James Cameron has explained more about the turbulent production on Terminator: Dark Fate and how he clashed with director Tim Miller.
Cameron directed The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day before stepping away from the franchise for a few instalments. He would return for Dark Fate as a producer, while he is credited with creating part of the overall story.
The Avatar director has revealed that Miller did not actually want Arnold Schwarzenegger to feature in the film despite being, in some form or another, involved in every single Terminator movie previously.
Cameron refused to do any Terminator movie without the franchise star.
"I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold," he said in an interview wth Deadline.
"Tim 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.”
Linda Hamilton's return
Cameron believes the situation escalated when Miller asked that Linda Hamilton return as Sarah Connor.
In his opinion, the return of two much older actors from T2 in 1991 didn't work.
"And then Tim wanted Linda," Cameron continued.
"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."
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