James Cameron, the director of the latest Hollywood movie Avatar: The Way of Water, claimed that at least 10 minutes of gun violence had been removed. Since opening in theatres throughout the world two weeks ago, the new Avatar movie has been grossing enormous sums of money at the box office. One of the most expensive motion pictures ever produced is Avatar: The Way of Water. According to James, for the movie to be profitable, ticket sales must reach at least $2 billion. Recently, he also explained why he had to remove the gun violence from the movie.
Why the director removed 10 minutes of gun violence in the movie?
“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,” James told Esquire Middle East.
Cameron added, “The first film has the good guys and the bad guys seemingly equally opposed, and then the good guys get crushed and defeated and many of the heroes die. Then there’s this almost ‘deus ex machina’ where Jake invokes the forces of nature, a ‘deus ex machina’ I think is earned by the way. The second film doesn’t work that way at all. The battle is not even a battle, it’s a rout. It’s the revenge of the Na’vi and the Tulkun. The real challenge, and the real defeat, and the thing that must be recovered from, happens after the battle.”
At the international box office, the first Avatar brought in close to $3 billion. In just 14 days, the sequel has surpassed the $1 billion mark globally. The best-grossing movie of all time is still the original from 2009, though. The indigenous Na’vi humanoids who live on the Pandora moon are threatened by colonisation in the movie, which tells their story.