With a TERMINATOR trilogy on the way featuring new blood Emilia Clarke and Matt Smith, you’d think original writer/director James Cameron would be a distant dot on a post-robo-apocalyptic horizon. With his AVATAR sequels and forthcoming Cirque De Soleil show of the same name (as in AVATAR not TERMINATOR, though I wouldn’t mind seeing that one either) surely the meticulous behemoth wouldn’t have had time for input over the current franchise?
Well, it seems not only did he offer his thoughts but he played a key role in ensuring a classic element was included in the mix. At the LA Times’ 2014 Hero Complex Film Festival he spoke about the world he left behind with TERMINATOR 2 back in 1991:
I pay attention to it but I’m not terribly concerned about it one way or the other. I’ve had to let it go. There was a point in time where I debated going after the rights… I just felt as a filmmaker maybe I’ve gone beyond it. I really wasn’t that interested. I felt like I’d told the story I wanted to tell. I suppose I could have pursued it more aggressively and gone to the mat for it but I felt like I was laboring in someone else’s house in a sense because I had sold the rights very early on.
There go my images of a fuming Cameron biting through his cigar at TERMINATOR: SALVATION! However, he also revealed strong views about a certain Austrian of pensionable age:
My goal… was not to insinuate myself artistically but to try to make sure they stayed true to the Terminator character and the idea of Arnold being in it. Because he’s a friend of mine and we’ve been through all the wars together and everything. And I wanted them to see the possibilities I saw for what they could do with this character… And then (producer) David Ellison took the project over… and he and I met a couple times. And so Arnold is very much front and center in the new Terminator films. So I might have had some tiny effect on it… but I won’t have any credit on it.
Whether Schwarzenegger would’ve been in GENESIS anyway is debatable, though Skydance Productions may have planned at least a passing reference, as with the previous instalment. But I would bet a chat with Cameron resulted in not so much a tipping of the hat as the entire emporium going off a cliff. An aspect the director wouldn’t have had a hand in is the new chronology, that sees the events of previous films rejigged in a time travel storyline of the sort used in J.J. Abrams’ STAR TREK. This approach has never made sense to me as arguably it’s more disrespectful to obliterate the source material than just start from scratch with a new universe, not to mention bogging everything down in continuity from the get go.
Currently shooting, TERMINATOR: GENESIS is directed by Alan Taylor (THOR: THE DARK WORLD) and will be released July 2015.
Source: Dark Horizons
