James Cameron Says He Can Relate to Marvel’s Thanos

Just how much does Avatar: The Way of Water filmmaker James Cameron care about environmentalism? Enough to say that he can relate to Marvel’s Thanos and his mission. In a new interview, Cameron addressed how blockbuster movies like his Avatar series are becoming more and more aligned with the climate change crisis – and surprisingly enough he cited Marvel Studios as one of the franchises taking up that messaging – in films like Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. That’s right: in the eyes of James Cameron, Thanos was just a committed environmentalist! 

“I can relate to Thanos,” Cameron told TIME. “I thought he had a pretty viable answer. The problem is nobody is going to put up their hand to volunteer to be the half that has to go.”

Wow. That definitely is a take. After seeing Avatar: The Way of Water, we can’t help but feel that Avengers: Endgame’s throwaway line from Captain America about whales swimming in NYC’s Hudson River really struck a deep, profound, chord inside James Cameron… 

As always, the Avatar filmmaker manages to straddle a fence between a passionate hardline viewpoint and Bond-style super villainy – an image of Cameron that has pretty much stayed consistent throughout his career (see: Titanic’s production war stories). It is pretty wild to hear Cameron actually state that wiping out half of all life in the universe is a “viable answer” to humanity’s negative impact on the environment – and it’s not exactly a breath of relief to hear him go on to say that the only “problem” with it is finding volunteers. Is the thought of mass genocide automatically abhorrent to most of us as means of “fixing” the world? Absolutely. For a special mind like Jim Cameron’s, however, it’s at least worth consideration. If only we could find more volunteers… 

Oddly enough, while his views may be leaning more toward the eccentric side of things, James Cameron isn’t exactly alone in his sentiment. After Avengers: Infinity War was released in 2018, “Thanos Was Right” became a massively popular tagline/hashtag that exploded all over social media. The sentiment has never really gone away fully, even after the Avengers reversed time and killed the Mad Titan; you can still find “Thanos Was Right” merchandise at any geek culture convention that you go to. Again, if nothing else, this is all just a more disturbing look into how tired some people are of being in an overcrowded and overpolluted world. 

You can stream the Avatar and Avengers franchises on Disney+.