Avatar director says testosterone is a ‘toxin’ that men should ‘work out of [their] system’

Director James Cameron discussed his upcoming Avatar sequel in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter and said that it will focus on some of his lessons of evolving as a man.

During the interview, Cameron suggested that the testosterone that fueled him in his youth was a “toxin” that he has had to remove from his system.

“I thought, ‘I’m going to work out a lot of my stuff, artistically, that I’ve gone through as a parent of five kids,’” Cameron said during the interview, according to Breitbart News.

“The overarching idea is, the family is the fortress. It’s our greatest weakness and our greatest strength. I thought, ‘I can write the hell out of this. I know what it is to be the asshole dad,’” he said.

“A lot of things I did earlier, I wouldn’t do — career-wise and just risks that you take as a wild, testosterone-poisoned young man. I always think of [testosterone] as a toxin that you have to slowly work out of your system.”

As Breitbart reported, Cameron made similar comments back in 2018, saying at the time: “It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hypergonadal males (men who produce too much testosterone) without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process. It’s like, oy!”

Cameron also expressed his frustration with Marvel for not portraying heroes who have families.

“I’ve found myself as a father of five starting to think about what an ‘Avatar’ story would be like if it was a family drama. What if it was ‘The Godfather?’” he said.

“It’s a generational family saga. That’s very different than the first film. There’s still the same setting and the same respect for the shock of the new. We still want to show you things that you haven’t even seen or imagined, but the story is very different. It’s a continuation of the same characters … but what happens when warriors who are willing to go on suicide charges and leap off cliffs, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids?”