James Cameron Reveals He Cut Out 10 Minutes of 'Avatar: The Way of Water' Due to Gun Violence

With its successful box office opening, many people around the world have watched the sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. Director James Cameron recently spoke to Esquire Middle East and revealed that despite the film already being just under 3.5 hours, he had in fact cut out 10 minutes of the film due to violent gunplay.

The legendary director admitted, “I had a bit of a crisis of faith as we were cutting the movie together. It was too violent. I wanted a balance between the beauty, the epiphany, the kind of spiritual aspect of the film, with the action, and I felt it had gotten a little too grim.” He also said that while the conflict was necessary to tell the story, he “actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action.” He added that he faced quite a dilemma in those scenes noting, “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.”

His reflection on the violence of his films comes as a shock as Cameron is known for some of the most iconic violent film sequences in history, including his Terminator and Rambo movies. He continued,

“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.

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.”

In other entertainment news, Chris Rock has shared the first teaser for his upcoming Netflix special, Selective Outrage.