Stephen Lang

Quaritch’s growl remains useful in Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025): Stephen Lang can make a threat sound as though its speaker expects immediate obedience. He gives James Cameron a villain who needs little introduction, but by the third film that familiarity has become a problem. We were weary of him threatening the same family again; the delivery still works, but we know what is coming. Lang keeps doing the job. Cameron needs to give him a different one.

Before Avatar (2009) brought wider recognition, Lang had built a screen career in supporting parts. He plays Freddy Lounds in Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), a thriller whose cold control and lasting unease still impress us. Its restraint makes a useful contrast with the repeated threats Cameron gives him. There were also parts in Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) and, as Ike Clanton, Tombstone (1993), before Quaritch became the recurring assignment. That longer stretch of work deserves attention when the military bearing threatens to become the whole impression.

As soldiers and antagonists, he makes it easy to believe that these men could carry out their threats. That force also suits the Blind Man in Don’t Breathe (2016), a leading role built around a demanding physical performance. His stage work in the solo show Beyond Glory (2007) points to something the screen roles can underuse, an ability to give soldiers and veterans more than a threatening manner. We would like more of that care with character in the parts he is offered.

In Avatar: Fire and Ash, Oona Chaplin’s Varang is allowed an enjoyment of cruelty that makes the older villain look overfamiliar. Her interest in Quaritch also gives Lang something more promising than another pursuit of the Sullys. Yet the film repeats itself, and his dependable delivery cannot disguise how often we have heard the threat. We still value an actor who commits this firmly to material that does not repay him. For an evening’s viewing, we would choose Manhunter before returning to Quaritch.