Hollywood director James Cameron is once again preaching the plebs from his private mountaintop, this time in New Zealand. During a recent interview on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, the Avatar filmmaker let loose on America and praised his adopted home as a land of “sanity.” As Variety reports, Cameron said, “After the pandemic hit… [New Zealand] had eliminated the virus completely,” before bragging that the country “actually eliminated the virus twice.”
He then lumped praise on their “98% vaccination rate” while ripping the United States, calling Americans less “sane” and lamenting our reportedly lower “62% vaccination rate.”
James Cameron: Why I left Hollywood for 'sanity' in New Zealand
Cameron seems to think loving freedom makes you insane. Furthermore, no credible source confirms a nationwide 98% rate during the outbreak he referenced. So is Cameron even telling the truth? New Zealand peaked around 89-90% first doses for adults by late 2021. Fully vaccinated rates hit about 80% of the total population. No published records show a nationwide 98% during that outbreak. And in the US? Over 80% of adults got at least one dose. About 70% were fully vaxxed by mid-2022. For someone supposedly “pro-science,” Cameron’s numbers don’t match reality. They just fuel his escape narrative.
He told Bensinger, “This is why I love New Zealand. People there are, for the most part, sane as opposed to the United States… going the wrong direction.” Then he mocked his home country even further: “Are you kidding me? Where would you rather live? A place that actually believes in science and is sane and where people can work together… or a place where everybody’s at each other’s throats, extremely polarized, turning its back on science and basically would be in utter disarray if another pandemic appears.”
When Bensinger had the nerve to call America “a fantastic place to live,” Cameron snapped back, “Is it?” The arrogance couldn’t be clearer. The Oscar-winning director doesn’t even bother to hide his contempt for the country that helped make him rich and famous. When Bensinger politely ‘agrees’ with him that New Zealand is beautiful, Cameron doubled down: “I’m not there for scenery, I’m there for the sanity.”
Think about that for a second. Cameron fled to New Zealand, a place he calls “sane” with supposed sky-high vaccine rates and perfect virus control. But peel back the layers, and New Zealand’s freedoms don’t stack up to America’s Bill of Rights. Over here, you have ironclad speech rights, the Second Amendment to protect yourself, and courts that can’t just wave away your God-given liberties. New Zealand? Their Bill of Rights is just some flimsy law Parliament can rewrite on a whim. They banned guns after one tragedy, clamp down on “hate speech,” and locked folks down hard during COVID. Who’s really freer?
America empowers the people. New Zealand bends the knee to bureaucrats. Cameron traded liberty for a nanny state and called it sanity. How patriotic is that?
Keep in mind, this is the same James Cameron who famously made Titanic and Avatar, two films that broke box-office records thanks to the very audiences he now dismisses as “insane.” On another show, The F—ing News podcast, Cameron bragged that his New Zealand citizenship was “imminent” and sneered at the United States under Donald Trump, saying, “I see a turn away from everything decent. America doesn’t stand for anything if it doesn’t stand for what it has historically stood for. It becomes a hollow idea, and I think they’re hollowing it out as fast as they can for their own benefit.”
“There’s an innate respect and a demand for respect [here],” Cameron continued about New Zealand. “Everybody has this kind of equal status in terms of person-hood. And I love that – that’s what I wanted my kids to experience.” In other words, he believes New Zealand shows more “respect” than the country that gave him opportunity, wealth, and global fame.
Then came the most revealing part. Cameron admitted he really only moved because he’s tired of seeing Trump in the news. “I certainly feel like I don’t have to read about [Trump] on the front page every single day,” he said. “And it’s just sickening… I just don’t want to see that guy’s face any more on the front page of the paper.”
There it is. The man who lectures the world about tolerance admits he fled because he couldn’t tolerate one man and those that voted for him.
It’s ironic. A man who once made films celebrating courage, perseverance, and survival now runs from headlines and calls Americans crazy for questioning authority. But what else can we expect from Hollywood’s self-proclaimed visionaries who bite the hand that built them? Cameron doesn’t just live overseas — he’s mentally gone, lost in a fantasy world where smug elites never have to hear from the little people who made them famous. No wonder his Avatar movies are so hollow.
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