Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: in just a few months’ time, we’re going to get a brand-new “Terminator” sequel, and this one is definitely, definitely going to fix the problems with all its predecessors. For all the films in the franchise since “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” this promise has been incredibly wrong, and each subsequent film has (somehow) been worse than the one that came before it. But now, with the upcoming reboot-quel ‘Dark Fate,’ James Cameron swears that this time, it’s different.
READ MORE: Edward Furlong will return at John Connor in “Terminator: Dark Fate”
How is ‘Dark Fate’ going to succeed where other films, like the absolutely terrible “Terminator: Genysis,” failed? According to a new interview with Deadline, Cameron says that ‘Dark Fate’ is a true return to basics and is exactly what the third film should have been all those years ago.
The, uh, genesis of “Terminator: Dark Fate” involved Skydance executive David Ellison reaching out to Cameron about a new ‘Terminator’ strategy after the failure of ‘Genysis.’ Specifically, Ellison suggested that Cameron go back to the basics and start back at the end of ‘T2,’ similarly to how “Halloween” recently ignored every film after the original.
“He’s always believed in the potential of ‘Terminator’ but he really felt that his own film, ‘Genysis’ — and he was quite honest with me about this — fell short of the mark and didn’t really do what he had wanted it to do. So he said, ‘Let’s start with a blank slate and take it back to Terminator 2.’ And that idea was intriguing,” explained Cameron.
READ MORE: James Cameron confirms “Terminator: Dark Fate” will be R-rated
From there, Cameron and Ellison got together to plan everything for ‘Dark Fate.’ Tim Miller (“Deadpool”) was brought on to direct, with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton brought back to co-star. And even though they have no clue whether or not ‘Dark Fate’ will be a big success, Cameron is optimistic and already has the future planned out.
“We rolled up our sleeves and started to break out the story and when we got a handle on something we looked at it as a three-film arc, so there is a greater story there to be told,” said the filmmaker. “If we get fortunate enough to make some money with ‘Dark Fate’ we know exactly where we can go with the subsequent films.”
But for those thinking that the ‘Terminator’ mastermind was going to micromanage the entire production of ‘Dark Fate,’ Cameron was quick to make sure everyone knows that his involvement with the film was limited to mostly pre-production work and script changes. Ultimately, Miller was able to do his thing.
READ MORE: Arnold is back (again) in the latest “Terminator: Dark Fate” trailer
“I focused on getting the script punched up,” Cameron explained. “I didn’t feel like we went into the shoot with the script exactly where it should have been. There was a lot of momentum on the project, there was a start date, there was a lot of energy and a lot of ‘go fever,’ but the script wasn’t where it needed to be so I quietly worked on it in the background and shipping out pages.”
He continued, “Sometimes I was shipping out pages the day before they shot a scene. I’m not sure that was 100% always helpful but overall I kept the characters on track and sounding right and being where they needed to be.”
And where these characters “needed to be” is back in the familiar territory of the R-rating. As Cameron suggests, having an R-rating was a necessity, as anything less “compromised” the film by trying to pander to the mass audiences, instead of being true to the franchise’s origins.
“Even going into the shooting we were like, ‘OK let’s cover it both ways,’” Cameron said about being unsure at first about the eventual R-rating. “So we would have a scene where Sarah is completely unfiltered and with no mediation and then shoot it again where it was tamed down. But eventually we just said, ‘To hell with this, it’s a waste of time.’ I think the feeling was that everyone wanted to recapture the tone and the sensibility of the first two films, which I considered flattering.”
Once again, Cameron is saying all the right things about ‘Dark Fate.’ These are things that fans of the ‘Terminator’ franchise have been begging for over the decades. And yes, he’s said these sorts of things before when a new ‘Terminator’ film arrives, which subsequently hurt more when that film ends up being terrible. So, while we must admit that ‘Dark Fate’ has us excited, we’re going in expecting the worse.
“Terminator: Dark Fate” arrives on November 1.