Yes, James Cameron's 'Favorite Scene' in “Avatar: Fire and Ash” Is That 'Erotic' Drug Trip (Exclusive)
- - Yes, James Cameron's 'Favorite Scene' in “Avatar: Fire and Ash” Is That 'Erotic' Drug Trip (Exclusive)
Jack SmartDecember 21, 2025 at 4:00 AM
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20th Century Studios
Oona Chaplin in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' -
James Cameron, writer and director of the hit Avatar franchise, talks to PEOPLE about the newest installment, Fire and Ash
“My favorite scene just from a writing and acting standpoint,” he says, involves a trippy sequence with Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch and Oona Chaplin as Na’vi leader Varang
“There's an erotic undercurrent to that scene that I like,” says the filmmaker
If you had to guess James Cameron’s favorite Avatar: Fire and Ash scene, would you pick its sexy, villainous drug trip?
“I'm just in my happy place making an Avatar film,” the hit film’s writer-director, 71, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I just love the world-building. I just love figuring out this ecosystem, what the trees look like, what the creatures look like.”
The third Avatar film, again starring Zoe Saldaña, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Bailey Bass and Kate Winslet, picks up where 2022’s The Way of Water left off. Stephen Lang returns as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the former military commander now in his Na'vi avatar, while Oona Chaplin plays new character Varang, witchy leader of the volcano-dwelling Mangkwan clan.
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James Cameron on Dec. 4
The latter two face off several times throughout Fire and Ash, building to an evidently steamy connection as they unite against Saldaña’s Neytiri, Worthington’s Jake Sully and their embattled family. One scene involves Varang poisoning Quaritch with a mysterious hallucinatory drug that compels him to tell the truth about his motivations.
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“There's an erotic undercurrent to that scene that I like,” admits Cameron. “You sort of think that it's a deadly seduction on her part. And then you realize it's actually the other way around. He's drawn her in to his role… He goes in with his ace card [which] is actually the truth. And she must believe him because she gave him the drug and he can't lie.”
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Stephen Lang and Oona Castilla Chaplin at the Los Angeles premiere of 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' on Dec. 1
The two nefarious characters’ tense exchange is rendered with “a sensuality,” as the Titanic filmmaker says, with trippy visuals amid Lang’s smiling Quaritch telling Varang everything she wants to hear. “To me, that's my favorite scene just from a writing and acting standpoint,” says Cameron. “It's not the biggest emotional scene in the film by far, but it's I think one of the more intriguing scenes.”
A “dreamlike experience,” the director says, is a crucial part of building an Avatar movie. “We're trying to put on a big show,” he says, “and it's intensely detailed, highly realistic.”
He would like to do more, of course, with fourth and fifth installments planned and partially shot, but not yet guaranteed. Filming adventures in Pandora “costs money and I'd love to continue to do it,” Cameron tells PEOPLE, “but I think we can't assume [anything] in a shifting marketplace where the people got to get out to the theaters.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash is in theaters now.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
