‘Avatar’ Boss James Cameron Stands By Decision To Leave USA For New Zealand: “I’m Not There For The Scenery, I’m There For The Sanity”
Five years on since he and his family relocated to the real-world Middle Earth, Avatar franchise creator James Cameron says he has yet to feel a single regret about their decision to leave the USA and put down roots in New Zealand, especially as the former succumbs to being “extremely polarized”.
Having bought a home on the pacific island in 2011 after spending a significant amount of time within its borders during the filming of the first Avatar, the Canadian-born Cameron would sell his United States resident in Malibu, CA and declare New Zealand as his new permanent place of residence in 2020, his decision at least somewhat influenced by his immense disappointment at the degrading social standards of post-Trump America.
Last year asked by The Daily Beast for his thoughts on Donald Trump’s second presidential term, the director asserted, “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 [in 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.”
Finally taking the first steps towards acquiring permanent Kiwi citizenship in 2020 and ultimately granted the honor in August 2025, a recent appearance on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, an interview-centric podcast hosted by the eponymous American journalist, would see Cameron pressed as to the ‘catalyst’ to his intercontinental move.
In turn, the Terminator visionary began by recalling how it was a combination of his Avatar duty demands and the country’s collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic that ultimately motivated him to take the jump below the equator.
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“We were shooting [Avatar: The Way of Water] in New Zealand. We came back for Christmas and then COVID hit and we didn’t get back down there. So then I had to move mountains to get our production unit back up and running in New Zealand and we just decided at that at that point in time that it was time to make the move as a family.”
“And so everyone came down and joined me that August. So that would have been you know five or six months after the pandemic hit and New Zealand had eliminated the virus completely. They actually eliminated the virus twice. The third
time it showed up in a mutated form, it broke through, but fortunately, they already had a 98% vaccination rate. This is why I love New Zealand. People there are for the most part sane, as opposed to the United States where you had a 62% vaccination
rate and that’s going down, going the going the wrong direction.”
“Are you kidding me?” he then exclaimed to his host. “Where would you rather live? A place that actually believes in science and is sane and where people can work together cohesively to a common goal, 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.”
Met with the subsequent observation from Bensinger that the “United States is a fantastic place to live, but New Zealand is just stunningly beautiful,” Cameron ultimately declared, “I’m not there for the scenery. I’m there for the sanity.”
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