James Cameron cut 10 minutes from Avatar: The Way of Water so as not to 'fetishize' gun violence

For a movie with a three-hour-plus runtime, an extra 10 minutes might not seem like such a big deal.

But for James Cameron, who fought hard to keep Avatar: The Way of Water's blockbuster-size running time, those few minutes went against what he's willing to say with his films. He's even rethought some of the movies he's made in the past and wonders if he'd make them today given the cultural climate.

In a recent interview with Esquire Middle East, the director said he cut portions of the Avatar sequel depicting gun violence because he no longer wants to "fetishize the gun."

"I actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action," Cameron said. "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."

20th Century Studios Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in 'Avatar: The Way of Water'

Indeed, Cameron is one of the most decorated and successful action filmmakers we have. Case in point: His long-gestating blue baby The Way of Water has garnered positive reviews and is already nearing the $1 billion mark worldwide after opening earlier this month. And let's not forget Terminator 2: Judgment Day, one of the greatest and most influential action films of the past few decades.

Still, Cameron is wary of the kind of influence his films have had and will have.

"I look back on some films that I've made, and I don't know if I would want to make that film now," he said. "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 added, "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."

And though the Terminator franchise has seen better days, Cameron thinks it'll take more than terrible reviews and several consecutive flops to keep the T-800 and his brethren down. Of a potential sequel or reboot, the Na'vi whisperer said he would take a different approach.

"If I were to do another Terminator film and maybe try to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided," Cameron said recently on the Smartless podcast, "I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy."

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