‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron: Having A ‘Pregnant’ Warrior Is ‘Last Bastion’ Of Empowering Women

Director James Cameron said in a recent interview that his upcoming movie, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” is the most empowering movie for women because one of the characters is a pregnant warrior.

The movie, which debuted in theaters across the U.S. on Friday, continues where the first movie left off, and in this film one of the main characters, Neytiri, is pregnant.

Cameron made the remarks about Neytiri during an interview with Variety when he was asked why it was important to have Neytiri and another character be pregnant in the movie.

“Everybody’s always talking about female empowerment,” Cameron said. “But what is such a big part of a woman’s life that we, as men, don’t experience? And I thought, ‘Well, if you’re really going to go all the way down the rabbit hole of female empowerment, let’s have a female warrior who’s six months pregnant in battle.’”

“It doesn’t happen in our society — probably hasn’t happened for hundreds of years,” he continued. “But I guarantee you, back in the day, women had to fight for survival and protect their children, and it didn’t matter if they were pregnant. And pregnant women are more capable of being a lot more athletic than we, as a culture, acknowledge.”

“I thought, ‘Let’s take the real boundaries off,’” he concluded. “To me, it was the last bastion that you don’t see. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel — all these other amazing women come up, but they’re not moms and they’re not pregnant while they’re fighting evil.”

Cameron said during an interview late last month about the movie that testosterone was a “toxin” that men should work out of their systems.

Cameron made the remarks during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Cameron, 68, said that he has changed as he has gotten older as his “F-bomb-laden shouting matches with executives is behind him,” the publication 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,” he said. “I always think of [testosterone] as a toxin that you have to slowly work out of your system.”

Related: Kate Winslet Thought She ‘Died’ After Holding Breath For Over 7 Minutes During ‘Avatar’ Filming