Avatar: Fire And Ash Will Bring An ‘Airborne And Water-Borne Battle For The Ages’

As Chief Brody famously said upon seeing the shark up-close in Jaws: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” And that, too, seems to be exactly how the RDA felt after their SeaDragon ship was trashed by heroic space-whale Payakan in the final reel of Avatar: The Way Of Water. James Cameron’s mega-sequel ended in a colossal aquatic battle that led to major casualties on both sides, and left the RDA running away, tail-between-legs – but as we head towards this year’s Avatar: Fire And Ash, the conflict has only just begun, and the RDA are ready to strike back.

As production designer Ben Procter promises Empire, in Fire And Ash “we’re going to see an airborne and water-borne battle for the ages, as the Pandoran forces and RDA clash in a really interesting environment”. It’s a face-off, he says, that makes The Way Of Water’s end battle look like “nothing but a skirmish”.

In part, that’s because the RDA is even more tooled-up this time – bringing along a gigantic, smoke-belching Factory Ship (“Essentially a moving oil platform that is designed to capture and process the tulkun on an industrial scale”), more than twice the size of the SeaDragons. “Coming out of these vehicles is an army, and all of that leads into a war,” says Procter. “At the end of Avatar 3, what we’re going to see is something of a scale, in terms of conflict, that we have not seen before.” Payakan had better have some new tricks up his fins.

Read much more about Avatar: Fire And Ash in Empire’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning issue, on sale Thursday 13 February. Order a copy online here. The Path To Pandora continues every month in Empire – subscribe here to get the magazine every month and hear the latest Na’vi news. Avatar: Fire And Ash comes to UK cinemas from 19 December.