Despite the death of Colonel Miles Quaritch at the end of James Cameron’s first “Avatar,” actor Stephen Lang is reprising the role for the upcoming sequels starting with this month’s “Avatar: The Way of Water”.
In a recent interview with Empire, Lang revealed he would be playing a recombinant version (‘recom’) of himself. His character’s essence has essentially been downloaded into a fully autonomous avatar:
“He’s a genetically-engineered autonomous avatar. He has been downloaded with the mind, the emotions, and even more interestingly, possibly the spirit of Quaritch. Now, that’s all pretty esoteric stuff. He comes with a full memory bank up until the time he actually undergoes the DNA transfer. So there are certain things that he doesn’t have any memory of at all. He has no memory of his death.”
Asked if he has the same kind of personality as the old Quaritch, Lang says to some extent – but you’ll also get to see more depth and other sides to the man:
“It’s fair to say it, but I think it’s incomplete. If you think about it, in the original film, Quaritch was really a function. He was a colourful function – a personality-filled function, but he really was there to provide conflict.
Now, he still has that function but I also think, just because of the depths of what Jim is exploring here, he’s quite a bit more than that.
We’re seeing parts of him that we have not seen hitherto. That only makes sense because we don’t want to be massaging the same territory over and over again. We need to go to new places and indeed he does.”
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, this tells the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
20th Century Studios has also released a new featurette with commentary from producer Jon Landau and the cast as they talk about what it’s like to rediscover Pandora after over a decade.
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, Lang, Matt Gerald, and Sigourney Weaver return, whilst Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh, Vin Diesel, Jemaine Clement, and Oona Chaplin also star.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” releases everywhere on December 16th.
