The Next 'Airbender' Gets Older, Wiser and Adds a Feminine Touch
The fantasy cartoon "Avatar: The Last Airbender" was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows on Viacom Inc.' Nickelodeon network. Now the creators of the show are back with a sequel series called "The Legend of Korra" that they hope will expand the audience for the program despite a change in the title, a switch in the setting, and a new female protagonist.
"Avatar" centered on a 12-year-old boy named Aang, but the new series, which launches on April 14, features a 17-year-old girl, Korra. While in the first series, characters wandered a countryside that often resembled ancient China, much of the action in the new series, which is set 70 years after the events of the first program, takes place in Republic City, a fictional urban center that is a kind of mash-up of Shanghai in the 1920s and American cities like Chicago and New York during the Prohibition era."Avatar: The Last Airbender" was set in an imaginary world in which some individuals, called benders, have the supernatural ability to control water, earth, air or fire and one person-the Avatar-has the power to manipulate all the elements. The action-adventure series was inspired by "Star Wars," the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, and the animé movies of Oscar-winning Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. "Avatar" debuted on Nickelodeon in 2005, and the show's finale in 2008 drew six million viewers ages 2 and up, according to the network. Typically, 1.2 million viewers watch the channel each week.
Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the co-creators of "Avatar" and the executive producers of "Korra," said they decided to retool their franchise because they felt that the original series, which ran for three seasons, had told a complete saga. "We loved those original characters like Aang but we wanted something fresh," Mr. Konietzko said. "It was a creative challenge for us."
"Korra" has been in the works for years, but Mr. DiMartino said that with the success of "The Hunger Games" movie and the coming Pixar film "Brave," which both feature strong female leads, "The time is right in the cultural zeitgeist for all these female heroes to come out."
According to Nickelodeon, the median age of "Avatar" viewers is 12.8 years old, and the audience is roughly 65% male and 35% female. Mr. Konietzko said Nickelodeon tested the new series and young boys readily accepted the show's female hero. "You can't say it's gonna fail when there aren't that many things to point to in animation like this," Mr. Konietzko said. "Luckily, Nick was brave enough to let us do it."
Given its teenage heroine, "Korra" will explore story lines that are slightly more mature than in the previous series. "But it's not 'The Wire,'" Mr. Konietzko jokes. "We didn't get that mature. But the show will deal less with good versus evil than with conflicting interests. We find that to be more interesting."
The name of the show was changed, in part, to avoid brand confusion with directorJames Cameron's 2009 blockbuster movie "Avatar," which is completely unrelated to Nickelodeon's cartoon series. Mr. Konietzko said he first heard about Mr. Cameron's "Avatar" when he was working on the second season of the cartoon series.
"It certainly makes weddings and parties more tiresome," Mr. Konietzko says. "It's like 'No, it's not the blue people. We didn't have anything do with that.' " (lol)
Mr. DiMartino said that he and Mr. Konietzko pushed to change the name of their series because they felt the word "Avatar" was "not going to work for the branding of it." Mr. DiMartino and Mr. Konietzko both contend that their fans will be able to find the show despite the name change. "The fans know it as 'Avatar' and they'll probably keep calling it 'Avatar,' " Mr. DiMartino said. "We'll always call it 'Avatar.' "
In 2010, director M. Night Shyamalan ("The Sixth Sense") made a live-action big-screen adaptation of the first season of the cartoon series but it was a disappointment at the box office. The film brought in $131.8 million domestically, according to the movie tracking website Box Office Mojo) and it was panned by most critics. "It was based on our series, but we weren't in charge, we had no leverage at all," Mr. Konietzko said. "We tried to help and be cooperative, but it had someone else's name on top of it and it wasn't ours. It's very refreshing to be back executive producing something again where we have the reigns of our creation." (ALL THE TEARS ;_;)
DiMartino and Konietzko say that they'd like to get a shot at making another big-screen feature based on their cartoon series, though nothing is officially in the works. "Hopefully, when we're done with the 'Korra' saga we can put our stamp on a movie," Mr. Konietzko said. "I think we've been honing our skills towards that for a long time."
The Pic has nothing to do with the article but I couldn't help it, the fanart was too cute. But I love to see Bryke to make a big-screen movie on the series we all know and love (not the last flopbender) whether it is live action or animated <3
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