After the travesty that was Terminator Genisys, you'd be forgiven for thinking that James Cameron would be happy to leave the franchise he started to die. However, now he has the rights back, the filmmaker is teaming with Deadpool director Tim Miller to bring a new instalment to the big screen but this won't be Terminator 6; instead, it sounds like it will, in fact, be part three of the original trilogy.
Asked what direction the movie is heading in during a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron revealed that it continues the story which he began and that it's definitely going to be unique.
"This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. And we're pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our multi-verse. This was really driven more by [Tim] than anybody, surprisingly, because I came in pretty agnostic about where we took it. The only thing I insisted on was that we somehow revamp it and reinvent it for the 21st century."
As for whether the plan is to bring in some new actors who will join the now much older Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, Cameron indicates that this new Terminator movie will set the stage for a fresh wave of movies similar to what's happened with Star Wars and its younger cast.
"A lot of this is handing off the baton to a new generation of characters. We're starting a search for an 18-something young woman to essentially be the new centerpiece of these stories. And then a number of other characters around her and characters from the future. We still fold time in the story in intriguing ways. But we have Arnold's character and Linda's character to anchor it. Somewhere across there, and I won't say where, the baton gets passed, so to speak."
The trade then put it to Cameron that Arnie will be 71 when the movie starts shooting and he was quick to offer an explanation for that; just like in Terminator Genisys, the flesh over the metal endo-skeleton ages! Miller, however, went a little more in-depth and hinted at a T-800 that's breaking down.
"I haven’t talked to Arnold about this so I could get in trouble. But because he’s been in all the other movies — unlike Linda — I do think there needs to be a reason to be different here. I like my sci-fi grounded. I like my characters grounded. And what Jim said about the exterior aging while the interior remains the same — well, not the interior, as in the brain, as emotionally and intellectually he will have evolved. They’re learning machines. But that’s a way to make it different than it was. Even in Genisys, he looked — I should stop — he was a slightly gussied-up version of the old Terminator. I think we should embrace his age. And that’s what’s going to make it interesting and fresh for the fans."
That sounds like a vastly more interesting approach and better than what happened the last time Schwarzenegger played the iconic character. What do you guys think? Share your thoughts below.