News culture After Avatar 2, James Cameron wants to reboot the cult Terminator but the fans are not convinced…
Published on 26/12/2022 at 15:54
James Cameron, the director of Titanic, Terminator, Aliens The Return, Avatar and Avatar: The Way of the Water, is everywhere! Interviewed by media around the world on the occasion of the release of the sequel to the greatest success of all time. The opportunity to talk about his career, his films, his favorites, his mistakes, but also his projects.
Terminator, a franchise in decline for many years
James Cameron is a busy director. behind the camera for two of the world’s top three box office hits, he must now make Avatar: The Waterway one of cinema’s biggest hits, and exceed $2 billion at the box office. It’s off to a good start, since the film generated $850 million in 10 days. What hope to achieve the goal if attendance does not collapse. Anyway, Avatar 3 is already filmed, and we should find the Na’vi from 2024, still in the cinema.
In the meantime, there’s another license that comes up in the director’s speech, and that’s Terminator. Born in 1984, the license is became cult with the release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, before it started lose speed from the third opusreleased in theaters in 2003. With the other films, Terminator Rebirth (2009), Terminator Genisys (2015) and Terminator Dark Fate (2019), the license explored other timelines, but struggled to renew interest fans.
The latest film, which brings Linda Hamilton back, was a critical and commercial failure with 261 million dollars generated for a budget of 185 million. This failure, James Cameron assumed it a few days ago, explaining that he forced for Arnold Schwarzenegger to be in the game. A desire that created tension with Tim Miller, the director of the film, who for his part wanted to bring Linda Hamilton back.
Tim wanted Linda (Hamilton). The film could have survived Linda’s return as well as Arnold’s. But when you put the two together, her being 60 and him over 70, it’s not your Terminator movie anymore. It’s not even your father’s. It’s your grandfather’s Terminator. We didn’t understand it. We liked our story, we thought it was a good idea to produce a direct sequel to Terminator 2. But in 91, the young audience of today was not born. He wasn’t even born in 2000… We were myopic. We were high on our own stuff. This is the lesson to be learned.
Towards a last chance reboot for Terminator?
However, James Cameron may not be done with Terminator. During the Smartless podcast, the director touched on the franchise when talking about artificial intelligence and how she might be useful At the movie theater :
The Avatar movies are about the environment. Nothing to do with artificial intelligence. If I were to do another Terminator movie and try to revive this franchise again, which is under discussion – but nothing has been decided yet – I would focus much more on the artificial intelligence side rather than on evil robots gone crazy.
We are far from the mere mention, since James Cameron evokes discussions, which are just waiting to materialize. For now, it seems that the direction Cameron wants to give to a potential Terminator return is sfocus on the AI itself, on Skynet, rather than the destructive side robots. As he indicates, nothing has been signed yet and this project may never see the light of day. A few years ago, James Cameron had pitched a 7th filmin which a new timeline was created to allow for the return of Grace’s character.
However, no one had validated this approach, and nothing was put into production. Whatever, The challenge is big, because as cult as it is, the franchise has had several attempts at relaunch, which ended with a Terminator Dark Fate, a direct sequel to Terminator 2, which was more than disappointing. Fans of the franchise who have spoken out on social media are invariably between excitement and fear to see things repeat themselves (which is ultimately very Terminator in the idea). It remains to be seen if this reboot will be done with or without Arnold Schwarzenegger but, given the statements made, it may be time for the former governor of California to say goodbye to this character.
About Avatar: The Waterway
