At the end of James Cameron’s iconic science fiction movie Avatar, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) managed to defeat Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) by spearing him with an arrow. You’d be forgiven for thinking that was the end of the psychopathic soldier, but you’d be wrong.
It was announced before we’d even seen the first trailer that Quaritch and Lang were both returning for the action movie’s sequel. But how? Well, the answer’s as ridiculous as you’d expect from a series about remote-controlling alien bodies, and Lang has shared how he returns with Empire Magazine.
“He’s a genetically-engineered autonomous avatar,” Lang explained. “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.”
During the same interview, Lang also shared how Cameron told him he’s returning for the next alien movie in the series over a few beers. “We were months and months into the first shoot. It was one of those days in Wellington when we actually had a party,” Lang said. “So we were having a couple of beers, and at that point, Jim turned to me and said, ‘You’ll be coming back’, I was like, ‘Hey, that’s great!’ and then I kind of forgot about it.”
“It came up again two years later, and I was so thrilled and delighted”, he continued. “He said, ‘I already told you that’. And it’s true. He doesn’t forget a thing. You know, when he first said it, I put it down as one beer too many or something like that. But that wasn’t the case at all. Generally, when Jim says something, he means it.”
If you’re excited about Way of Water, check out our guide to the Avatar 2 release date, or we have a list of the best sci-fi series you might enjoy. If that’s not enough, or if you love Cameron’s work, we have an article on how to watch the Terminator movies in order.