James Cameron Tells You If It’s Okay To Have A Bathroom Break During Avatar 2: The Way of Water

James Cameron has come out pre-emptively taking swings at critics and trolls alike and I love it. In talking to Empire, he first zeroed in on the trolls and naysayers of the first Avatar, of which there are plenty. You don’t become the highest grossing film of all time without cracking some eggs along the way.

“The trolls will have it that nobody gives a shit and they can’t remember the characters’ names or one damn thing that happened in the movie,” he says. “Then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, okay, excuse me, let me just shut the fuck up right now.’ So I’m not worried about that.”

I loved the first film. There’s Main Marine Guy who goes native, followed up by Ellen Ripley from Alien, and then there’s that one chick from Fast & Furious and ah yeah, the rest of them. The list goes on. It’s a great movie.

In the interview, he also had an argument with a bunch of people who don’t exist yet who might possibly complain about the length of the film.

“I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours,” he said. “I can almost write this part of the review. ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie…’ It’s like, give me a fucking break. I’ve watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row. Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s okay to get up and go pee.”

This rustled some feathers, with commentary on his remark taking the form of “But you miss the point of streaming, you can’t pause a movie the projectionist would never allow it! Are you trying to say the random 3 minutes of your movie that I choose to take a slash during isn’t pivotal to my entire enjoyment of the film? What about the other 177 minutes, are they equally as expendable? My immersion will be in tatters after concentrating on a urinal for bit.”

With all the realistic water splashing around in this film, I have no doubt there will be droves of people needing to pee the whole time, but I think the main reason people complain about 3 hour films is that they are usually unnecessarily bloated for the sake of hitting that three hour mark in the hopes that some Lord of the Rings magic rubs off on it.

With that said, as a film reviewer with a tiny bladder who hates missing a second of the action, I think I’ve fully come to terms with the brave new world Cameron has imagined in terms of bathroom freedom.

Shot right here in New Zealand, the series has received $140 million in subsidies, so you better go out and see it, you’ve helped pay for it a bit already so you may as well.