Not Quite Normal

In The Storm, we cut from a flashback about Aang’s life with the Air Nomads to Zuko’s life in the Fire Nation. We get an entire episode just about him in Zuko Alone. We watch him steal food for refugees with Jet in The Serpent’s Pass while the Gaang escort more refugees through the titular pass. He learns how to redirect lightning while Toph teaches Aang earthbending in Bitter Work. He and Aang learn about their predecessors’ shared past together in the perfectly named episode The Avatar and The Fire Lord. During The Day of Black Sun, we jump between Aang reach the beginning of the end of his journey and Zuko beginning on his newly chosen path as the Avatar’s ally.

Every step of Zuko’s journey is in tandem with Aang’s, right from the first episode. He’s learning and growing right there alongside the Gaang, even when they’re miles apart. Him and Aang doing the Dancing Dragon in The Firebending Masters is the culmination of three seasons worth of buildup. Two young men who were once enemies become allies, as Zuko restores firebending’s true spirit and Aang overcomes the last thing holding him back from his full potential.

It was the failings of the Avatar and the Fire Lord that started the war, and it’s the successes of the new Avatar and the new Fire Lord that ends it.

And my manager was like no!!!! If that happened, I would drive to find you guys in my truck and we could eat stuff from my wife's garden and I would make sure everyone I know survived!! I would carry you all on my shoulders away from the zombies!!

The idea that societal collapse exposes mankind’s true nature ignores one thing: society IS mankind. We make it, just by being around each other. Social mores and customs aren’t arbitrary rules inflicted on us by some unseen force, they’re our own behaviors and views. We say please and thank you because we want to be kind. We establish charities because we want to help others. We set up garbage cans because we want to be clean. We’re the ones setting the standards and frowning at the people who don’t rise to meet them. We’re the ones who are appalled by the cruelties in our history.

In a film market so thoroughly oversaturated with Oscar bait and lowest-common-denominator nothing burgers, criticizing the movies people actually enjoy screams of the kind of pedantic snobbery that birthed current Hollywood’s postmodernist cynicism.