40 Years Later, James Cameron Doesn’t Look At ‘The Terminator’ As “A Holy Grail”: “There Are Part Of It That Are Pretty Cringeworthy”

“The Terminator” may have put James Cameron on the Hollywood map in 1984, but forty years on, the film’s production values still irk him. EW reports (via Empire) that Cameron still has quibbles with his breakout film.  Not surprising to hear from a director who loves to revisit his movies and tinker with their remasters, but when is James Cameron ever satisfied with success?

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“I don’t think of it as some Holy Grail, that’s for sure,” Cameron told Empire in an interview for the sci-fi film’s 40th anniversary. “I look at it now and there are parts of it that are pretty cringeworthy, and parts of it that are like, ‘Yeah, we did pretty well for the resources we had available.'” Cameron shot the film in 1984 on a $6.4 million budget; meager for the era. But “The Terminator” ended up a smash hit, making $78.3 million in its box office run, cementing Cameron as a director to watch in the process.

But what issues does Cameron have with the movie decades later? Not surprisingly, it’s “just the production value” that still bothers him. Indeed, only having about $7 million to work with is a lot different than the several hundred million Cameron has for his “Avatar” sequels. And even less surprising, Cameron doesn’t have any issues with his early screenwriting on the film either. “I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue,” he continued, “but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write.”

Of course, that kind of smug answer is what one expects from the 70-year-old director at this point in his career: a consummate perfectionist who’s nonetheless very (very) proud about what he’s accomplished with his movies. “You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness,” he joked to naysayers about his screenwriting ability. And Cameron has the buffer of success to get away with comments like that.  2009’s “Avatar” still reigns supreme as the highest-grossing film ever, with 2022’s “Avatar: The Way Of Water” ranking at #3 and 1997’s “Titanic” as #4. Where will next year’s “Avatar: Fire And Ash” inevitably rank?  Probably up there, if not surpassing at least a couple of Cameron’s previous juggernauts.

But back to “The Terminator.” Despite his lingering issues with his film, Cameron remains proud of a couple of creative choices he made on it, especially his decision to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role. The Austrian bodybuilder-turned-actor didn’t fit Cameron’s original idea for the character, but after meeting Shcwarzenegger, the director knew he had to adjust his vision. “I think a lot of filmmakers, especially first-time filmmakers, get very, very stuck in a vision, because of insecurity,” said Cameorn. “I’m proud of the fact that we weren’t stuck enough to not be able to see how it could work with Arnold, because it wasn’t our vision. Sometimes, when you look back from the vantage point — at this point 40 years — we could have made a great little film from a production-value standpoint, and it would have been nothing if we hadn’t made that one decision that captured the imagination of people.”

Cameron has spoken to EW about the genius of casting Schwarzenegger before, in the outlet’s 2014 oral history of the 1984 film.  In that piece, Cameron recalled meeting with the actor about playing the film’s hero, Kyle Reese. “I went to lunch to pull ‘creative differences,’ but I actually liked him,” said the director. “I was studying him at the restaurant, just watching the light from the window on his face and thinking, ‘Holy crap, what a face! Forget the Reese thing. Arnold would make a hell of a Terminator.'” When Cameron offered the role to him, Schwarzenegger initially wasn’t wild about playing a part with only 17 lines. “But Cameron said that he’d shoot it in such a way that all the evil stuff that I do will be totally excused by audiences because I’m a cool machine,” said the actor. “And so cool that some of the people will cheer.”

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Schwarzenegger took the role, and the rest is history; “The Terminator” launched both actor and director to Hollywood superstardom.  And in terms of the film, Schwarzenegger lended the Terminator a hulking mystique Cameron had never imagined. “We didn’t change a line of dialogue,” he told EW. “I didn’t change my storyboards, but all of a sudden he was this big formidable guy — a human bulldozer, like a panzer tank. Originally, the Terminator was supposed to be this anonymous guy in the crowd, you know, the killer could be anybody. Arnold stands out in a crowd. But it gave the film power in a way I hadn’t anticipated.” Cameron and Schwarzenegger carried that power through to their 1991 sequel “T2: Judgment Day” before Cameron departed the franchise to make “True Lies” (also with Schwarzenegger) and “Titanic.”

Cameron gave “The Terminator” a 4k restoration for its 40th anniversary, available for fans to purchase now.  Will the film’s new look assuage Cameron’s nagging issues with the movie’s production values? Maybe not, but Cameron isn’t about to change at his age: he’s a perfectionist through and through.