James Cameron Thinks Bringing Back Arnold Schwarzenegger & Linda Hamilton For ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Was A Mistake

When it was announced that Tim Miller and James Cameron were going to team up to wipe the slate clean with the “Terminator” franchise and present the real sequel to “T2,” fans were elated. Finally, we’d be getting a quality “Terminator” film after all of these years. Sadly, “Terminator: Dark Fate” wasn’t it. And James Cameron thinks he knows why.

Reflecting on the failure of “Terminator: Dark Fate” in a new interview with Deadline, James Cameron has a diagnosis for what went wrong with the legacy sequel. The problem, according to the filmmaker, is that there was too much reliance on the stars of the previous films, even if that seemed to be the biggest selling point.

READ MORE: Linda Hamilton “Would Love To Be Done” With The ‘Terminator’ Franchise In Light Of ‘Dark Fate’s’ Failure

Though the film wasn’t the huge success that James Cameron hoped it would be, he does admit that he’s “actually reasonably happy with the film.” Though, he doesn’t deny that there were issues between him and director Tim Miller. He said they “butted heads” but are “still pals.”

As for where ‘Dark Fate’ went wrong, Cameron blames a couple of reasons that fall under the same umbrella—he and Miller put too much stock in the idea of bringing back aging icons for the film.

“I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold,” Cameron explained. “Tim didn’t want Arnold, but I said, ‘Look, I don’t want that. Arnold and I have been friends for 40 years, and I could hear it, and it would go like this: “Jim, I can’t believe you’re making a Terminator movie without me.”’ It just didn’t mean that much to me to do it, but I said, ‘If you guys could see your way clear to bringing Arnold back and then, you know, I’d be happy to be involved.’”

He continued, “And then Tim wanted Linda. I think what happened is I think the movie could have survived having Linda in it, I think it could have survived having Arnold in it, but when you put Linda and Arnold in it and then, you know, she’s 60-something, he’s 70-something, all of a sudden it wasn’t your ‘Terminator’ movie, it wasn’t even your dad’s ‘Terminator’ movie, it was your granddad’s ‘Terminator’ movie. And we didn’t see that. We loved it, we thought it was cool, you know, that we were making this sort of direct sequel to a movie that came out in 1991. And young moviegoing audiences weren’t born. They wouldn’t even have been born for another 10 years.”

READ MORE: Director Alan Taylor Says ‘Thor 2’ & ‘Terminator: Genisys’ Failures Caused Him To “Lose The Will To Make Movies”

Ultimately, Cameron blames “myopia” and only wanting to do it this specific way for the failure of “Terminator: Dark Fate.” He’s not wrong in thinking that doing the specific legacy sequel formula that seems to be so popular in Hollywood nowadays is a double-edged sword. At first, the idea of seeing people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton return for a new ‘Terminator’ film is exciting. However, in execution, it does feel a bit held back by nostalgia. 

It’s a shame, too. “Terminator” is such a classic and the sequel, ‘T2’ is maybe even more iconic. The fact that Cameron and the various filmmakers who have worked on the franchise over the decades can’t figure out how to really follow those films up is disappointing. It would be great to see a really awesome ‘Terminator’ film in 2022. Sadly, it just doesn’t seem like it’s possible.

It’s clear that even James Cameron is a bit defeated by the failure of ‘Dark Fate.’