Nickelodeon has released a trailer for the Avatar: The Last Airbender mini-series.
The new story, entitled The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra follows a teenaged Waterbender from the Southern tribe named Korra as she ventures to Republic City to learn Airbending from Aang’s descendants, 70 years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
I’m already a fan of this character. Of course, I’m a bit of a sucker for rebellious female heroes, which is all we really know about her so far. I feel confident enough in the team to trust that she and whatever friends she will have will be just as evocative as the characters in the original series, and possibly a bit more mature, since the creators now know that their audience is a bit more mature than originally intended. The final clip at the end of the trailer shows us that they haven’t removed every spark of goofiness from the series however.
Especially interesting is the seeming skyscraper pagodas, seen in the distance in this trailer. It seems that the world has moved on a bit from bending, and we likely won’t see a world filled with people using the mystical forces in their everyday lives, like we saw in Avatar.
In the 70 years since Aang’s original adventures, the world has become less mystical and more technological, seemingly having gone through an industrial revolution of sorts, creating a really compelling combination of feudal Japanese with Victorianesque imagery.
Republic City looks like a sort-of dystopian, industrial revolution era city, with just a touch of steam-punk. However, it has retained that world-of-pagodas look that made the setting so visually exotic in the first series.
I think it’s odd the way they switched up the title of the series – the originally announced title was Avatar: The Legend of Korra, which makes more sense – but perhaps there is good reason which we’ve yet to see. Maybe in some ways, it is still the story of Ang.
If you’re one of the few who completely missed Avatar: The Last Airbender, or if you only saw the M. Night Shyamalan movie, this is something you should remedy immediately.
Though seemingly constructed for children, it is certainly not too juvenile for an adult audience, and is, in fact, one of the best fantasy series, with one of the most interesting mythologies, television has seen in a very long time.
There is no release date yet set for The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra.
