Casting Choices That Spoil The Movie

There are certain actors who always seem to play the bad guy. It’s typically a combination of the actor having a menacing look to them, and just being especially good at playing especially evil. When these actors show up in a movie and they initially seem to be on the same side as the protagonist, it’s typically a pretty safe bet that the actor is going to do a heel turn at some point during the film. As such, it’s rarely a surprise when it ends up happening.

Stephen Lang has a long history of playing a very effective antagonist. A few movies have attempted to make us believe he was going to be a good guy at the start, only for the inevitable reveal that his character was anything but. Perhaps the most notable example of this, at least in terms of movies that were released fairly recently in Lang’s long career, was «Avatar.» In the original installment of James Cameron’s epic sci-fi franchise, Lang plays Colonel Miles Quaritch — a character who admittedly seems difficult to trust but is nonetheless portrayed as being on the good team. When his methods are revealed to be much more extreme than expected, to the point that he becomes the movie’s primary villain by the end, it’s a surprise to literally nobody. And being played by Lang to begin with was a big part of that.