James Cameron says his new “kick a**” ‘Terminator’ films will “jettison” old history

To Empire magazine, Cameron says you shouldn’t expect to see a retread of the same characters and canon. 

“This is the moment when you jettison everything that is specific to the last 40 years of Terminator,” he says, “but you live by those principles.” So it seems like we’re not going to be seeing a now-77-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger as the old reliable cyborg, the T-800; Linda Hamilton has said the underperforming Terminator: Dark Fate would be her last go as humanity’s savior Sarah Connor.

Cameron continues of the old canon, “You get too inside it, and then you lose a new audience because the new audience care much less about that stuff than you think they do. That’s the danger … but I think we’ve proven that we have something for new audiences.”

That said, as real-life technology has grown exponentially since the 1984 original — and indeed its “far future,” 2029, is now just a few of years away — Cameron says an update is in order, though certain themes persist. 

“You’ve got powerless main characters, essentially, fighting for their lives, who get no support from existing power structures, and have to circumvent them but somehow maintain a moral compass. And then you throw AI into the mix. Those principles are sound principles for storytelling today, right?”

He enthuses, “So I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator films will not only be possible, but they’ll kick a**. But this is the moment where you jettison all the specific iconography.”