I Am Generally Of The Opinion That Kai Should've Been The One To Confront The Ice Emperor Instead Of

I am generally of the opinion that Kai should've been the one to confront the Ice Emperor instead of Lloyd, BUT if they were really committed to the idea of giving that solo arc to Lloyd then they could have made it work in a way that is narratively satisfying and wouldn't drastically change the season's overarching plot.

Allow me to demonstrate with a proposal for an ns11 rewrite:

At one point in the Fire Chapter, Zane confesses the details of his vision, apologizing for not telling them about it as he'd been hoping it was just a bad dream. But because of his wishful thinking, his friends were ill-prepared to face Aspheera. Bonus points if we have Jay apologizing for being so dismissive of Zane's vision and convincing him not to do anything about it.

While explaining the contents of his vision, Zane also tells them about the recurring detail where Aspheera blasts and presumably kills him. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Zane confesses that this part of the vision scares him - he's died once before, and while he doesn't regret his decision, it was still a profoundly unpleasant experience and the thought of dying again frightens him. Lloyd promises to make sure the rest of Zane's vision never comes true, he personally vows to keep Zane safe. Yes, we're drawing parallels between Kai's promise to Lloyd in season 5, and yes it ends up exactly as angsty as it sounds.

Optional: change Zane's fear reflection to him being dead again instead of him as just a machine. Better yet, have his reflection show him as he was in his fight with the Overlord, broken faceplate and all. I do personally like his canon reflection the way it is, since it sets up some good foreshadowing for both the Ice Chapter and Crystalized - but if you really want to hammer the point home that this is an outcome Zane's afraid of, then changing his fear reflection is a great way to do that. Plus, this could even be the moment where Lloyd personally assures Zane that the vision will never come true.

This particular change would achieve three things:

It makes Zane's banishment more angsty AND more narratively satisfying, by making it part of a character arc. Making Zane more outwardly afraid of dying by Aspheera's hand provides us with the opportunity to explore Zane's trauma from his s3 sacrifice a bit more, as well as his relationship with his sixth sense. Plus, it would make his banishment a much more compelling character moment - not only is he sacrificing himself to save Wu, but he's intentionally subjecting himself to an experience that frightens him and has traumatized him in the past. He was scared of the vision coming true, but he himself is the one making it happen. Something something, self-fulfilling prophecies.

It adds emotional consequence. In canon, Zane got blasted, was assumed dead for a few days, and then they realized he was alive and set out to save him without any lasting emotional consequences for the characters. But if they had all promised to keep Zane safe and to make sure his vision never comes true, well. Even when they find out he's alive, that doesn't erase the fact that that they couldn't keep their promise. And now the ninja are all filled with a deep, painful sense that they let him down. When they set out to save Zane, they aren't just rescuing a friend - they're trying to rectify what they believe to be a failure.

It gives Lloyd a much more personal motivation to go out and face the Ice Emperor on his own. Yes, he already has a motivation in canon - he's the leader, he's Zane's friend, of course he wants to save him - but giving Lloyd a deeper, more nuanced investment in Zane's rescue keeps things interesting. His feelings of failure are compounded by the fact that he had personally vowed to keep Zane alive. Maybe we could even dedicate a few scenes throughout the Fire Chapter to establishing the nature of Zane and Lloyd's friendship, just to make things more interesting narratively.

This also adds a layer of complexity to Lloyd's confrontation with the Ice Emperor - now he is burdened with even more guilt, blaming himself for what Zane has become. He considers himself responsible for this; if he'd just kept his promise, thinking if he'd just been strong enough to keep Zane safe, then the Ice Emperor never would have existed. He even blames himself for his inability to help Zane snap out of the corruption.

But then, as a resolution to his guilt complex, while fighting the Ice Emperor he realizes it wasn't actually his fault. It was Zane's decision to fulfill the vision. Zane made that choice, and it's not fair to either of them to take away his agency in that by Lloyd blaming himself. Lloyd isn't responsible for Zane's choices.

Zane's belief that he alone was responsible for protecting his friends pushed him to increasingly self-destructive ends. And Lloyd realizes that he too has been pushing himself to extremes out of a warped sense of responsibility. It wasn't his fault that Aspheera banished Zane, and it's not his fault that the Scroll has corrupted Zane and that Vex has controlled him. He can't force Zane to let go of the Staff, or to remember who he really is, because that's ultimately not his call to make. All he can do is try to help Zane make that decision for himself.

And in the end, that's how Zane snaps out of it. For the first time in 50 years, someone has encouraged him to make his own choices instead of trying to control or manipulate or coerce him. And he remembers a time, long ago, when he was free.

Anyway, like, I still think Kai totally should've gotten the solo arc rather than Lloyd, but if they absolutely had to give that subplot to Lloyd then this is certainly one way it could've gone.

And why is Kat always seeing little bits of what's going on through cracks in the doorway?? Why do people leave the doors open a little bit??

I loved the books but man oh man I will nitpick these movies.

Watching HG Catching Fire: maybe it's just me, but it feels so rushed and forced.

And why is the convo between Peeta, Katniss, and Haymitch (after the victory stop in district 11) so so rushed? Like there is so much content in the book, and if I hadn't read it I would have no idea what was going on.

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Watching HG Catching Fire: maybe it's just me, but it feels so rushed and forced.

And why is the convo between Peeta, Katniss, and Haymitch (after the victory stop in district 11) so so rushed? Like there is so much content in the book, and if I hadn't read it I would have no idea what was going on.

All of the training in D12 got cut out??

And so much time with her styling team got cut out ugh

It was an absolute crime that THG were made into movies not a TV series.

The whole movie is so scene after scene, no transition. There is so little flow, it's all disjointed.

It doesn't make sense for peeta to be walking out just as Kat walks in for individual assessment?? And the painting is covered and she uncovers it in the books.

Watching HG Catching Fire: maybe it's just me, but it feels so rushed and forced.

And why is the convo between Peeta, Katniss, and Haymitch (after the victory stop in district 11) so so rushed? Like there is so much content in the book, and if I hadn't read it I would have no idea what was going on.