Arnold Schwarzenegger shared his views on the two most recent entries in the Terminator series and why they fell short at the box office.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Schwarzenegger was asked about the future of the Terminator franchise and his involvement with it. “The franchise is not done. I’m done,” he answered. “I got the message loud and clear that the world wants to move on with a different theme when it comes to The Terminator. Someone has to come up with a great idea. The Terminator was largely responsible for my success, so I always would look at it very fondly. The first three movies were great. Number four [Salvation] I was not in because I was governor. Then five [Genisys] and six [Dark Fate] didn’t close the deal as far as I’m concerned. We knew that ahead of time because they were just not well written.”
The Failure of Terminator Genisys and Dark Fate
Released in 2015, Terminator Genisys presented an altered history of the events of The Terminator, trumpeting the return of Schwarzenegger as the T-800 alongside Emilia Clarke taking over the role of Sarah Connor, Jason Clarke (no relation) as John Connor and Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese. Director Alan Taylor discussed his initial excitement to work on the sequel, saying, “All the voices in my head, and all the ones around me, were saying I should do it because who didn’t love the first two films? I thought we would go in and fix the script and everything could be great.” Genisys was a box-office success but a critical failure, and the poor reception to both it and Taylor’s previous film, Thor: The Dark World, demoralized him from working as a director.
Following Genisys, the next entry in the franchise was 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, directed by Tim Miller and produced by series creator James Cameron. Dark Fate acted as a direct sequel to T2: Judgment Day and saw Schwarzenegger play opposite Linda Hamilton returning as Sarah Connor. Cameron later regretted hanging the film on two leads well over 60 years old, calling the film “your granddad’s Terminator movie.” “We loved it,” he explained. “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.” Dark Fate was better received than Genisys but fell far short of financial expectations, becoming one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.
Currently, a reboot of the Terminator franchise is in early development with Cameron’s involvement, which is intended to be “much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.” Additionally, Netflix is producing a Terminator anime series written by Mattson Tomlin. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, is gearing up to star in his first television series, the action-comedy FUBAR, also on Netflix.
Source: THR
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