James Cameron has become a reference point thanks to the overwhelming success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day , among other milestones. The sequel to the famous science fiction film grossed $520 million in 1991 and is considered a gem within its genre.
However, the rest of the franchise has not been as successful as the second installment, not even Terminator: Genesis and Terminator: Dark Fate , the last two attempts to keep the saga alive in 2015 and 2019, respectively.
Despite these failures, it seems that the filmmaker still has some hope in the potential of the franchise, although he must undergo some changes . The first? Doing away with both Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of the original cast. “Hasta la vista, baby.”
In a recent interview with Empire , Cameron made it clear that the future of Terminator depends on moving away from the formulas that have dominated international box offices over the past 40 years .
There is a new audience to be won over and it seems that Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and the iconic T-800 and T-1000 models are not going to achieve it. “The new audience is not as attached to those elements as we old-timers are ,” Cameron said.
For him, the key lies in approaching more universal and current themes, such as, for example, artificial intelligence.
The filmmaker knows exactly what he wants to see in the next films: “vulnerable protagonists who fight to survive in a hostile world, without support from existing power structures .” These kinds of stories, combined with the fear and fascination we feel for AI, are the director’s big bet to continue with the saga.
I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator movies will not only be possible, but they will be awesome. But this is the point where you get rid of all the specific iconography. It’s more of a plan. It’s what we’re doing. That’s all I’ll say for now.
The most shocking news, without a doubt, is that Cameron is already working on the future of the franchise. Until now, it was known that the director was focused on expanding the world of Avatar with Avatar: Fire and Ash , Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 , but it seems that he has more things in mind. This small preview has generated great expectations among fans, who expected the franchise to return, but perhaps not in the radical way that Cameron suggests.
We don’t know what Schwarzenegger will think of these statements, but it is clear that the director is convinced to recover the essence of the saga without counting on the actor with whom it all began.
As the famous T-800 always said: “I’ll be back” , and it seems that the team is determined to fulfill that promise, taking the franchise into a new era.
