Ostensibly, Avatar: The Way Of Water was the story of Jake and Neytiri’s Na’vi family. Of the return of baddie Miles Quaritch, now himself a Na’vi ‘
Ostensibly, Avatar: The Way Of Water was the story of Jake and Neytiri’s Na’vi family. Of the return of baddie Miles Quaritch, now himself a Na’vi ‘recom’. Of elderly wounds, fresh conflicts, and shaky alliances playing out across Pandora. But alongside all of that, another thread captured audiences’ imaginations: the plight of Payakan, the mighty Tulkun space-whale who bonded with Jake’s wayward son Lo’ak, and made a human nemesis in Brendan Cowell’s Mick Scoresby, a maniacal mariner making a fortune from hunting down Tulkun and draining their ultra-valuable brain juices. Last time, a showdown between Scoresby and Payakan saw Scoresby lose an arm. Now, in Avatar: Fire And Ash, he’s back for round two.
While Scoresby relished his high-seas villainy in the second film, this time he returns with a vengeance. “What Jim [Cameron, director] and I talked about for Scoresby in this film is how he arrived as this wind-in-the-hair cowboy-of-the-seas in the last one, out to make some bank, have some laughs. He’s not in it for the wind, the hair, the laughs, or the money this time,” Cowell tells Empire in our latest Path To Pandora dispatch. It’s time for Mick Scoresby 2.0. “He lost his last fight, he knows there’s this generational, ancestral hatred towards him, and so this time it’s personal,” warns Cowell. “It’s destructive. And in terms of what he wants to do, it’s probably a little more violent, too.”
He might have lost a limb in their previous fight, but that won’t stop Scoresby from coming out swinging in Fire And Ash. “We’ve all been there, right? An arm down, a few pissed-off Tulkun up!” Cowell laughs. “But don’t underestimate that Scoresby may use his loss and turn it into a superpower.” Cinema’s biggest showdown is on the way.
Read Empire’s full interview with Brendan Cowell and Jemaine Clement in The Running Man issue, on sale Thursday 28 August. Pre-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.
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