Hollywood director James Cameron has revealed he cut ten minutes of gun action from the new Avatar sequel, saying “what’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach.”
In an interview with Esquire Middle East, James Cameron also spoke about gun culture in his adopted country of New Zealand.
“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,” he told the magazine.
Cameron explained why he cut the scenes from Avatar: The Way of Water.
“I actually cut about 10 minutes of the movie targeting gunplay action,” he 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.”