James Cameron doubles down on ‘Wonder Woman’ comments: ‘Fun’ but not ‘groundbreaking’

In a newly published interview, director James Cameron has doubled down on comments he made last month in which he threw cold water on the success of this summer’s comic-book blockbuster “Wonder Woman,” which many feminists help up as an emblem of the money-making potential of action movies with strong female leads.

In August, Mr. Cameron sparked a firestorm in Hollywood circles after he told The Guardian newspaper that Israeli actress Gal Gadot’s title character was “an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing!”

“I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards,” he added at the time.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Mr. Cameron allowed that his earlier comment “was probably a little bit of a simplistic remark on my part.”

“I’m not walking it back, but I will add a little detail to it,” he added, “which is: I like the fact that, sexually, she had the upper hand with the male character [Chris Pine’s character Steve Trevor], which I thought was fun.”

That said, Mr. Cameron reiterated his earlier assessment, comparing Miss Gadot to an iconic sex symbol of the silver screen.

“[S]he was Miss Israel, and she was wearing a kind of bustier costume that was very form-fitting. She’s absolutely drop-dead gorgeous,” Mr. Cameron said. “To me, that’s not breaking ground. They had Raquel Welch doing stuff like that in the ’60s.”

The veteran action-movie writer and director contrasted that with the strong Sarah Connor character he created and his ex-wife Linda Hamilton portrayed in 1984’s “The Terminator” and 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

“It was all in a context of talking about why Sarah Connor — what Linda created in 1991 — was, if not ahead of its time, at least a breakthrough in its time,” he said, according to THR. “I don’t think it was really ahead of its time because we’re still not [giving women these types of roles].”