Korra and Aang ultimately stand for freedom, equality, and basic human rights, and I think Mike and I are fine with pushing that agenda.
Bryan Konietzko
Some Nickelodeon executives were worried about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls. During test screenings, though, boys said they didn't care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome.
Fans are more interested in imagining relationships between a myriad of pairings. But they're profoundly disinterested in seeing any of those things manifest themselves on the show.
I think Korra, I later realized she was inspired by my sister, who is pretty tough.
As humans our hangups seem to shape our interaction with the world around us. They are often the source of our intolerance and friction with people who think differently than us, and even the reason we build walls between us and the people close to us.
We wanted the elemental 'bending' to be based on authentic Chinese traditional martial arts, believing this would lend a beauty and resonance to the animation and the fictitious disciplines. Once we had that idea, I started looking for a Kung Fu teacher/Martial Arts consultant. My search led me to Sifu Kisu and I began training with him right away.
With 'Korra' we've really taken a lot of time to craft it. We're aiming pretty high, and in order to keep up the quality it just takes a lot of time and a lot or work.
Mike and I were really interested in other epic 'Legends & Lore' properties, like 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings,' but we knew that we wanted to take a different approach to that type of genre. Our love for Japanese Anime, Hong Kong action & Kung Fu cinema, yoga, and Eastern philosophies led us to the initial inspiration for 'Avatar.'
I thought Korra was 17 so Mike and I have to get our stories straight. The main characters are in their late teens, we've always loved those kind of teen love triangle type stories and there was plenty of that in the original series.
It wouldn't be the Avatarverse without some hairstyle changes, now would it?
Aang was an airbending prodigy, but didn't even discover he could bend the other three elements on his own; whereas Korra was bending three of the elements at age four.
You've got to earn it; you're not just handed anything in life. That's why no one starts out as a perfect master.
The social and political climate came from discussions about how we could find conflict in the wake of a 100-year-long war ending. But as we know in the real world, just because a war ends it doesn't mean that everything turns happy and peaceful. That provided us with some new kinds of conflict for us to explore in 'Korra.'
I like nothing more than a character sacrificing himself or herself for the sake of others. That's drama at its finest for me.
We just don't subscribe to the conventional wisdom that you can't have an action series led by a female character. It's kinda nonsense to us.
We knew we wanted the 'magic' in our show to be different than the typical wand-wielding spell-casting fare. For us, it had to be natural and physical, with a source and rules and limitations - and most importantly it had to be a skill rather than just a power, something that a practitioner had to learn and strive for.
When Nickelodeon, in 2009, told us they wanted us to come back and do another series where we could do whatever we wanted, the first thought we had was: Let's do a story about the next 'Avatar.' That was the first thought. The second thought was: Let's make it a girl.
I think it's touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I've felt that way in plenty of TV shows - 'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men.' How could they do that to that character? That's drama.
I always felt like Azula and Long Feng were much more interesting villains and three-dimensional characters than Ozai, who was just sort of a big jerk. Like a really big jerk, but not very complex or human.
Nickelodeon came to us at the end of 2009 with a twelve episode 'mini-season' already green-lit for a new series. They let us do pretty much whatever we wanted with it, as long as it was in the 'Avatar' universe and featured bending.
I am infamous for writing fight scenes beat for beat, punch for punch. I can't help it!
I'll just say that America - us included - has a long way to go to catch up with the animated work being done in a handful of countries, namely Japan.
When you have a fully-realized Avatar, it's like Superman, and how do you make that interesting?
We draw inspiration directly and indirectly from all sorts of things, like movies, documentaries, TV dramas, novels, non-fiction books, animation, science and nature shows, and our own life experiences.
It is a long story how we finally ended up with the title simply being 'The Legend of Korra,' but in a poetic way, I think Korra's big Type A personality willed it to happen!
After 'Avatar' ended, I spent a lot of time watching MMA and kickboxing fights on UFC, WEC, DREAM, and K-1.
In an early version of the story, I thought Aang could shepherd a herd of twenty bison.
As we wrote 'Book 1,' before the audience had ever laid eyes on Korra and Asami, it was an idea I would kick around the writers' room... The more Korra and Asami's relationship progressed, the more the idea of a romance between them organically blossomed for us.
Any political or philosophical agenda can and will be perverted by power and/or fear.
We want our villains and antagonists to have distinct motivations.
From the inception of this series, Mike and I were very interested in exploring the theme of tradition versus progress. We always like the struggle for balance to be a central theme of our stories, so as we introduce all of these changes to the 'Avatar' world, we get to see how people react and try to realign themselves.
I am certainly proud to add 'Korra' to the pantheon of TV characters, which is perpetually sorely lacking in multifaceted female characters who aren't sidekicks, subordinates or mere trophies for male characters.
It seems to me virtually any ideology, no matter how intrinsically benign, can be used to oppress. And any group with power, no matter how well-meaning, ultimately corrupts and ends up exploiting its advantage to some extent.
We have always put the quest for balance at the center of our storytelling, whether it is the struggle to find it within one character, between a character and society, between disparate cultures or between humans and their environment.
When I watch a show, I want to feel like it is coming out of someone's head, not out of a boardroom.
Hopefully, when we're done with the 'Korra' saga we can put our stamp on a movie.
I always feel pressure, no matter what I do! I think it is what gets me up in the morning.
I just follow what inspires me as an artist and a storyteller, and stay true to myself in my work.
I try to make the kinds of things I want to see out there in the world, and hope they end up resonating with other people too.
I'm just making 'Threadworlds' out of the things I love and that I'm passionate about learning. When we created 'Avatar,' Michael DiMartino and I did the same thing.
Though we did have a few main characters in 'Avatar' who represented the non-benders of the world, most of the people we focused on were benders. However, benders are the minority in their world population.
We're definitely still interested in the Avatar/Korra universe and fantastical world building in general, but I think many of the core themes and tones found in our two kids' series would be present as well in any sort of adult dramas we might be lucky enough to make in the future.
We really liked the magic of 'Harry Potter' and 'The Lord of the Rings,' but we could never figure out where the powers came from.
We feel like we're kind of movie guys working in TV. So we're looking forward to that day when we get to work in that medium.
Mike and I figured out a lot about the world, characters and story in the initial two weeks between creating 'Avatar' and pitching it to Nickelodeon.
Stories often take their own course once you start to write them, especially when you have the benefit of a writers' room and a team of people augmenting and adding to the material.
There is such a flood of TV shows, movies, video games, comics, and books, but somehow 'Avatar' is still being discovered by each new generation.
While we were in the middle of 'Avatar' we got a lot of volatile reaction from fans. They were very upset with the direction we were taking Zuko.
Book 4 is the end of the 'Korra' series. So we've got 52 episodes planned. When all is said and done it will have taken I think about five years to make.
Animation is incredibly difficult - much like doing a giant sweeping fantasy novel.
