James Cameron returned to the moon of Pandora for a third outing in the winter of 2025, with "Avatar: Fire and Ash", a direct sequel to "The Way of Water", and originally envisioned as one story, that was then split in two due to the scope of the narrative and action. While not boasting the technological leap evident between the first and second film, "Fire and Ash" continues to further push and refine Cameron's groundbreaking performance-capture and CG technology, with immersive design and rendering of the world and characters that continues to stun. What is less stunning continues to be Cameron's fallback to simplistic writing, often relying on generic tropes and clunky dialogue. That said, this film does deal with some heavier themes of grief, xenophobia, faith, and tests what the Sully family is willing to sacrifice to protect those they love. This film introduces the new tribe of air nomads knows as the 'Windtraders' as well as the Mangkwan, or 'Ash people', who serve as the primary new antagonists in the film. Overall, the film received solid reviews, and was another commercial success, though less so than the previous film.
Returning for the adventure was composer Simon Franglen, whose previous score exceeded expectations and is still one of my favorite blockbuster scores of the last decade. Franglen again immersed himself in the world-building of the universe, helping to explore what in-world music would sound like, developing instruments that could then be played by Na'vi characters on screen, and then continuing his thematic narrative for the underscore. Returning is Horner's main theme, with Franglen's family theme continuing to be the cornerstone of these sequels. Quaritch's theme gets a lot more development, as does Kiri'/Eywa's theme, as well as the music for the Tulkun and Payakan. The central new material includes a sweeping theme for the Windtraders, a central new theme for loss, and the music of the Mangkwan, which due to their destructive nature, Franglen avoided melody, instead opting for an aggressive ostinato of electronic textures and a Mongolian string instrument for their attacks, and vocal textures for Varang. Overall, while darker than the second score, and with the newer material not as memorable, but Franglen continues to impress with the sheer scope and ambition of his work, with extended action sequences that don't grow stale, and a constant commitment to development of his narrative structure and thematic ideas.
The soundtrack album was released by 20th Century Studios/Hollywood Records, featuring a generous (though not quite complete) 2+ hours of music, plus the end credits song performed by Miley Cyrus. The official album's cover is once again quite dull, so I wanted to explore the artwork available. There wasn't a lot of quality fan artwork available, so most of the art (minus the final three) are sourced from official marketing material, for a set of twenty-seven covers in total.
Some of these were relatively simple edits, a few others required combining to patch and widen the image, or paint out text, etc. I won't bother going through them one by one. Of these, the ones that took most work were Covers 19 - 21, the covers which feature the pairs of characters facing off. These started as wider wallpapers, so I had to slide the faces closer, and then carefully matte out edge details and blend the backgrounds together.
Covers 22 - 24 feature concept art paintings by Dylan Cole, one of the film's production designers.
Finally, covers 25 - 27 feature original artwork by French illustrator Julien Rico Jr. I thought they were a nice change of style from the other photo-real artwork. For the final cover, I simply slid the bottom volcano part of the image up a bit and re-blended.
Hope you enjoy the set, and let me know your favorites below!
No comments
Post a Comment