BITING THE BULLET

Director James Cameron Regrets ‘Fetishizing’ Guns

The “Terminator” filmmaker says he cut 10 minutes of “Avatar 2” that focused on gunplay.

James Cameron says he cut 10 minutes from Avatar 2 to avoid fetishizing guns like he did in Terminator. “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 told Esquire Middle East. Cameron said he chopped Avatar “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.”