Earlier this month we learned that “The Terminator” franchise still has life left. A reboot is now planned with “Deadpool” director Tim Miller at the helm, and James Cameron will also be involved in some level, which makes sense given that the rights to the first movie fall back into his hands in 2019. What will come of the new project remains to be seen, but the franchise track record isn’t so hot. Even so, Cameron believes the core idea still offer a lot to chew on.
Chatting with The Daily Beast, the filmmaker shared his view on the state of the series, and perhaps not surprisingly given his stake in the property, he still believes “The Terminator” can offer something of contemporary relevance. Well, as much as a movie about cyborg assassins can…
“It’s really just stumbled along, trying to find its voice again. There’s probably some degree to where it’s lost relevance, you know? Maybe the things that made it good back then are kind of a yawn now,” Cameron reflected. “It’s easy to remember fondly the things that kick off a franchise. It’s hard to keep a franchise vigorous, and relevant. I haven’t had my hand on the tiller since ‘Terminator 2,’ and that was 1991. So what’s that? Twenty-six years? But look, I think it’s possible to tell a great ‘Terminator’ story now, and it’s relevant. We live in a digital age, and ‘Terminator’ ultimately, if you can slow it down, is about our relationship with our own technology, and how our technology can reflect back to us — and in the movie, literally, in a human form that is a nemesis and a threat. But also in those movies, in the two that I did, it’s about how we dehumanize ourselves. In a time when people are being absorbed by their virtual-social world, I mean, just look around. I always say: if ‘Terminator’ was about the war between the humans and the machines, look around any restaurant or airport lounge and tell me the machines haven’t won when every human you see is enslaved to their device. So could you make a relevant ‘Terminator’ film now? Absolutely.”
Yes, technology is all around us, but the idea that the human race has already submitted to our mighty digital overlords is perhaps overstating things a bit. But, in my opinion, everything Cameron just said doesn’t sound particularly new, or isn’t something we haven’t seen communicated in other films over the past couple of decades. But given how far things have fallen since “Terminator Genisys,” I suppose there’s nowhere for the series to go but up.
Thoughts? Let us know in the comments section.