Films To Watch If You Love The Legend Of Korra
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Nickelodeon's The Legend of Korra kept all the element-based bending and nations from its predecessor series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. But the sequel series updated a lot, too, from its modernized urban setting to an edgier sense of humor and more intense action. In almost every way, the Avatar series' characters aged up with its viewers. The Last Airbender's principal heroes were in their early teens, but Korra and her pals were basically young adults, starting athletic careers in pro-bending and getting involved in teen-drama romance well beyond the chaste will-they/won't-they of Aang and Katara.
And, of course, The Legend of Korra focused on a young woman taking the mantle of the Avatar, giving all the girls who had followed Aang's coming-of-age adventures a tough, no-nonsense Avatar of their own to admire. Unlike Aang, who had to overcome his timid nature to fulfill his destiny, Korra had confidence and toughness to spare, with her journey being more about finding a way to work with others and embrace her spiritual side.
If you've already followed that journey by watching and re-watching every episode, what should you check out next? Whether you're in the mood for some more woman-led animated adventure, want to check back in with The Legend of Korra's voice cast, or are looking for a little extra mystical martial arts action, we've got you covered. The Legend of Korra hits Netflix on August 14, 2020. So to celebrate, here are some movies to check out on Netflix if you loved Korra.
A Whisker Away combines magic, romance, and animal adventure
Animals — specifically hybrids of the animals we know and love on earth, like polar bear dogs and badgermoles — are a huge part of the world of the two Avatar series. They sometimes even talk in hallucinations or dream sequences. One bit of magic that never made its way into either series, though, was a person turning into an animal, the main conceit of the Japanese anime film A Whisker Away.
The movie's lead character, Miyo Sasaki, is a middle schooler who longs after a boy, as middle schoolers so often do. That boy, Kento Hinode, continually rejects her, but she eventually manages to claw her way into his life anyway. A mysterious mask dealer gives Miyo a Noh mask with the power to transform her into a cat. She conveniently bumps into her crush in her cat form, and he names her Tarō.
She spends as much time as she can with Kento, longing to tell him she's Miyo. But she soon learns that there's more than just romance at play here. The mask seller introduces new terms to the deal for Miyo's mask, threatening to make her a cat permanently. If you're into the elements of Korra that blend teen romance with dangerous mystical forces and even a little body horror, A Whisker Away is a great follow-up.
Maria is a tense, female-led action movie for grown-up Korra fans
Most of The Legend of Korra's preteen and teen audience is all grown up now, so how about a gritty action thriller for adults featuring a fierce, fighting woman in the lead role? The 2019 Filipino film Maria can definitely scratch that itch. In true John Wick style, the film follows a former assassin, Maria (Cristine Reyes), who's settled down with a home and family. Unfortunately, she gets dragged back into her old life following a tragic home invasion.
At its heart, Maria is a straightforward revenge story, but it's also a lot more. It's about a woman with a violent history coming to terms with that past, and reaping what she sowed in her old professional life. It's absolutely clear that Maria's actions and their consequences have taken a huge emotional toll on her, making her mission of vengeance all the more meaningful.
Maria also shares an interesting similarity with The Legend of Korra, in that local government and politics play a huge role in the plot. Where Korra fights against a group of anti-bending separatists and later her power-hungry uncle who takes over both water tribes, Maria tries to protect the life of an inspiring governor caught in the sights of the criminal syndicate she once worked for.
Ne Zha ramps up the world-spanning mythology
If mythical creation stories and tales about chosen ones with prophesied destinies are your thing, the Chinese animated film Ne Zha has all those elements in spades. Stick with us, here, because this is some serious cosmology stuff: The title character is the incarnation of the Demon Orb, one half of the mega-powerful, energy-draining Chaos Pearl, which a god split into two pieces to prevent it from destroying the world. The son of the Dragon King, Ao Bing, is the living form of the other half, the Spirit Pearl.
Afraid of Ne Zha's demonic nature, not to mention the inconvenient fact that a curse the god placed on the Demon Orb will cause a lightning strike to kill him in three years, the boy's parents lie to him and say he was the one born of the Spirit Pearl. But after a few demon hunts and mishaps involving injured townspeople, he finally learns the truth and takes on his true demonic form. This, of course, leads to the inevitable clash between the Chaos Pearl's two halves, Ne Zha and Ao Bing, both of whom must navigate their complicated paths to the destiny they were born to carry out.
