James Cameron cut 10 minutes from ‘Avatar 2’ due to gun violence concerns

After years of wait and millions spent, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water is now out. It features several of the filmmaker’s hallmarks, but, when it comes to action, Cameron has apparently changed and cut out some of his gunplay.

In a new interview published by Esquire’s Middle East branch, the 68-year-old reveals 10 minutes of firearm filming was excised. He apparently found it to be too ugly and adds that taking it out it helped the piece maintain its balance of light and darkness.

“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.”

Elsewhere in the report he goes on to say he is happy to live in New Zealand where efforts to ban certain weaponry have happened quicker and been more successful than in the United States. In addition, Cameron also says he would not want to make some of his earlier films in this day and age and, with the Terminator films, the way the gun is fetishized apparently does not work right now.

“I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, like I did on a couple of Terminator movies 30+ years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach.”

Cameron has also recently revealed there are conversations taking place about doing another Terminator movie. In the meantime, his story of the sci-fi space kitties is scheduled to release content through to 2028 and, for one, he has lost his prior creative ways.

The Avatar: The Way of Water film has made over $800 million as of this story’s filing. Some view it as a bomb while others involved have expressed confidence behind the scenes and know where their character is going in the future of the franchise. The third film is already in the can, and, while nothing is official at this time, given the first film’s long run in theaters, we estimate Avatar: The Way of Water will not be available to watch on streaming services until some point later on in the coming year.