Colonel Miles Quaritch is a fictional character in the American science fiction franchise Avatar created by Canadian filmmaker James Cameron. He serves as the primary antagonist of the 2009 film Avatar and its 2022 sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, and will appear in its upcoming sequels, including the currently untitled third and fourth films. In all his appearances, including in the 2009 film's tie-in video game Avatar: The Game, the character is portrayed by American actor Stephen Lang, who won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Quaritch in the first film at the 36th Saturn Awards.
After serving in the United States Marine Corps with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, Quaritch became a senior officer in the security forces of the Resources Development Administration (RDA), a megacorporation, and was deployed to the exomoon of Pandora, where he served as their chief of security. Leading the RDA in their conflict against the indigenous Na'vi, Quaritch enlists the help of new arrival Jake Sully to spy on the Na'vi and help him defeat them. Sully eventually turns on the RDA, and defeats an attempt by an RDA force led by Quaritch to destroy the Tree of Souls. During the battle, Quaritch is killed by Sully’s Na'vi lover Neytiri. A copy of his consciousness is subsequently transferred by the RDA into a genetically grown Na'vi body, known as a Recombinant, which returns to Pandora to track down Sully alongside other Recombinants. However, he is unsuccessful in this attempt but survives the second confrontation with Sully.
Production history
Casting
James Cameron was initially reported to have met with Michael Biehn for the role of Quaritch in Avatar, having previously collaborated on The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and apparently even showed him multiple drafts of the script and some of the 3D test footage. Ultimately, Biehn was not cast in any role, as Sigourney Weaver had been cast to play Dr. Grace Augustine in the film and Cameron seemingly did not want audiences to draw comparisons to Aliens. Although Cameron confirms he met with Biehn for a part in the film, he disputed the claim that it was for Quaritch.
Having remembered Stephen Lang from auditioning for the roles of Dwayne Hicks and Carter Burke in Aliens, Cameron decided to cast Lang as Quaritch. Lang said of his casting:
Characterisation
Despite the character's death at the end of Avatar, Cameron confirmed in 2010 that Lang would return in the film's sequels, stating, "I'm not going to say exactly how we're bringing him back, but it's a science fiction story, after all. His character will evolve into really unexpected places across the arc of our new three-film saga". In October 2019, Lang revealed that his character was always meant to return in the sequels, stating:
Cameron later confirmed that Quaritch would act as the main antagonist across all four sequels. Lang later confirmed that Quaritch would return as a Recombinant, a Na'vi Avatar embedded with the memories of a soldier, which meant that, like the other actors portraying Na'vi characters, Lang's performance in the sequels involved motion capture, which included the new underwater performance capture Cameron developed for the films, which Lang initially found "challenging". Described as "avatars embedded with the memories of human[s]", Quaritch's Recombinant would seek revenge for his human self's death, while seeking to retrieve his son, Miles Quaritch "Spider" Socorro, who was rescued and adopted by Jake and Neytiri after being abandoned on Pandora after his father's initial death.
Appearances
Films
Avatar (2009)