Stephen Lang Talks ‘Sisu’ Sequel And ‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’

Stephen Lang attends the 28th Annual Critics Choice Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on January 15, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.

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Stephen Lang ends 2025 with two big theatrical releases that pack a punch. One is the Sisu: Road to Revenge, the sequel to fascist-bashing historical action romp Sisu, and the other is Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film in the multibillion-dollar sci-fi franchise.

“I’ve seen a lot of it, but I have not seen the finished film,” he says as we chat over Zoom. “I’m not sure who, actually, at this point, has seen the finished film. I’m not even going to sit here and state that the film is absolutely finished because when you’re working with Jim Cameron, or when Jim Cameron is working on a film, he’s working on it right until they seal the envelope, stick the stamp, and put it in the mail. The work really does continue on it. I worked on Avatar within the last month. I went and did a little bit of tweaking here and there because he’s never quite done, and he wants it to be what he wants it to be. That’s exciting.”

Avatar: Fire and Ash lands in theaters on Friday, December 19, 2025. Up first is Sisu: Road to Revenge. Even bloodier and chaotic than the first film, the sequel sees Finnish actor Jorma Tommila return as the silent widow Aatami Korpi. Returning to dismantle and relocate the home where his family was murdered, his solitude and mourning are shattered by the arrival of Igor Draganov, played by Lang, the Red Army commander who sent Korpi’s loved ones to their graves. What unfolds is a violent cross-country chase that pits the men against each other in a bitter battle of wills. Sisu: Road to Revenge, written and directed once again by Jalmari Helander, gets a wide theatrical release on Friday, November 21, 2025.

When he was approached to play the bad guy, Lang hadn’t seen the original film, but he instantly fell in love with it.

“I’m a bit of a movie junkie and I like to go to the cinema when possible, but the number of things I don’t see is quite amazing,” he explains. “My first experience with Sisu was when they said, ‘Why don’t you watch the director’s work?’ and I was completely blown away by it. What I saw in Sisu was something I’d really never seen before. What I heard was a voice I really had never quite heard before in cinema, as well. There were certainly flavors, hints, and a certain sense of other genre films and filmmakers. I could see that there was a slight referentiality in a way, but that was all for the good.”

Lang adds that Helander’s homages and influences were done with “tremendous discretion, great taste, and above all, great wit. I was looking at a filmmaker who had a tremendously dry, wonderful sense of humor, but he was not funny.” The actor also watched and adored another of Jalmari’s films, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.

Stephen Lang Says ‘Rambo’ Was An Inspiration

Both Sisu and Sisu: Road to Revenge evoke memories of the golden age of action movies, namely the 1980s. That was something the Don’t Breathe and The Hard Way actor saw right away and connected with.

“Harkening back to something that happened 20, 30, or 40 years ago in one’s life can be very attractive,” he muses. “There is definitely almost a nostalgia factor that happens for somebody my age. As it happens, for the filmmaker, the very films you’re talking about from the 1980s are the films that he grew up on. If you asked him what film he was influenced by for this, you’re not even going to finish the question before he says Rambo. That had a huge impact on him. Are there thematic or cultural reasons that themes in films repeat themselves, or are reincarnated in a different but familiar fashion? I imagine there are, but it’s a cultural anthropological question that I don’t really think that I have the kind of capacity to answer.”

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Lang describes his deadly, deeply narcissistic character, Draganov, as “the hero of his own story.”

“If you asked him how things are, he would probably point to himself as having been victimized by a system, which is why he’s turned into such a complete cynic,” he says. “The system that grabbed him from the moment of his birth.”

With economical dialogue, when Draganov speaks, it has more impact. Lang doubles down on that with a downbeat delivery that has a calmly sinister edge. However, not everyone might take it the same way.

“A lot of that is very subjective,” he explains. “I could be saying very different words in a very different circumstance to a different character with the same inflection, intonation, and everything like that, and you might not find it snarky or malevolent but quite calming and loving or something like that. I’m suggesting that audiences bring a lot of their own needs and desires to something.”

“Having said that, I will always take advantage of a dialect coach. What is the voice that emerges? That’s slightly mysterious to me. As you work on a role, the voice emerges almost on its own. It’s a phenomenon that I’ve experienced many times in my career, where after contemplation, meditation, and research, you open your mouth, and the voice of the character emerges in a fashion that can be as surprising to the actor as it is to anyone.”

Here’s Where Stephen Lang Found His Character’s Chilling Demeanor

A key objective was to “deaden the character,” because that’s something he finds particularly chilling.

“There are harsh feelings, and then there are loving feelings, and what’s scarier than anything is no feelings at all. The feelings, emotions, and sentiments are something he can objectively understand, but they have been conditioned out of him so that cold delivery comes very naturally.”

As the conversation draws to a close, we look ahead to 2026, which marks the tenth anniversary of the first film in a franchise he headlines, Don’t Breathe. It has been five years since the last movie in the series, but is a third one on the cards?

“That’s what’s contemplated and discussed,” Stephen Lang confirms. “It’s really a question of coming up with the strongest story, and also the story that can take those two films and wed them together in a sense that it really does become a trilogy. It’s not an easy task, but I certainly have every confidence in Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, the writers and directors, who have the skill to pull it off. Ultimately, we probably will get it done.”