Inside the Sound of Pandora: How ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Was Scored Over Seven Years
Fire and Ash: How the Avatar Soundtrack Was Built Over Seven Years
Composer Simon Franglen spent seven years crafting the expansive soundtrack for Avatar: Fire and Ash, writing 1,907 pages of orchestral score, inventing new instruments for the Na’vi world of Pandora, and completing the final music cue just five days before the nearly 195-minute film was printed and delivered, according to an interview with the BBC’s music correspondent Mark Savage.
A Technical Feat Behind the Camera — and in the Orchestra Pit
The Avatar franchise, created and directed by James Cameron, has long been cited by film analysts and technologists as a benchmark for advances in 3D cinematography, performance capture and visual effects. Since the first film’s release in 2009, critics and industry observers have often focused on the visuals, from Pandora’s rainforests to its bioluminescent creatures.
Less widely discussed, but comparably ambitious, is the music. Franglen, who took over primary composing duties for the series after working closely with original composer James Horner, describes Avatar: Fire and Ash as containing “four times as much” music as a standard Hollywood production, with nearly the entire 195-minute running time underscored, according to his account to BBC News.
Film-music historians note that such wall-to-wall scoring echoes earlier epics like Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia, while modern blockbusters more commonly use shorter, modular cues and heavier sound design. Musicologists interviewed in recent years about franchise cinema have pointed out that continuous scoring can shape audiences’ emotional responses with greater precision, but also demands significantly more writing, recording and post-production resources.
Seven Years, 1,907 Pages: Inside an Unusually Long Composing Schedule
Franglen told the BBC that work on the musical world of Avatar: Fire and Ash stretched across seven years, with the heaviest writing period occurring between 2023 and 2025 as Cameron’s edit evolved. Over that time, he produced 1,907 pages of orchestral score. By comparison, veteran Hollywood orchestrators say that two to three hundred pages are typical for a contemporary studio feature running around two hours.
The extended schedule reflects the unusual production model of the Avatar sequels, which were developed and filmed in close succession in New Zealand and the United States. Trade publications including The Hollywood Reporter have previously reported that Cameron continued revising story beats and visual effects deep into post-production, which in turn required ongoing adjustments to the score.
“I finished my final cue five days before the film was printed and delivered,” Franglen said, characterizing the process as a race against time. He added, jokingly, that he earned “10 minutes off for good behaviour” in a film otherwise almost entirely underscored.
Production insiders and composers who have worked on effects-heavy franchises say such last-minute changes are increasingly common, but the sheer amount of music on Fire and Ash sets it apart. Some industry observers argue that this intensity can lead to creative breakthroughs; others warn that tight turnaround times can increase stress on orchestras, mixers and post-production staff and complicate archiving and live-concert adaptations.
Scoring Grief and Distance on Pandora
Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third instalment in the series, continues the story of the Na’vi defending Pandora’s ecosystems from human exploitation. Early in the film, protagonists Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) are shown mourning the death of their teenage son, Neteyam, a storyline that draws directly from the ending of the previous film.
Franglen told the BBC he set out to express not only sorrow but also emotional distance between the couple. “I wanted to make sure that you felt that sense of distance that was growing between them,” he said. “So what I would do is, I would take two lines [of music] and I’d have them moving apart, or I would make them go wrong, so that they felt austere and cold and disconnected.”
He added that “grief is not something that is ever addressed in these sorts of films,” describing the death of a child as “the worst thing you can go through” for a family and emphasizing that “musically, the important stuff is often the quiet moments.” Film scholars and psychologists who study media have similarly observed that blockbuster franchises increasingly incorporate themes of loss and trauma, a trend visible in series such as Avengers and Star Wars. Some view this as a sign that big-budget films are tackling more emotionally complex territory; others see it as part of building multi-film arcs that keep audiences invested.
Audience response to such narratives tends to be mixed. While some viewers praise the emotional depth, others debate whether intense grief sits comfortably alongside large-scale action sequences. Early reactions to Fire and Ash suggest that the score’s quiet passages and recurring motifs for the family have resonated strongly with fans discussing the film on social media, according to informal tracking by entertainment news outlets.
A “Hoedown on a Galleon”: Inventing Music for the Wind Traders
In contrast to the subdued themes surrounding Jake and Neytiri’s grief, Franglen describes the sequences featuring the Wind Traders — a nomadic clan of airborne merchants — as an opportunity to “let his imagination run wild.” According to his account, their music draws on the swashbuckling adventure scores of 1930s and 1940s cinema while incorporating entirely new instruments devised for Pandora.
“When we meet the wind traders [they’re having] a hoedown on their enormous Galleon,” he recalled. “The problem was that, if you are having a Pandoran party, what do they play? I can’t give them guitar, bass and drums. I can’t give them a banjo.” He said he wanted instruments that would make sense for “three metre-tall, blue people with four fingers.”
