Top 25 Bryan Konietzko Quotes

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.

Early on, many years ago when we started ‘Avatar,’ the executive that we were working with said to make the sad scenes sadder, the funny scenes funnier, the scary scenes scarier. That was kind of permission to do what we felt comfortable with.

Hopefully, when we’re done with the ‘Korra’ saga we can put our stamp on a movie.

The ‘Korra’ crew were like a family, and they’re so unbelievably talented and dedicated, and got along so well.

After ‘Avatar’ ended, I spent a lot of time watching MMA and kickboxing fights on UFC, WEC, DREAM, and K-1.

Animation is incredibly difficult – much like doing a giant sweeping fantasy novel.

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.

In a lot of ways, their journeys are opposite of each other’s: Aang was a peace-loving monk, through and through, whereas Korra is a dyed in the wool fighter.

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.

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.

It wouldn’t be the Avatarverse without some hairstyle changes, now would it?

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.

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.

We don’t dwell on the business of Korra restoring everyone’s bending in ‘Book 2,’ but we figured she got around to helping the innocent people who lost it in the months between the seasons.

Any political or philosophical agenda can and will be perverted by power and/or fear.

Mike and I like a balance of tones. We never set out to make an overtly silly show or an overly serious dramatic show.

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.

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.

‘Korra’ is its own series. Obviously it’s tied in, in the same world, a similar story, but it’s not just ‘Book Four’ of ‘The Last Airbender.’

Since the first announcement of ‘Korra’ a few years ago, our fan presence online has just been huge and it’s really active online. And as TV distribution evolves, even between ‘Book 1’ and ‘Book 2,’ it’s evolved even more, our audience is increasingly online.

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.

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.

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.

Korra and Aang ultimately stand for freedom, equality, and basic human rights, and I think Mike and I are fine with pushing that agenda.

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.