Avatar: Fire & Ash's Windtraders, Explained By Director James Cameron [Exclusive]

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Whether you've already seen "Avatar: Fire And Ash" or you've just seen the trailers and ads, you've probably noticed those giant airship-type vehicles flying through the skies. These are the craft of the Na'vi clan known as the Tlalim, also known as the Windtraders, led by Peylak (David Thewlis). The Windtraders are a nomadic group of Na'vi who continually travel around Pandora, and as per their name, they deal in a variety of goods and services. Not only do they transport physical material, they also carry messages and stories across the planet. Unfortunately, similar to real-life trading ships, they are prey for pirate clans, specifically the Mangkwan, led by the vicious Varang (Oona Chaplin). In "Fire and Ash," the Sully family make a deal to travel via the Windtraders, only for events to spiral out of control once Varang and her marauders attack the convoy.

All of this is absolutely as engaging and as cool in the film as it sounds on paper; it's "Master and Commander" meets "Pirates of the Caribbean" with a dash of "Mad Max: Fury Road," all in the world of "Avatar!" Yet when you sit down to think about how it all got brought to the screen, you might get dizzy with dollar signs, as I did. After all, the "Avatar" films have always been shot on a combination of motion capture and live-action stages, so how in the world were these sequences involving the Windtraders accomplished? To find out, I was lucky enough to go straight to the source. I spoke with James Cameron prior to the release of "Fire and Ash," and the director was only too happy to break down how he, his cast, and his crew brought this clan and the setpiece they're part of to thrilling life.

The Avatar crew built the biggest set ever built on a performance capture stage for the Windtraders

Capturing the Windtraders and their craft on screen was always going to be a massive undertaking. Certainly, the visual effects wizards at Weta Digital have a ton to do with the way they appear in the film. Before their work could even happen, however, Cameron and his crew needed to figure out how to capture the scenes with the actors first. As Cameron revealed, it turns out that the best way to shoot a big giant setpiece is with a big giant set:

"To do it, basically we built the largest set we'd ever built in our performance capture stage. We built the ship from end to end. So you could run up and down and climb the rigging and pull on the ropes and all that, so it was quite a big production number for us. Because usually the performance capture stuff is quite small and intimate and tightly grounded for the most part."

Of course, once a large set was built, Cameron had to take into consideration all the physical interactions which would arise from that. This included both obvious things like props, as well as less obvious elements like the Na'vi's long hair blowing in the wind — hair which wasn't on the actors on set:

"Yeah, we just use wind machines and when we're doing capture, if people's hair is long or braided or whatever, and it plays a part in their physical performance — like if you turn your head to the wind, it blows the hair across your face — you need to move it, right? So we need to account for that. So anything that the actors touch or they physically have in their hands or anything that supports them."

Cameron's experience on oceanic vessels contributed to the design of the Windtraders

Figuring out how to portray the Windtraders came from Cameron and his team conceptualizing how they might work. For that, Cameron fell back on his extensive seafaring experience:

"We had to imagine how you would sail such a craft. I wanted it to have a little bit of a nautical feel to it, but it also had to be truthful to how you'd really do it. So they have the Wind Ray, which is the creature upfront that's sort of pulsating and it allows them to sort of tack and toe up wind, and then it's got these big veins [...] the creature itself isn't intelligent enough or developed enough in its nervous system that they could just plug in and tell it what to do. They have to control it with lines."

Once they had the idea for the Wind Ray and how it would steer the ship, the rest of the design of the craft fell into place, as did the feeling of it being akin to classic seafaring life:

"So then it becomes more of a sailing metaphor. And now you've got a captain and he's saying, 'Windward vein, out full,' and then everybody's hauling on ropes, and all of a sudden you feel like you're on a tall ship from the 1700s [...] what boy or a young person of either gender wouldn't want to go on that ship? So now you're getting sucked in [...] that was fun."

Cameron doesn't use the word "fun" idly, as the Windtraders sequence in the film is one of the most fun in years. I can't wait to go for that sky ride again!

"Avatar: Fire and Ash" is in theaters everywhere on December 19, 2025.