There are kids' shows and then there are animated epics that just happen to air on Nickelodeon. Avatar: The Last Airbender falls pretty squarely into the latter category. I'm not a child, nor do I have children, and yet I sincerely enjoyed just about every minute I spent watching that show with my similarly young adult-aged friends. The writing is solid, the voice acting entertaining, the design and animation just gorgeous. The story has a clearly defined arc--it was laid out beforehand, more like a miniseries than your average never-ending serialized television show--and gets into some pretty deep territory by the time it's over and done with. It's a masterpiece of contemporary television, a fable to grow old with.

Then M. Night Shyamalan came along and made a piece-of-crap film out of the whole affair that everybody will hopefully forget forever. While commercially successful, because sometimes kids (and their parents) are stupid, The Last Airbender completely slaughtered the artistry of the original series. There's not a drop of acting to be found in the whole thing. It's pretty sometimes. That's it. I sat through about 20 minutes of streaming it on Netflix before walking out of my apartment and punting the nearest small animal across the street. The dialogue is enough to drive one to needless violence. It put rather a dent in the artistic integrity of the whole franchise. 

I stopped watching the movie because that darn kids' show has such a special place in me now. Just seeing the avatar's lovable sky bison rendered in clumsy CGI killed a little piece of my soul. I know Nickelodeon has a brand to sell, but come on. The story was told as best it could possibly be in the original series. Why muck it up beyond recognition just to sell 3D movie tickets? This is art here, folks. You won't often see it on Nick and it's probably because they don't really know what to do with it.

But the original dream team, the developers who conjured up A:TLA in the first place, aren't done telling stories. The little universe they've created, a sort of mythological alt-world Asia, has too many charms to be used for just one show. And so they're diving back into it to create another.

The new show will still be about the Avatar, but not about Aang. The legendary quadru-benders are reincarnated into different forms. The next time around, the Avatar's a water bender. The Legend of Korra is about her adventures in a later version of the show's original world. 70 years later, to be exact, so there's all sorts of fun post-industrial scenery. And that's about all the teaser is telling us so far. The original vision of the world of Avatar doesn't seem to be much damaged by time or popularity. The animation is still beautiful and the bending still looks like it's being done by a martial arts master instead of a 13-year-old flailing around on a green screen. So props to Team Avatar; here's hoping they can come back for a solid round two despite the dippy film nonsense that marred their brand a little while ago. 

Check out the trailer here: