‘Avatar 2’: James Cameron Compares Franchise Development To Writing ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Novels

While we all saw Stephen Lang’s villenous Colonel Quaritch die in the first “Avatar” film, the actor is clearly returning in the upcoming sequel. Now, months before the new film hits theaters, Lang is explaining his miraculous resurrection (appears in a new avatar body in the teaser trailer) for the upcoming sequel in a new interview with Empire Magazine

Apparently, the return of Quaritch in “Avatar: The Way of Water” is tech-based, as RDA has the ability to put the memories of fallen human soldiers into new avatar Na’vi bodies and are referred to as Recoms. He’s also not the only one with a big blue upgrade running around Pandora as the evil mining operation will have a set of Recombinants at their disposal. 

“He’s bigger, he’s bluer, he’s pissed off. But there may possibly be an aspect of humility. When you take two Na’vi arrows in the chest, that’s gonna have some kind of effect on you. [He] was always a character who moved in straight lines and at right angles,” Lang explained. “But now he is as lithe as they come. He can move with the same kind of cunning and feral quality that any of the Na’vi can.”

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Perhaps, we’ll see Edie Falco’s General Ardmore, a new RDA villain, with her own Recom too?

Franchise producer Jon Landau adds that the Recombinants aren’t the only thing the RDA has in its tool belt as the warmongering company has built a new city called Bridgehead (RDA forces lost access to Hell’s Gate and were banished) and a new weapons-spewing 3D printing facility that is being used to help it strip away the resources of Pandora’s oceans. 

“They are coming back with an armada to take back the prized possession that they lost,” Landau added. 

In a separate interview piece from Empire, director James Cameron compared his development of the “Avatar” sequels to writing the “Lord of The Rings” novels and then adapting them into movies.

“What I said to the Fox regime at the time was, ‘I’ll do it, but we’ve got to play a larger game here. I don’t want to just do a movie and do a movie and do a movie. I want to tell a bigger story,’” he said. That meant a comparison with a certain literary saga. “I said, ‘Imagine a series of novels like “The Lord of The Rings” existed, and we’re adapting them.’ Now, that was great in theory, but then I had to go create the frickin’ novels from which to adapt it.”

This highlights the effort put into writing four movies at once before shooting them. However, we’ll have to see if all that effort worked in the end as “Avatar: The Way of Water” will hit theaters on December 16. 

Empire also included a new image of Quaritch at the RDA’s new facility on Pandora which you can see below.

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