Composer Simon Franglen Honors James Horner, Evolves New Sonic Palette for ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

Composer Simon Franglen knows the way of the Na’vi.

The Avatar: The Way of Water composer first started working in the world of Pandora when he partnered with best friend James Horner on the score for the 2009 original. Horner owned primary composition duties while Franglen took on the sounds and natural rhythms of the Pandoran forests. When Horner died in a tragic plane crash in 2015, Avatar director James Cameron naturally turned to Franglen to carry on Horner’s legacy while simultaneously forging new paths forward with The Way of Water and future sequels.

“Jim Cameron and I both talked about the idea that we wanted to honor James by bringing themes, where appropriate, into the new score. The vast majority of it is fresh and new because because it’s a new film, and there are new characters in those new places. But there are moments when it’s important to have the original themes there,” Franglen explained. “I hope that the fans of the original will like and recognize that we’ve tried to keep that because also there’s a flow for a series of films. Avatar isn’t a standalone film. It’s part of a whole canon of movies, we hope. Therefore, bringing some of the score from A1 into A2 I thought was appropriate and a good thing to do.”

Avatar: The Way of Water is a massive, stunning accomplishment that introduces audiences to the water-centered Metkayina tribe. Given the film’s shift from the jungle to the ocean, Franglen’s score needed to shift its inspirations and sounds. But he couldn’t just make stuff up. Cameron challenged his highly collaborative crafts team to justify every choice they made with sound reasoning.

To help design and understand the Na’vi culture, Franglen and other behind-the-scenes craft teams formed the “Culture Club.” The intent, according to Franglen, was to provide research based in various Earth-bound international cultures that could infer the Na’vi culture. For example, Franglen explored the instruments the Na’vi might play, provided sketches to the production design team, and then realized physical manifestations of his designs through 3D printing.

Culture Club research into Polynesian culture also helped determine how the score would shift to reflect the sounds of the Metkayina tribe.

“I thought this is a different field. It’s a different tribe. They have a different culture, so I discarded all of what we used in the forests. All of the rhythm was now is bamboo and wood, so I started using bamboo, percussion, wood percussion, things like that,” Franglen commented. “Once we move out to the Metkayina tribe, I moved to a slightly softer, more Polynesian texture. It’s also a bit of Mongolia. I’ve worked with Mongolian singers a few years ago, and I was always amazed by the quality of their voices. I took a sort of hybrid approach to the ensemble vocals. I worked with some South Pacific Islanders that we wanted to bring into Wellington where I was recording them and did some wonderful vocals with them.”

Cameron also challenged Franglen to create a score that would reflect the first time we see the pristine ocean floor, the way the light plays with plant life and even the sand itself. To accomplish this, Franglen built a space with the highest percussions he could find. Rather than playing the instruments in a traditional fashion, he and his team played them randomly, producing an iridescent, shimmering sound. Vocals employed in this section needed to sound like mermaids calling to the forest-dwelling Na’vi, beckoning them to enter the water.

In addition to the score, Franglen also helped develop two songs for the film. He co-producted “Nothing is Lost (You Give Me Strength),” written by The Weeknd, based on a jump-starting care package of ideas and themes from the film. The Weeknd saw an early cut of the film back in the summer and immediately understood its emotional context. Cameron and Franglen didn’t want the song to be a “rubber stamped” pop song over the closing credits. They wanted it to reflect the film’s journey, a sense of hope, and the idea of a father fighting for his children.

Yet, it’s the first song Franglen worked on that remains most intertwined with the heart of the film. As sung by Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri, “Song Chord” was written in the Na’vi language and grounded in the concept of beginning a new life, the spark of life, found in cultures across the world. Like many of the music cues in the film, “Song Chord” was specifically written into the first page of Cameron’s script.

“Jim Cameron understands the music in a Jim Cameron film and knows exactly how he wants it to be. On the first page of Avatar Two, as it was called then, it says Neytiri sings the song chord. He explained the concept of the Song Chord and how there needed to be this melody that had to be sung on screen by Neytiri. It needed to have this ancient quality, but obviously, we still have the sense of a mother’s love. So there was already the concept of musical themes written into the script, which obviously gave me a way in.”

Further challenging Franglen in his Avatar: The Way of Water score was the understanding that this remains a continuing story. Disney holds future dates for the next three iterations of the story, and Cameron already has a strong understanding of the journey these films will take. Naturally, Franglen’s score needed to establish a sound that very likely will appear in future Avatar incarnations.

“I’ve already written stuff for three as well already. We were working on two and three together. Part of the reason Jim wanted to me to read the scripts through to Avatar 5 was so that I could see the arc of where we were going because that would inform me, certainly the things that we’re doing,” Franglen said. “There are certain things in the music that I’ve written for Avatar: The Way of Water that you will start to see make more sense as you go through the series. There are definitely some Easter eggs.”

Avatar: The Way of Water opens Thursday night nationwide.