“I look back at some of the movies I’ve made and I don’t know if I would want to make this movie today,” explains James Cameron in an interview and goes on to cite “The Terminator” and its sequel “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” as examples of movies he doesn’t know if he’d make today.
But why does James Cameron have a problem with his two celebrated classics? The answer: gun violence. “I don’t know if in today’s world I would want to fetishize the weapon like I did in the two ‘Terminator’ movies over 30 years ago.” He is touched by the violence of guns today and he is happy to live in New Zealand, where assault rifles were recently banned.
Firearms and their depiction have long played an important role in James Cameron’s films. For example, in the “Terminator” films mentioned, the sequences in which the machines sent back from the future equip themselves with weapons are staged in such a way that they also get a certain coolness – which is probably what Cameron means by “fetishization”. Also in films like “Aliens” or “True Lies”, firearms are not only shown as a practical tool, but also staged with great style – although it must be said that Cameron breaks through this time and time again.
Not only in “Aliens”, but also in “Abyss” and the first “Avatar” the tough, weapon-loving elite soldiers are deconstructed, in “True Lies” a gun that tumbles down the stairs and hits the target leads the previous Super accuracy agent a bit ridiculous.
James Cameron even cut 10 minutes from “Avatar 2”
and Even today, James Camerona doesn’t completely ban guns from his films. Also in “Avatar 2: The way of the waterthey play such a role. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is now a Na’vi, but still prefers to fight with his old machine gun and even arm his people with modern human weapons after a train robbery. Also for Cameron, violence and action are an essential part of a film like him reveals. Nevertheless, he even cut ten minutes from “Avatar 2” due to his developed aversion to guns, as he further reveals:
“I wanted to get rid of that ugliness a little bit,” he explains, explaining why “ten minutes of the gunplay-centric movie were cut.”