Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Kim Masters, bajillionaire director James Cameron continued his uptick in press availability on the eve of beginning production on the second Avatar film (and also the news that he and Linda Hamilton will both be returning for a new Terminator movie). Cameron also took the opportunity to double down on comments he made in August about how Wonder Woman and its lead star Gal Gadot were far from the progressive step forward they were being hailed as.
“Yes, I’ll stand by that,” Cameron says. “I mean, she was Miss Israel, and she was wearing a kind of bustier costume that was very form-fitting. She’s absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. To me, that’s not breaking ground. They had Raquel Welch doing stuff like that in the ’60s.”
Cameron did choose to clarify that his denigrating comments about Wonder Woman are only made in service of praise for Hamilton’s work in Terminator and Terminator 2, which he found to be far more groundbreaking as far as women in action films are concerned. “It was all in a context of talking about why Sarah Connor — what Linda created in 1991 — was, if not ahead of its time, at least a breakthrough in its time.”
Cameron expressed surprise that his comments became such a big deal (James Cameron: meet 2017). “It was pretty obvious in my mind,” Cameron says. “I just think Hollywood doesn’t get it about women in commercial franchises. Drama, they’ve got that cracked, but the second they start to make a big commercial action film, they think they have to appeal to 18-year-old males or 14-year-old males, whatever it is.”
Cameron did deign to throw Patty Jenkins’ film a bone, saying, “I like the fact that, sexually, she had the upper hand with the male character, which I thought was fun.”
You can read the full Cameron interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
