What’s the point of having a multi-verse if you can’t utilize its strengths?
Since Terminator creator James Cameron is busy directing several Avatar sequels, he’s enlisted Deadpool‘s Tim Miller to direct the sixth entry. While it’s technically the next sequel, it’s actually going down a different path, or timeline, if you will.
“This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. And we’re pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our multi-verse,” Cameron told THR in a special Q+A on Sept. 19.
“This was really driven more by [Tim] than anybody, surprisingly, because I came in pretty agnostic about where we took it. The only thing I insisted on was that we somehow revamp it and reinvent it for the 21st century.”
Miller notes that the first two films “are more relevant today than they were when he made them,” which leads to Cameron explaining why the franchise is so terrifying.
“Technology has always scared me, and it’s always seduced me. People ask me: ‘Will the machines ever win against humanity?’ I say: ‘Look around in any airport or restaurant and see how many people are on their phones. The machines have already won.’ It’s just [that] they’ve won in a different way. We are co-evolving with our technology. We’re merging. The technology is becoming a mirror to us as we start to build humanoid robots and as we start to seriously build AGI — general intelligence — that’s our equal. Some of the top scientists in artificial intelligence say that’s 10 to 30 years from now. We need to get the damn movies done before that actually happens! And when you talk to these guys, they remind me a lot of that excited optimism that nuclear scientists had in the ’30s and ’40s when they were thinking about how they could power the world. And taking zero responsibility for the idea that it would instantly be weaponized. The first manifestation of nuclear power on our planet was the destruction of two cities and hundreds of thousands of people.”
“So the idea that it can’t happen now is not the case. It can happen, and it may even happen.”
It’s such a unique way to look at the way he presents the technology and clearly why the first two films have a distinct feeling of horror alongside the sci-fi elements. Miller chooses to see the bright side of things.
“I don’t think AI’s agenda will be to kill us. That seems like a goal that’s beneath whatever enlightened being that they’re going to become because they can evolve in a day what we’ve done in millions of years. And I don’t think that they have the built-in deficits that we have, because we’re still dealing with the same kind of urges that made us climb down from the trees and kill everybody else. I choose to believe that they’ll be better than us.”
But I digress, there’s a lot of juicy nuggets within this piece, including how they convinced Linda Hamilton to return to her Sara Connor role. Cameron explained that he approached Hamilton when Miller injected “Jim was fucking terrified.”
“I was,” Cameron confirmed. “It took me a week just to get up the nerve. No, that’s not true. Linda and I have a great relationship. We’ve stayed friends through the thick and thin of it all. And she is the mother of my eldest daughter. [They were married from 1997 to 1999.] So I called her up, and I said: ‘Look, we could rest on our laurels. It’s ours to lose, in a sense. We created this thing several decades ago. But, here’s what can be really cool. You can come back and show everybody how it’s done.’ Because in my mind, it hasn’t been done a whole lot since the way she did it back in ’91.”
Miller adds: “As strong a character as she was, as meaningful as she was to gender and to action stars everywhere, I think it’s going to make a huge fucking statement to have her be the really seasoned warrior that she’s become.”
Even with Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger returning to their roles, Cameron and Miller are looking to Stars Wars as a formula for rebuilding a nearly-destroyed franchise. This included new characters and the passing of the baton.
“Absolutely, yeah. A lot of this is handing off the baton to a new generation of characters,” said Cameron. “We’re starting a search for an 18-something young woman to essentially be the new centerpiece of these stories. And then a number of other characters around her and characters from the future. We still fold time in the story in intriguing ways. But we have Arnold’s character and Linda’s character to anchor it. Somewhere across there, and I won’t say where, the baton gets passed, so to speak.”
Now if only they can get Edward Furlong back as John Connor…