If I were to guess, one of the most difficult parts for you to fit into the movie would be the comedy. Was that a challenge for you?
Yeah, you know, I think it's the single thing I'm struggling with, with the movie. Partly because the show is so schizophrenic in the best way, right? In the best way. It developed the tone as it went on in the series. So the opening scene, and the opening episode of the movie, is the youngest episode of the entire series. Mike and Bryan [the show creators] started out making the show and went towards a particular tone thinking it's Nickelodeon!? Going literally against their instincts a little bit. Going young.
Then as the show went on, they just started being more and more themselves, and it got older and older and older. Then it became cooler and edgier. But in the beginning they had lines like, "Wanna go penguin sliding?" That was the appropriate line in episode one, but would not be in, let's say, episode 27. That would not be that appropriate dialogue. And that — kind of, its origins as it was finding itself — is the balancing act of the movie. I wanted to honor that part of it. Because it would be like taking away my seven year old's [connection to it], and why we're all here, because my seven year old connected with it. I don't want to take that away.
You know, I have a very dark and edgy sensibility, but I'm trying to balance the two. But the humor is definitely the trickiest part of the piece. Even on Nickelodeon, the comedy's broad at times, really broad at times. And then you have episodes like the "Blue Spirit" episode — I think it was episode 13 from the first season — which is just all edgy. Like straight up, I literally just took episode 13 and put it in the movie. I just picked it out and put it in the movie. But the first season, the first episode, you're really picking and choosing delicately how to maintain the thing.
I've actually written a second draft of the second movie, and it's so much older. It's so much edgier and older. And that's what they're naturally having, because kids are 12 and 14 in the beginning and they just keep on growing and getting more mature, it just naturally moves that way. Then you have all the cool ladies they're fighting off. The Kyoshi warriors Vs. Azula's crew [is] in the second movie. It just gets darker and edgier, in the greatest way, more Shakespearean for me, as the seasons progress. So yeah, I like goofy humor, so I have a higher tolerance than most.
Is Momo in the movie, and will it be fun?
I don't know if I can answer the second one, I hope so. But there was a moment where — I have my focus group at home with my kids — and there was a moment when I was like, "So what's Momo do exactly?" I always ask the question like "What does he represent, what is his thing." And they're like, "well he's just kinda fun." And we put him in, like we were finishing an episode and put him in somewhere. In a way, when I was early in the movie, I was thinking, "I need to have a reason for everything." Maybe I was over-thinking it, but I would say to the kids "what would you think if Momo wasn't in the movie?" They literally attacked me. The stopped speaking to me. I had to say, "All right, all right, all right. We'll put him in. Relax. Everybody relax, he'll be in the movie." And so he's in there. I love him, he seems so real. Being so not versed in animal biology, I would believe that that exists. I think he's just really fun and cool in the movie. I would love to kinda have a moment for him somewhere in the three movies, [in which] I give him a purpose. That's my dream, give Momo a purpose.
A lot of people look at the trailer and they assume the film is the entire first season. But it can't possibly be because there wouldn't be enough time for everything. There's a lot of really fun, smaller moments like King Bumi and things of that nature. What was cut?
The first outline I made of the movie I bought Mike and Bryan to my house and said, "I have an outline of the movie, what do you think?" And they said, "This is like 10 hours long. You have to cut stuff." And I thought, "I can't. I love everything." The first outline was so long that — you know, I'll give you an example. You know the bounty hunter? I love that! I thought, "I'm getting her in here I have to." And I just couldn't fit her in. In an episodic series, the nature is that it's episodic. You need to have a beginning, middle and end in each episode. It needs to go "right, left, right, left," like that. But there's a through-line that's present in most of the episodes — like he has to master all the elements, those kind of things. Someone's chasing him. Katara and her brother are becoming like a family and they're protecting him, and they're moving to the Northern Border Tribe. Broad things like that, that represent the story of the first season. So there's a bunch of things that had to get jettisoned for this movie.
But my hope is that [The Bounty Hunter] will end up somewhere in one of these movies. I moved some things, like the deserter. The deserter character, which I love, and I think is a huge moment, I moved him to the third movie when he's going to learn fire. And so, those kind of things, I'm trying to think of what other things will be... well, King Bumi's not in the first movie. But my hope is again that as we get to Earth, all those Earth-related things will come in handy. It really is a kind of distillation of just getting the story correct. And how much can I lay in with a line. I have a line which I hope stays, about grandma saying something about "my friend Hama." Like my favorite episode of the series is the blood-bender episode from the third season. So I wanted to just lay the groundwork for that. It's really sad, you know, to lose something that was fun and exciting in the first season.
