UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: (as character) She lacks restraint. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: (as character) She's strong. I know I look like a waif, so who am I to judge? It's like definitely better than being a waif who's about to pass out. KONIETZKO: She's muscular, and we like that. ULABY: The show's creators imagined their headstrong heroine as the kind of girl you might meet snowboarding. I feel like - there are even, you know, certain episodes where it's like all at night in these alleys, and there's more noir.
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MICHAEL DIMARTINO: The show is a lot moodier. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: (as character) You're in Triple Threat Triad territory, and we're about to put you in the hospital. She travels to the city seeking training for her powers and stumbles into fighting crime. ULABY: In this show, Korra is the new avatar. KONIETZKO: It's kind of set in the1920s fictional Shanghai meets Manhattan.
#JAMES CAMERON AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER TV#
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LEGEND OF KORRA") But this show - meant for older kids - includes a steampunk metropolis with coughing old-fashioned cars and floating iron blimps. ULABY: Bryan Konietzko says the new show, "The Legend of Korra," takes audiences back into "The Last Airbender's" shadowy snowscapes and pastoral tribal villages. KONIETZKO: It's very nice to be back in the driver's seat. He could not be more pleased about the creators getting back their world.ĬAIN: It is pretty satisfying to see that. He runs the new show's Facebook fan page. ULABY: Brendan Cain started watching "The Last Airbender" on TV when he was 7 years old. He will just be reborn again.īRENDAN CAIN: Oh, the movie. (SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE LAST AIRBENDER")ĪASIF MANDVI: (as Commander Zhao) Do not kill the avatar. Fans complained the casting added weird racial implications, and they lamented the ham-fisted script. Night Shyamalan cost $150 million and flopped epically. ULABY: But on the big screen, the show's hand-painted look coarsened with cheesy CGI effects and live actors. KONIETZKO: I always wanted it to be wider and bigger and deeper and have, like, more depth, more cinematic scope. He said he wanted to test the limits of a kids' TV show. Bryan Konietzko studied landscape painting at the Rhode Island School of Design where he met DiMartino. You can feel the pulse of "The Last Airbender's" heart through the 15,000 handmade drawings that animate every episode.
#JAMES CAMERON AVATAR THE LAST AIRBENDER MOVIE#
ULABY: Obviously, there's a little kung fu movie love in there too. It's a skill they have to learn and earn. So they took what they liked about "Lord of the Rings" and blended it with the gentle humor of Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki. Nickelodeon had asked them to come up with something like "Lord of the Rings" or "Harry Potter." But Konietzko says they found sword and sorcery-style magic unpersuasive.īRYAN KONIETZKO: Where does it come from? What's the limit? You know, why is one magician better than another if they're just saying a word? Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino drew on Asian philosophies when they dreamt up the show. That's the avatar, who brings Taoist balance to the rest of the world. ULABY: But only one person can control all four elements. The energy extends past your limbs and becomes fire. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (as character) The breath becomes energy in the body.
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Some people, called benders, can control one of those elements using half magic, half martial arts. UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (as character) Water. ULABY: In this world, four tribes are each associated with a base element. He's had a century to master the four elements. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (as character) The sages tell us that the avatar is the last airbender. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER")
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"Avatar: The Last Airbender" was a super popular kids' show on Nickelodeon a few years ago. This "Avatar" has nothing to do with blue people or James Cameron. NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: OK, let's get one thing clear. Now, as Neda tells us, the creators have a new show set in the same world: "The Legend of Korra" premieres tomorrow on Nickelodeon. The show was "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Its creators had no control over the big-budget movie, which bombed at the box office a couple of years ago. And now, NPR's Neda Ulaby has a story about a hit TV show for kids that was almost ruined by its own movie adaptation.