Avatar

James Cameron's Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time. It is also the longest movie in existence. Well, the second thing may not be true but it is really long, and in it is about 3 hours of original music by composer James Horner.

Being about a skinny blue race of arboreal shamanistic aliens, called Navis, the movie's composer was able to create an entire music culture from scratch. This clip is a medley of the score:



You can easily tell that the music implies certain things about the Navi by using types of existing music and sounds that we have already given 'earthly' correlations to. For example, the use of African tribal-type drumming is prevalent in the Navi portions of the score. Also, the contrast with the music played during the scenes involving the film's villains (a militaristic mining company) gives the impression that the Navi aliens are definitely the good guys. Compare the different types of drum used to divide the two archetypes:



The militaristic, heavy drum pattern and chordophones succeed in sounding as warlike as the film's villains need to be, while the hand clapping, tribal drumming, and vocal chorus (sung in actual Navi) makes the watcher well aware that the alien race is quite spiritual, a bit ethereal, and much more wholesome than the former.