The Avatar director has defended tobacco use in his 3D blockbuster, comparing it to how gamers care little about their physical well-being

The comment came about on the back of criticism from the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, Stanton A. Glantz. Glantz criticised Sigourney Weaver’s character, Grace, as she smokes during the film, and noted:

“This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply.”

“Grace doesn't care about her human body, only her avatar body”

Reacting to the claim, James Cameron said these here words, thus leading to the video game issue:

“She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes. Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.”

And… well… it’s hard to disagree. Obviously we’re all fine, chiselled examples of humanity, but we know of many examples of people who simply don’t care about their physical well-being, instead putting their all into video games. It’s not true of everyone, and we’d be hard pressed to think Cameron meant this as a blanket statement covering all gamers ever. Plus he made Aliens and Terminator 2, so we absolutely cannot be mad with him.

[via the NYTimes]