And while this definitely all sounds like grandiose, universe-spanning stuff, the movie still manages to balance the epic action with cute animation and a goofy sense of humor, just like The Legend of Korra and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Quest for Camelot follows a young woman on a legendary quest
It's no big shock to say both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra were clearly heavily influenced by Asian culture, legends, and mythology. The costumes, character names and martial arts all undoubtedly reflect Chinese, Tibetan, south Asian, and various indigenous cultures. If you're looking for a similar type of adventure story influenced by the culture of another part of the world, you couldn't find a more iconic and enduring European legend than a story about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
The 1998 animated film Quest for Camelot follows the adventures of another young heroine, Kayley, the daughter of slain knight of Camelot Lionel. After King Arthur's sword Excalibur is stolen by a griffin (or as the characters on Legend of Korra might call it, a lion-eagle) Kayley secretly ventures into the Forbidden Forest to try to recover it while a rogue lord tries to usurp the throne from Arthur. It's up to Kayley to recover the sword and get back to Camelot in time to save the king and everyone else from the attempted coup. But it's not going to be easy. There are ogres in her way.
Sadly overlooked upon its release, Quest for Camelot has everything a great adventure needs: action, romance, intrigue, peril, and, of course, dragons. What more could you want?
The Main Event brings fantasy to the arena
Avatar: The Last Airbender had one sports episode, "The Blind Bandit," in which earthbending entertainingly melded with professional fighting (and wrestling legend Mick Foley voiced earthbending champion "The Boulder"). The Legend of Korra upped the sports content considerably, with big chunks of the first season dedicated to Republic City's Pro-bending Tournament, and with two lead characters, Mako and Bolin, coming from the pro-bending world.
So it's possible that if you liked The Legend of Korra, you also may have an affinity for dramatized sports action with a sprinkling of magic. The family comedy The Main Event checks all those boxes. It tracks the story of young Leo (Seth Carr), an often-bullied boy who dreams of becoming a star in the WWE. One afternoon, he hides from his bullies in a house having an estate sale, and he finds a luchador mask he eventually discovers gives him super strength and a really deep voice.
With his new powers, Leo auditions for a local wrestling competition and is shockingly successful against much-older opponents. He's almost too successful, in fact, which leads one of the other competitors to try some underhanded scheming to win.
And if you like wrestler cameos, watch out for tons of them in this one, including NXT Champion Keith Lee, former WWE Champion Kofi Kingston, Sheamus, and Mike "The Miz" Mizanin.
A brash lead character learns about teamwork in Klaus
The Spanish animated holiday flick Klaus doesn't just share a cast member with The Legend of Korra — the legendary J.K. Simmons, who voices Aang's airbending son Tenzin in Korra and the title character in Klaus. It also has a lot of the same themes. See if any of this sounds familiar to you: An overconfident — some might say arrogant — lead character travels from their home to an unfamiliar place to learn a lesson. But it's only once they learn the value of teamwork and to embrace magic that they truly find themselves.
That's Korra's story, right? Well, it's also pretty much the arc of Klaus' Jesper Johansson (Jason Schwartzman), the spoiled son of the powerful Postmaster General. Jesper's dad sends him to the remote town of Smeerensburg with the near-impossible task of getting the people there to post 6,000 letters in a single year. The problem is that nobody there ever mails anything. They're too busy feuding with one another in cartoonish and increasingly violent ways, with two particularly hateful families, the Krums and the Ellingboes, leading the charge.
So what's Jesper to do? After failing to scheme his way out of his predicament, he meets what seems to be a threatening woodsman, Klaus. Klaus is a lot more than he seems, though, and he and Jesper work together to build something they hope won't just save the town but will endure as a tradition for the ages.
Double World is a sprawling martial arts showcase
Hong Kong Director Teddy Chan's big-budget martial arts extravaganza Double World has a lot more in common with The Legend of Korra than just cool fight scenes, though the both certainly have their share of those. They also both occupy similar worlds. Korra's world focuses on four nations based on the various elements that have come to a lasting peace after a massive war. Meanwhile, Double World takes place in a fictionalized, fantastical ancient China with two long-warring color-coded regions. When the shaky peace between those regions is threatened by an assassination attempt on a young king, a scheming official from the southern region sends a call to the eight clans to find a new grand marshal, and a martial arts tournament gets under way.
