James Cameron rejects ’51st state’ talk as he brings ‘Avatar’ home to Canada

TORONTO — James Cameron doesn’t mince words when it comes to Canada’s sovereignty.

“The Trump administration doesn’t understand that we will not ever be the 51st state,” the filmmaker said while in Toronto.

“We’ll fight to the last man up here — and the last six-pack.”

After circling the globe on a press tour, Cameron says it feels fitting to bring “Avatar: Fire and Ash” back to his home country. The third instalment in his blockbuster sci-fi franchise had its Canadian première in Toronto on Wednesday, ahead of its worldwide release Friday.

The filmmaker behind one of the biggest franchises in movie history traces the roots of his fictional world, Pandora, not to Hollywood, but to the small Ontario village of Chippewa, near Niagara Falls, where he spent his childhood roaming the woods.

“I grew up in a little village of about 1,200 people — it’s probably 1,300 now,” the 71-year-old says with a laugh. “Behind my subdivision was 20 miles of bush.

“I spent all my free time out there. I was either inside the house drawing and painting, or I was out in the woods collecting, observing and just being.”

Cameron says those early experiences — and learning about Indigenous cultures — would shape “Avatar,” his lush 2009 sci-fi epic that went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, earning $2.9 billion worldwide.

It follows paralyzed ex-marine Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, who uses a genetically engineered alien body to infiltrate the Na’vi — the native inhabitants of the moon Pandora — on behalf of a mining corporation.

However, after falling for a Na’vi woman, Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri, he chooses to defend her world from human exploitation.

“Fire and Ash” continues the story of the Sully family on Pandora as they encounter a hostile new Na’vi tribe, the Mangkwan clan, who have allied with Jake’s nemesis, Col. Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang.

Cameron describes the film as more emotionally complex than its predecessors, pushing characters into darker territory.

“I think what ‘Avatar’ films allow you to do is inhabit nature, and look back at human civilization as nature sees us — as basically destructive,” he said.

“I wanted to temper that by having good human characters fighting on behalf of nature and the Na’vi, and also having negative Na’vi characters. It’s basically a collision of two value systems.”

Lang said the film is both a meditation on loss and a call to action.

“It examines grief at a time when you don’t have time to grieve, because you’re in a world at war. And what it finally supplies is a message of hope. One can’t live on hope. It’s empty air, but one can act,” he says.

After the first “Avatar” was released, Cameron said the themes he once studied academically — particularly Indigenous rights — suddenly became personal.

“People approached me from the Amazon, from New Zealand, from Australia, from Canada, talking about the tarsands, the pollution of the northern rivers, the destruction of the boreal forest,” he says.

“It becomes a kind of a duty, I think, to resonate and feed back with the leadership of these Indigenous people all over the world.”

Cameron says he keeps his philanthropic work with Indigenous communities “out of sight” to avoid grandstanding, but that it’s something that takes up much of his time and resources.

He credits Canadian anthropologist Wade Davis with helping shape his understanding of Indigenous knowledge.

“He’s written a lot about how we can benefit from the wisdom keepers of the First Nations people, and listen to them and profit from their sense of time and responsibility across generations to keep the land safe and to stay connected,” he says.

“You can’t make an ‘Avatar’ movie without plunging into that world.”

While Cameron hopes the “Avatar” films inspire audiences to think differently about the natural world, he admits his idealism has dimmed in recent years — particularly as environmental regulations are rolled back in the United States.

“Everything is getting repealed, electric vehicles, the EPA is denying that fossil fuels and carbon emissions have anything to do with climate change,” he says. “It’s like, are you kidding me?

“It’s like the fox is watching the hen house down there. It is harder to be optimistic, but you keep pounding away at it, and people keep responding to that message.”

If not the world, is he hopeful that “Fire and Ash” can at least save the box office?

“It’s not my job to save that damn box office,” he says. “It’s the job of everybody that loves movies to go to the damn movie theatres and realize that there’s a distinction between that which you consume from streaming and that which you go to for entertainment in a movie theatre.”

He notes that as theatrical revenues dwindle, it’s up to audiences to make a “conscious choice” to go to the movies — if they want cinemas to survive.

“Otherwise, it’s going to go away,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I’m a storyteller; I’ll always have a gig.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 19, 2025.