Two of James Cameron’s movies that are nearly unanimously thought of as his masterpieces are the first two entries in the Terminator franchise. He and Arnold Schwarzenegger blasted their way into the action movie hall of fame with mind-melting action. As Cameron returns with Avatar: The Way of Water, the director has revealed in an article from Variety that he felt sick of the gun violence and cut ten minutes out of the new film that showcases such.
The Terminator director would showcase Arnold displaying a ton of gunplay in those movies as well as in the action comedy True Lies. Well, now Cameron has taken a firm stance on not wanting to fetishize guns anymore. “I actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action. I wanted to get rid of some of the ugliness, to find a balance between light and dark. You have to have conflict, of course. Violence and action are the same thing, depending on how you look at it. This is the dilemma of every action filmmaker, and I’m known as an action filmmaker.”
Cameron continues, “I look back on some films that I’ve made, and I don’t know if I would want to make that film now. I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, like I did on a couple of Terminator movies 30-plus years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach.”
He also adds, “I’m happy to be living in New Zealand where they just banned all assault rifles two weeks after that horrific mosque shooting a couple of years ago. Earlier this month, it was said that Cameron had discussed plans to return to the franchise he started in 1984. Cameron would reflect on this, “If I were to do another ‘Terminator’ film and maybe try to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided, I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.”
Avatar: The Way of Water is currently out in theaters in IMAX 3D.