Nobody here is bending air or fire, but there's plenty of spectacle and tons of kung-fu fisticuffs. Double World is based on the popular massively multiplayer online role playing game Zhengtu. So in order to stay true to its multiplayer video game roots, it focuses on the journeys of not just one hero, but several, including orphaned street urchin Dong Yilong (Henry Lau), young pickpocket and huge-sword wielder Jinggang (Lin Chenhan) and world-weary soldier Chu Hun (Peter Ho Yun-tung), who carries a broken spear.
If you crave martial arts action taking place with beautiful locales in the background, with the potential of some mythical creatures showing up, Double World is the perfect choice.
Parents looking for ghostly family fare will love Okko's Inn
A lot of teenagers (and, let's be honest with ourselves, adults) who watched The Legend of Korra during its initial TV run are parents now, and odds are they're going to make sure their kids see the show they loved in their youth. If you're in that camp, and you've already shown Korra to your kids, a great next choice might be Okko's Inn, a Japanese animated film based on a popular series of children's books.
Don't let the colorful and cute animation style fool you into thinking Okko's Inn won't appeal to kids who loved Korra's sometimes dark themes. That becomes more than abundantly clear within the first five minutes, when young Okko's parents are killed in a car crash. Okko survives the crash, and in the middle of it, sees a vision of the ghost of a boy named Uribo. Now an orphan, Okko goes to live at her grandmother's country inn. There, she continues to see and interact with Uribo's ghost, who encourages her to become involved in the day-to-day operations of the inn.
Fans of the deep character relationships and spiritualism of both Avatar and Korra will definitely find plenty to latch onto in Okko's Inn, which beautifully marries an examination of death and the afterlife with a cute, kid-friendly tale about how a child handles the responsibility of being a junior innkeeper.
If you loved Bolin's comic relief, check out The Clapper
Let's make a few things clear from the start: The 2017 indie comedy The Clapper does not have martial arts. Nor does it have any content about bending elements or opening portals to the spirit world. What it does have is P.J. Byrne, whose voice you may recognize as that of Bolin, the more lighthearted of the two brothers Korra teams with for pro-bending in the first season of The Legend of Korra. The funny and kindhearted Bolin is a fan favorite for good reason.
Byrne's character's intentions are a little less noble here. In The Clapper, he plays a producer of the talk show that more or less destroys the life of Eddie Crumble (Ed Helms), an actor whose main line of work is appearing as an audience member in infomercials. After noticing Eddie in a number of audience segments, late-night talk show host Stillerman (Russell Peters) starts talking about him constantly on his show, leading all of Eddie's work to dry up. Then Stillerman starts sending out camera crews to find out more about the actor he has nicknamed "The Clapper," inviting Eddie's best friend Chris (Tracy Morgan) onto his show and scaring the shy gas station attendant Eddie's falling in love with, Judy (Amanda Seyfried), into basically disappearing. Desperate to find Judy again, Eddie eventually agrees to go on the show, leading to even more complications.
Byrne's role isn't huge, but he's definitely got a comedic presence in the movie. And if you loved the parts of Korra that focused on Bolin's time as a budding movie star playing Nuktuk, hero of the South, you'll probably enjoy the showbiz-based comedy of The Clapper, too.
Latte and the Magic Waterstone is a journey through nature and the elements
Avatar Korra comes from the Southern Water Tribe. And even going back to the original Avatar series, waterbenders have been at the core of the story of both series from the beginning. So if you're in the mood for some more fluid wizardry, the German animated film Latte and the Magic Waterstone, based on a children's book of the same name, may just be the thing. Particularly if you also like stories that feature young, female lead characters you might characterize as headstrong.
The loner hedgehog Latte (Ashley Bornancin), has a reputation among her forest community as being lazy and selfish. After she and nervous squirrel Tjum (Carter Hastings) get into an argument that leads to them accidentally destroying the last tiny bit of their forest's water, they're tasked by the Grand Council with recovering the original source of the life-giving liquid: The Magic Waterstone, which has been stolen by the raging bear king, Bantur (Danny Fehsenfeld).
What comes next is a classic hero's journey through mountains, caves, chasms, and crevasses, featuring encounters with wolves, lynxes and — what else? — hungry bears. Through facing down danger to save her community, Latte also goes on a journey of self discovery to learn about the value of caring about someone other than herself.