James Cameron has made his fair share of action movies that feature a good enough dosage of violence, The Terminator being the quintessence of the same. But after more than two decades of epic filmmaking, the Avatar director has had enough with horrifying and brutal action scenes. This is also why he scrapped 10 minutes worth of scenes from Avatar: The Way of Water, because it contained heavy gun violence.
With a runtime of 3 hours and 12 minutes, the iconic sequel to the 2009 sci-fi/adventure film has been breaking box office records left and right. But if it wouldn’t have been for the director’s afterthoughts about certain violent scenes, then the movie would have been 10 minutes longer. And James Cameron is grateful that it isn’t.
Gun Violence is A Dealbreaker for James Cameron
James Cameron is renowned as one of the most ingenious filmmakers in the post-New Hollywood era. Besides helming various science fiction projects, he has directed a number of award-winning films in the genre of action as well, like The Terminator, True Lies, and Aliens. However, the trajectory of Cameron’s filmmaking seems to be taking a new turn as he revealed how he’s not interested in portraying ruthless violence in his projects anymore.
Speaking with Esquire Middle East, about Avatar 2 that just became the 5th highest-grossing movie of 2022, Cameron remarked how he cut 10 minutes of “gunplay action” from the sequel because he couldn’t bear to have that “ugliness” in an otherwise impeccable film.
“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 doesn’t seem to intend to stop with the inculcation of this ideology with Avatar: The Way of Water. Given how strongly he feels about this matter, it wouldn’t be too unlikely for him to take the violence down a notch in The Terminator reboot, if at all that does happen.
What Could This Mean for The Terminator Reboot
Recently, Cameron hinted the possibility of making a Terminator reboot as he talked about the 1984 film on the Smartless podcast. While he hasn’t explicitly confirmed anything with regard to the same yet, should there be a new Terminator movie, there are chances that it would focus less on aspects of gun violence.
In the same interview where he talked about scrapping some scenes from Avatar 2, The Abyss director also reflected on the old projects that he has shepherded, claiming how he isn’t so sure he’d do it again. With the way atrocious shootings and other such acts of armed violence are being carried out in the real world, Cameron feels sick to his stomach to “fetishize the gun” on the screens.
“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.”
In light of the filmmaker’s chain of thought, it’s safe to believe that if at all the Terminator franchise gets revived in the future, it could very well comprise more toned down action scenes with controlled elements of violence instead of unchecked goriness.
Avatar: The Way of Water is currently playing in theatres.
Source: Esquire Middle East
