Avatar Villain Stephen Lang gives insight into his character’s return to Pandora

The long awaited sequel to Avatar will drop December 17, 2021, but production has been underway on it and parts of all four upcoming sequels for quite some time. We’re now hearing from actors like Stephen Lang who is returning to the franchise as the big villain Quaritch.

Director James Cameron decided to bring back Colonel Miles Quaritch, the one with the big scars on the side of his face , for at least Avatar 2 and 3, which are filming simultaneously. The villainous Quaritch was played by Stephen Lang in the original film.

In an interview with The National, Lang spoke about how overwhelming it was to film for all the sequels at once following Cameron’s plan for the films.

“I’ve given up trying to keep track,” Lang says when asked how many script pages and hours of footage has been logged. “The whole thing gets a little confusing.”

We’re looking forward to seeing how Lang can take his considerable acting talent and use it to develop Quaritch as a character. He was definitly a bit of a characteture in the first movie.

“I’m working now with a much broader canvas than I was with the first ‘Avatar,’ and it keeps me in concert with James Cameron to really go to town and examine the character in detail,” Lang said in the interview. “That, to me, is totally tremendously satisfying and challenging…Quaritch has evolved, definitely. We’re making four more films, so if he doesn’t evolve, we’re in some kind of trouble. And it’s not always a question of evolution, it’s about becoming more deeply entrenched. I’m still discovering it. That’s something I’ll be discovering as we continue to work because we’re by no means near finished with this process.”

Cameron has reported that motion capture and live action filming for the first two sequels is mostly done at this time. Now there’s a long period of post-production where all the digital effects will be added in.

Given how Cameron has promised the new films will be another evolutionary leap, just as the first film was, we can’t wait for the first Avatar sequel to hit theaters. The big question is how much rope will the studio bosses at Disney give him compared to his old bosses at Fox.

Previously: How Stephen Lang learned his character of Col. Quaritch would be back in the Avatar sequels.