Scary Dad
Out stumping Avatar : The Way of Water, Covid-stricken James Cameron was quizzed on why he thinks the last Terminator film, which he executive produced and had plenty of input in, flopped at the box-office.
2019’s Terminator : Dark Fate, which reunited Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton for the first time since the 1991 sequel Terminator 2 : Judgement Day, picked up after the even of that film and served as a direct sequel to Cameron’s two movies (skipping over the rest).
The Oscar winning director thinks that’s where they went wrong – doing a sequel featuring the original players.
“I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold [Schwarzenegger]”, the Titanic helmer tells Deadline. “Tim [Miller, the director] didn’t want Arnold, but I said, “Look, I don’t want that. Arnold and I have been friends for 40 years, and I could hear it, and it would go like this: ‘Jim, I can’t believe you’re making a Terminator movie without me.’” It just didn’t mean that much to me to do it, but I said, “If you guys could see your way clear to bringing Arnold back and then, you know, I’d be happy to be involved.”
And then Tim wanted Linda [Hamilton]. I think what happened is I think the movie could have survived having Linda in it, I think it could have survived having Arnold in it, but when you put Linda and Arnold in it and then, you know, she’s 60-something, he’s 70-something, all of a sudden it wasn’t your Terminator movie, it wasn’t even your dad’s Terminator movie, it was your granddad’s Terminator movie. And we didn’t see that. We loved it, we thought it was cool, you know, that we were making this sort of direct sequel to a movie that came out in 1991. And young moviegoing audiences weren’t born. They wouldn’t even have been born for another 10 years.
So, it was just our own myopia. We kind of got a little high on our own supply, and I think that’s the lesson there.”
There has been no movement, let alone talk of a further Terminator movie since the film’s release.
