With the film’s 195-minute runtime almost entirely scored, Franglen noted the soundtrack contains “four times as much” music as a standard Hollywood production. Director James Cameron’s perfectionism meant the British musician finished his final cue just five days before the movie was printed.
Beyond sheer volume, Franglen tackled complex emotional themes. The new film sees main characters Jake Sully and Neytiri mourning their dead son, Neteyam, with grief threatening to pull them apart. Franglen composed music to reflect this despair, using techniques like setting two musical lines moving apart to create a sense of distance, making the score “austere and cold and disconnected.” He stressed that the “important stuff is often the quiet moments” when addressing the loss of a child—a rare theme in action films.
The score also demanded incredible creativity, particularly for the new Wind Traders—a nomadic clan. Since Pandoran parties can’t feature guitars or banjos, Franglen had to invent new, playable instruments for the three-meter-tall Na’vi. He sketched out designs for a long-necked lute and a percussion instrument whose drumhead mirrored the airship’s sails. The art department rendered the designs, and a prop master 3D-printed the working instruments, which actors played on set. Franglen affectionately refers to his inventions as “the stringy things” and “the drummy things.”
This painstaking dedication mirrors Cameron’s commitment to realism and his explicit instruction to avoid artificial intelligence, ensuring that no real musicians were put out of work. Franglen, who previously worked on Titanic with James Horner, is now celebrating a Golden Globe nomination for the film’s theme song, Dream As One, and anxiously awaits box office results, hoping for the success needed to greenlight the already-scripted Avatar Four and Five.
