Avatar: Fire and Ash

This week, we’re looking at probably the strongest contender for the theatrical holiday season, as James Cameron prepares us for the next film in the Avatar series—with a third film taking a fairly reasonable three years from the last, in stark contrast to the thirteen-year wait between the first and second movies.

From the outset, the trailer opts for the original film score by Simon Franglen, who also wrote the score for the second film in the series, 2022’s The Way of Water. Wordless choir and various wind chimes and woodwinds from different cultures abound, drawing us back into the world of Avatar.

A swell of strings at 0:27 with the director’s title card (James Cameron, of course) leads us to the next segment, focusing now on epic aerial scenes and broad, sweeping chords. This only lasts a moment, however, as the music ducks out at 0:58 at a point of tension as series protagonist Jake Sully solemnly warns his partner, Neytiri, that she “cannot live like this, baby, in hate”.

Next, epic percussion and ever-climbing strings help lead the next segment as we see a montage with militant fighters and warring factions—another Na’vi tribe, the Ash People serve as a less clear-cut foil to Sully’s people, promising something more nuanced than the first two films.

This montage set to an epic arrangement continues until 1:43, when we return to what appears to be the same previous conversation between Sully and Neytiri, as she suggests “then we will find another way”.

The end of the trailer recalls, of course, Avatar’s main theme—an adventurous phrase tinged with wistfulness, owing in part to its use of the Dorian mode, with its characteristic mix of a generally minor melodic contour with the inflection of a major sixth. There’s a bit of tragic underscore here, too, in knowing that Horner almost certainly would still be scoring the Avatar series were it not for his untimely passing in 2015 in a plane crash at the far too young age of 61.

While straightforward in use, the evolution of the soundtrack’s arrangement in this trailer serves it well in terms of (re)introducing the world of this franchise. It imbues a sense of awe and wonder, and in the latter half especially, raises the stakes in portraying the conflict at the heart of this instalment. Arguably, largely shying away from synch points or other tropes of modern trailer music helps one to simply focus on the core story and ambiance that Cameron and Franglen are going for.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is due in theatres December 19th, 2025.

— Curtis Perry