I remember watching the second season and thinking "wow, this is a plot that feels like it should be the final season," given the high-mystical elements at play. Season three was ultimately just a better story (and I think generally considered the high watermark of the series) but also felt tied into the Avatar mythos enough (though in a very different way) that it felt fitting as the send-off to the series (Zaheer is also a fantastic villain).
So there's a part of me that felt a bit underwhelmed by the plot of season four. On the other hand, while it does end with a giant mech battle that devastates Republic City a lot worse than Unalaq/Vaatu's assault actually did, the story is, in a lot of ways, really much smaller in scale. Spirits, and even philosophical points of view, aren't really the focus here. In a lot of ways, actually, the crisis of season four is a mirror to the plot of Avatar: the Last Airbender - though in the original series it was the Fire Nation that threatened the world, in this case it's a sort of misguided (though also just morally bankrupt) Earth Empire that poses the threat (this also completes the villain collection, with at least one main villain of each elemental bending type, as our bad guy is an earthbender, and a metalbender.)
The movie looks good. I'm a little skeptical about the choice of music (I don't recognize the song, but I guess I'm always just a little skeptical of songs with lyrics in trailers or scoring this sort of movie.)
The beats we see here are all exciting to behold - I love the image of ancient Greek soldiers when discussing the Atreides family - the Atreides trace their house back to Atreus of classical myth (Atreus is the father of Agamemnon,) despite the fact that this far in the future, humans don't even remember Earth is their planet of origin (though given other details, like how the first use of "atomics" was by "House Washington," it's surprising they don't have a better idea of it.)
In the Dune future, the existence of personal force fields has made firearms obsolete, and people are forced to fight with bladed weapons again. We get some pretty cool shots of this style of fighting, which is faster and more frenzied than it's been rendered in the past.
We also start with the famous scene from the beginning of the books - Paul's trial with the Gom Jabbar, in which the leader of the Bene Gesserit (the all-female order that has been bred and trained to have mental and physical capacities that make them practically psychic, and who are the not-so-secret background manipulators of culture and politics in the cosmos) holds a poisoned needle to his neck while he is forced to place his hand in a box-like device that inflicts incredible pain upon him. The point of the test is to determine whether Paul is "human" or "animal," knowing that an animal doesn't think rationally and will just react to the pain, while the human, knowing the danger, will take the pain over the certainty of death.
We get a bit of Duncan Idaho, played by Jason Momoa, the dashing, rugged hero and loyal servant of House Atreides, as well as some glimpses of Paul's father Leto (Oscar Isaac,) Stilgar, the leader of a group of the planet's indigenous Fremen (Javier Bardem,) the Beast Rabban, the member of rival House Harkonnen whose mismanagement of Arrakis was part of the ploy to lure the Atreides there, as well as Chani (Zendaya,) the Fremen woman whom Paul sees in visions before he's even come to Arrakis, and Doctor Yueh (Chen Chang,) whose ultimate role is... spoilers.
But the real money shot is the reveal of the giant Sandworm - the massive monsters who live on Arrakis, and, unbeknownst to most of the universe, is the source of the Spice that allows for interstellar, intergalactic society to exist.
This movie is, I believe, meant to be part one of two, as there's a lot of plot to the original Dune novel (and it divides rather neatly into two parts.) The downfall of House Atreides is pretty much shown by the trailer, when Duncan Idaho refers to Paul as Duke, but given how classic this story is, I don't think spoilers are something people are going to worry too much about.
While Paul is a hero we sympathize and root for, especially in the first book, the series ultimately shows that even with the best intentions, the damage he inflicts on the universe (even if the alternative was worse) is utterly horrific. Indeed, much of Paul's journey is not exactly becoming a hero, but reckoning with the fact that he's going to be so important and powerful that all of human history is going to be shaped by his actions, including entire worlds wiped out, religions extinguished, cultures vanished, and staggeringly enormous numbers of lives lost. Frank Herbert's message is that that much power concentrated in one person invariably creates a monster, even if that person genuinely wants to do good.
While set within the same world as Avatar: the Last Airbender, the Legend of Korra changes up the overall structure. Aang's entire journey is about confronting the Fire Nation and stopping their genocidal, imperial conquest, and while the roles in that fight (particularly the role that Zuko, who is introduced as the show's primary villain, plays) shift, and the focus of each season is on a different part of the world (with plenty of stand-alone episodes as well, something Korra can't really afford with its shorter seasons) it's still ultimately building to that fight with Firelord Ozai - a character who's less of a person than an embodiment of that will to power that he and his father and grandfather (maybe great-grandfather? I can't recall how many generations back Sozin was) possessed that has made a fascistic conqueror out of a nation that, in other ages, had been just another facet of the elemental quadrarchy that defined this world.
Korra, structurally, is a lot more like another classic show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though despite the fact that Korra is probably supposed to be around Buffy's age, and the younger targeted audience means there's no explicit talk of sex (and definitely less graphic violence) in a lot of ways, Korra's stories feel a bit more like that of a young adult.
But structurally, Korra ditches the single building conflict for a series of one-season villains, whose plots are wrapped up by the end of the season - though the repercussions of those plots are certainly still felt in later seasons.
I've just watched seasons two and three. As with ATLA (and the more recent spiritual successor, set in a different world but with a similar tone and storytelling style and much of the same creative team, the Dragon Prince,) the seasons are organized by "book," with season two as "Spirits" and three as "Change." (If I recall correctly, season one is "Air," which does complete the cycle that the original series started with, though Air is a more important element in season three, which we'll get to.)
