While James Cameron didn’t direct a movie between Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water, he did produce and co-write a few titles, including the most recent Terminator film, Dark Fate. Despite Cameron’s involvement, as well as roles for franchise stalwarts Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, the film was not a hit, which Cameron recently attributed to making “your granddad’s Terminator movie” and having “myopia” about what they had created and what today’s moviegoing audience would think about it.
But Terminator movies have flopped before, and they just keep coming. (There are now six Terminator movies, if you lost count.) And Cameron now says the franchise, much like Skynet, could rise yet again. In a recent appearance on the SmartLess podcast (via The Playlist), Cameron revealed that yet another Terminator is “in discussion.”
Here was what he had to say on that subject:
The Avatar films are about the environment; I’m not dealing with AI … If I were to do another Terminator film and maybe try and to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided. I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.
As Cameron’s comments suggest, he retains a lot of affection for The Terminator series. (As well he should; wouldn’t you have affection for it if you’d created one of the most beloved sci-fi movies in history?) The real problem with the franchise, besides its aging stars, is the fact that the horrible future that the heroes are trying to stop was supposed to have come to pass decades ago. The sequels have tried to get around that in a few different ways; sometimes the characters claim while the apocalypse was delayed, it is still coming. In the case of Terminator: Salvation, they actually made a post-apocalyptic movie, with less than stellar results. It’s a bit like a later Friday the 13th movie; sure, it can be fun to watch Jason Voorhees run around slashing people, but are you scared of him by Jason X? Not really. The stakes have kind of diminished.
Cameron’s got the right idea, at least, with making a new film about AI rather than killer robots. The same old Terminator just won’t work anymore. In the meantime, Cameron’s new movie Avatar: The Way of Water is playing in theaters. He’s still got three more of these he wants to make, too, so who knows when he’d find time to make a Terminator on top of that.
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