It is difficult to find a more appreciated television series than “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. Unlike some fandoms, the public “avatar” lives in the shared worship of the show – as harmonious as the four nations of water, earth, fire and air. There are 61 episodes “avatar” divided into three seasons (or “books”). Among these, season 2 “Zuko alone” is often distinguished as one of the best, otherwise THE The best, from all the show. The suite “Avatar” “The Legend of Korra” even made a spiritual follow -up: “Korra alone”. The prince in exile of the fire nation, Zuko (Dante Basco) is introduced in season 1 of hunting Avatar Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen). In season 2, Zuko even falls lowerEven losing the meager resources he had before. He must put his avatar hunt on a break because the nation of fire hunt him Also.
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“Zuko Alone” (directed by Lauren MacMullan, written by Elizabeth Welch) is both an autonomous episode and the one who can’t be jumped. It is crucial for the past and the future of Zuko. True to his name, he is the only main character who appears. The Avatar team is not shows, and Zuko had separated from his uncle Iroh (Mako) in a previous episode, “Avatar Day”.
Travel alone on the ostrich-horseback, Zuko comes to a small village in the Kingdom of the Earth. He saves a boy named Lee (Robby Bruce) from a gang of soldiers extorting the city. This makes him win an invitation to the farm of Lee’s family, where Zuko remains and reflects on his past. The episode underlines how Zuko is a good person in his heart, but also marked by his violent culture and his abusive family.
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If the story of Zuko seems familiar, it should, because it man the Western “Shane” of 1953. Located in the Wyoming of the 1880s, the titular shooter (Alan Ladd) is looking for a new life as a workforce for the Local Starrett family. Local real estate disputes, however, force Shane to resume his weapon. In “Shane”, Little Joey Starrett (Brandon Dewilde) admires Shane more than his own father, in the same way that Lee admires Zuko. In the two stories, it is not a friendship to last.
Zuko alone tells the Western film Shane
“Avatar: The Last Airbender” modeled its construction of the world on the culture of Southeast Asia (the different flexion styles are based on real martial arts, for example). The love of creators for anime and Wuxia films infiltrates each setting of the show. But “avatar” East An American series, and filled with American cultural references. “The Chase”, the following episode “Zuko alone”, presents a relentless prosecution from the start of a different Western classic: “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.”
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“Zuko alone”, however, is undoubtedly the episode “avatar” which most resembles a Western image. The episode opens with Zuko on a horse through a meadow like a lonely cowboy. His straw hat even suggests a cowboy hat. Then, the last plan of the episode is Zuko, once again on horseback, turning off and turned into a silhouette at sunset. Between this, Zuko faces the gang of the Earth kingdom in rue Middle de la Ville – the archetypal setting for a Western duel, even if Zuko fights with swords and not rifles.
Now there is a big structural difference between “Zuko alone” and “Shane”. The first cut between the present and flashbacks on Zuko’s childhood. “Shane” has no such flashbacks, or even at the exhibition, to what Shane did in the previous days. We don’t do it Know Shane’s past, while the episode is to explore that of Zuko. For Lee and the other villagers, Zuko is a man as mysterious as Shane, but the public knows it differently.
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What unites stories again are similar themes on violence and how it is transmitted. Before leaving Lee’s family, Zuko gives the boy a knife. Registered with “Never abandon without fight”, Zuko wore the knife to recall his determination. But after his departure, Lee tries to use the knife to fight certain soldiers and is kidnapped. Zuko returns to save Lee, he cleanses his own error.
In Shane and Zuko alone, violence burns and scars like fire
Throughout “Shane”, Shane is too wary of Joey too admiring her. After having become (which seems to be) his old self to rid the valley of certain black hats, Shane leaves, his last words to Joey being a warning: “There is no life with a murder. There is no return of one or bad, it is a brand. A brand. There is no return.”
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In “Zuko alone”, Zuko reveals his fight against fires and his real self in a moment of pride for his victory. This truth makes the city dwellers, the inclusive, rejects it. He leaves like Shane, but Lee does not argue that he will come back. Zuko always does the best thing he could, like Shane, was to leave and take violence with him. The people of Zuko are those who started the cycle of violence; Unlike Shane (who can be dead or not when credits roll), Zuko always has time to become a better man, and he ends up doing it. His experience with Lee was a small step on this trip which has become a big one.
The inheritance of “Shane” is looming. Clint Eastwood had already semi-camarade in 1985 as “pale rider”. You can also see its influence on Eastwood “Unforgiven”. Compare Shane’s latest words to William Munny (Eastwood) saying: “It’s a hell to kill a man.”
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James Mangold’s “Logan” sent Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in 2017 with a shaped story after “Shane”. (The characters of “Logan” look at “Shane” and quote it afterwards.) “Logan” reintroduced “Shane” to a young generation of moviegoers, but a lot of this generation had already seen the story of “Shane” being played a decade earlier in “Zuko alone”.
