Stephen Lang Goes In Depth on Using Performance Capture as an Actor in "Avatar: Fire and Ash"

A new video for Avatar: Fire and Ash features one of the film's stars, Stephen Lang, giving a notably thoughtful lesson on what it's like to be part of the performance capture process used to bring the alien Na'vi to life from an acting perspective.

What's Happening:

• The new 14-minute video features Lang, who plays the villainous Colonel Miles Quaritch in the Avatar films, providing an overview of how performance capture works on the technical side, but mainly focuses on what it's like to incorporate performance capture into your work as an actor.
• The video takes a very different approach than you night expect for material of this sort, not consisting of sit down interview clips with Lang or even having him doing a normal hosted video where he's speaking lines scripted for him.
• Instead, Lang goes into a deep dive on the craft of acting itself in relation to Avatar, with the closing credits noting Lang himself wrote what is, in most respects, a mini acting class with a focus on performance capture. This includes a lot of discussion of the history of method acting and how it relates to acting in an Avatar movie, with Lang stressing how performance capture does what the name implies and captures every physical aspect of the cast's performance in a way he greatly appreciates.

• Lang has an interesting perspective here, as the one ongoing cast member from the James Cameron-created franchise who was not immersed in performance capture for the first film -- when Quaritch only appeared as a human -- before joining that side of things for the sequels when his character returned in Na'vi/Avatar form.
• Along the way, during his talk about acting and the approach to it through the decades, Lang name drops the likes of Lee Strasberg, Peter Brook and Federico Fellini - folks one doesn't usually hear mentioned in the midst of a big studio blockbuster marketing campaign.
• I'll use this opportunity to say that while Lang is always an awesome presence in any film he's in, I'm a big fan of his wild performance in 1991's action-comedy The Hard Way as that film's villain, a serial killer known as The Party Crasher. The quirkiness, including the memorable speaking voice, Lang brings to the role are a great touch, completely playing against what you'd think a big buff guy like him would go for.
• Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters worldwide on December 19th, 2025.