“Because Avatar is not animation, when there are instruments on screen, you have to have the real thing,” Franglen explained, referencing Cameron’s rule that everything shown must be rooted in tangible reality, even where imagery is computer-generated.
To achieve that, Franglen sketched a set of instruments that were passed to the film’s art department, which then produced detailed designs. Among the creations was a long-necked lute, likened to a Turkish saz, whose strings echo the rigging of the Wind Traders’ ship, and a percussion instrument whose drum head uses the same material as the vessel’s sails.
Prop master Brad Elliott subsequently built the instruments using 3D printing technology, allowing actors to perform with them on set. As of the BBC interview, the instruments did not yet have official names, with Franglen joking that they were known internally as “the stringy things” and “the drummy things” and suggesting that a fan competition might be needed to rename them.
Production designers and ethnomusicologists note that inventing believable instruments for fictional cultures is an emerging niche in film and game development, tying together visual design, performance ergonomics and acoustic plausibility. While some observers see this as a form of cultural world-building that enriches fictional universes, others have raised questions in academic writing about how such designs may borrow from or remix real-world instruments and traditions without always crediting specific cultures.
From Manchester Electronics to Michael Jackson: Franglen’s Path to Pandora
Franglen’s route to one of Hollywood’s largest film scores began, he says, with a letter written at age 13 to the BBC asking how to become a record producer. The corporation, apparently assuming he was interested in radio, advised him to study electronics. That advice led to a course at the University of Manchester in the early 1980s, where he enrolled just as the influential Hacienda Club opened.
He recalls being member number 347 at the venue and spending his spare time booking bands for a college concert space. “I remember booking Tears for Fears and 11 people came,” he told the BBC, underscoring how even future chart acts once drew small crowds.
After graduation, Franglen was hired as a synthesizer programmer and introduced to producer Trevor Horn, working on major 1980s albums by acts including Yes and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. He later moved to the United States, where, after what he described as six relatively quiet months, he became an in-demand session musician and programmer.
His credits grew to include hits such as Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart,” All-4-One’s “I Swear,” and Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing,” as well as programming drums on Michael Jackson’s HIStory album. “The pressure was to make it great,” he said, emphasizing the importance of “the pocket” — a term musicians use for rhythmic feel. “A big part of my career is that I had a good pocket. I understood where things should feel and how they should hit. And that is as important with film scores as it is when you’re making a Michael Jackson record.”
Music producers and film composers often describe this crossover between pop and scoring as increasingly common, as studios look for artists with both technical skills and a track record in commercial music. Some critics welcome the trend for bringing contemporary production techniques into orchestral settings; others question whether it can lead to homogenized sound across different franchises.
Learning Film Scoring from John Barry to David Fincher
Franglen’s first experience in film scoring came when celebrated Bond composer John Barry invited him to assist on the Oscar-winning score for Kevin Costner’s 1990 western Dances with Wolves. He later contributed to David Fincher’s 1995 thriller Se7en, where he says his role was to provide the “dark and nasty stuff.”
“I would take squealing brakes, make samples of them, and then play all the violin lines with squealing brakes underneath,” he said. “There was a lot of experimental stuff, which was incredibly fun.”
Experts on sound design note that integrating found sounds and treated recordings into orchestral textures has become a staple of modern scoring, especially in psychological thrillers and science fiction. Franglen’s work on Se7en fits within that broader shift, which has also involved composers like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Hans Zimmer and Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Some purists of traditional orchestration have expressed concern in interviews and essays that heavy reliance on processed audio can overshadow thematic writing. Others argue that such hybrid scores are well suited to depicting dystopian or alien worlds — a lineage that can be traced from industrial-influenced soundtracks of the 1990s to the layered, textural approach heard in Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Reception, Fan Expectations and Franchise Legacy
Avatar: Fire and Ash, released globally on 19 December, has been projected by box office analysts to be one of the year’s highest-grossing films, following the commercial success of its predecessors. As with earlier entries in the series, the music is expected to be issued in soundtrack form and used in live orchestral events if demand is sufficient.
Franglen has suggested in interviews that the new instruments created for the film could be produced commercially if audience interest is strong enough. Collectors of film memorabilia and musicians who specialize in world and fantasy instruments have expressed curiosity online about potential replicas, while others have raised practical questions about playability and cost.
Among fans, early discussion on forums and social media has highlighted both continuity with James Horner’s original Avatar themes and the darker, grief-focused material in Fire and Ash. Some long-time admirers of Horner’s work emphasize the importance of preserving his melodic imprint on the franchise; others argue that Franglen’s expanded role and more experimental textures are a natural evolution for a series that continues to push technical and narrative boundaries.
Industry commentators also point out that the soundtrack arrives in a broader context of renewed attention on film music, with orchestral concerts, vinyl releases and streaming playlists giving scores a life beyond the cinema. Whether Fire and Ash will become a long-term reference point like the original Avatar score remains to be seen, but its combination of extended runtime, invented instruments and hybrid orchestral-electronic sound has already marked it out as one of the most ambitious film music projects of the decade.
