceptionally rare character to see, makes it even better, IMHO.

Well, that's a pretty fantastic way to wrap up a series. I admit that S1 was really rocky, and I wasn't entirely sure about S2, but 3 and 4 are pretty sublime, and elevate Korra as a whole above ATLA.

Vulture weighs in: http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/perils-of-an-all-digital-movie-future.html

I wonder what the record for aggregate opening weekends is.

It's believable, yes, but that doesn't make it true. Which is why I asked.