Filmmaker James Cameron has reflected on making The Terminator 40 years on, admitting that some parts of the cult film now seem “pretty cringeworthy”.
The cult science fiction, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg assassin, was originally released in 1984 and marked the legendary filmmaker’s directorial debut.
The film took $78million at the global box office and spawned a successful franchise. While Cameron says it will always hold a special place in his heart, he doesn’t think it necessarily stands up today.
Speaking to Empire, the three-time Oscar winner visionary, 70, explained: “I don’t think of it as some Holy Grail, that’s for sure. 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.'
”Just the production value, you know? I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue, but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write. You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”
He continued: "I was just a punk starting out when I directed The Terminator. I think I was 29 at the time, and it was my first directing gig. Terminator was my first film, and it’s near and dear for that reason.”
Cameron - whose other hit films include Titanic and Avator - credits Austrian bodybuilder Schwarzenegger to the film’s staying power, even if he wasn’t what he had initially envisioned for the role.
He said: "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.”
To-date, there are six Terminator films, the last being 2019’s Dark Fate.
Despite the last installment bombing at the box office, Cameron insists that the franchise is far from dead in the water and that there are still stories within its universe to be told.
He added to the publication: “I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator films will not only be possible, but they’ll kick ass.”
Weighing-in on why he felt the Tim Miller-directed Dark Fate had failed to capture cinemagoers imaginations, he told Deadline back in 2022: “I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold.
“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.’
“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.
“So, it was just our own myopia. We kind of got a little high on our own supply, and I think that’s the lesson there.”
