James Cameron discusses the future of the Terminator franchise.
It’s no secret that aside from his ongoing work on the Avatar sequels, director James Cameron is looking to get back into the Terminator franchise and whilst Deadpool director Tim Miller is rumoured to be taking the reigns behind the camera, Cameron will be looking to produce.
It’s fair to say that every film in the franchise after Terminator 2 has been a disappointment but there is one common denominator that would account for this and that’s the lack of any creative input on subsequent films in the series from Cameron, the man who created the franchise in the first place. There is still no word on what his latest proposed Terminator film will show us that we haven’t already seen but one question that may be answered is the origins of the design and appearance of the T-800.
Cameron, speaking with The Arnold Fans (via JoBlo), had this to say,
“Yeah, you got to ask yourself, ‘Why did they make these characters look and sound like Arnold?’ There has to be a reason. So yeah, it has flashed through my mind that there has to have been a prototype. There has to have been a guy who’s DNA was harvested from – that they grew the organic outer layer that they grew the Terminator from and that presumably was a real person at some point. Now, the question is, did that person have some sort of meaning to Skynet on WHY they chose that one? Or was it like a whole rack of Terminators and the one that happened to be the Arnold model just happened to be closest to the door going out to the time displacement center and all the others looked different? I’ve asked myself these questions but it’s never been resolve so stay tuned! We’re talking pretty seriously now about doing some new Terminator films or possibly a trilogy and you’ll just have to see what surfaces in those.”
We certainly detect the hint of a new storyline there. It would seem an easy way of writing in a part for his old friend Schwarzenegger. The two of course have a great working relationship and it would appear that the actor is willing to put faith in Cameron’s decisions. This was highlighted recently by Cameron during an interview with The Telegraph where it was revealed that Arnold initially had reservations when he first saw the script for Terminator 2.
The director recalled,
“Arnold said to me, ‘Jim, I don’t kill anybody.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s the big surprise… they’re never going to see it coming.’ He responded, ‘Jim, I’m the Terminator. I kick the door down, I shoot everybody, this is what I do.’ He was really nervous about it.”
If Cameron is insistent on carrying on the franchise let’s hope he’s able to keep it as groundbreaking and fresh as the first two iconic films. Whether we’ll actually see him take a significant degree of creative control over any subsequent Termintor films remains to be seen given how much of his time is being taken up by the Avatar sequel he’s been working on since the original was released in 2009.