Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator Getting A Reboot?
James Cameron has stated that a Terminator reboot is currently "in discussion."
Arnold Schwarzenegger might have given up on being a massive movie star in the way he once was, but that does not mean the man has left behind his most beloved franchise. James Cameron recently revealed on the Smartless Podcast that the wheels have begun turning about rebooting the Terminator franchise. According to Cameron, “If I were to do another ‘Terminator’ film and maybe try to launch that franchise again, which is in discussion, but nothing has been decided, I would make it much more about the AI side of it than bad robots gone crazy.”
Quite honestly, we are not sure that rebooting the Terminator franchise needs to happen at this point, though the last movie did do quite well in terms of reviews. Terminator: Dark Fate currently holds a 70% critic approval rating with an even better 82% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also brought in $261 million in worldwide box office numbers against a budget of $185 million, making it a box office bomb.
Still, James Cameron speaking on the Smartless Podcast about the Terminator reboot being more about artificial intelligence could be something that fans want to see explored. We have all just seen cyborgs going at in every movie, without seeing how Skynet became self-aware. The rebooted franchise could be more grounded, showcasing how humans began to figure out that the A.I. program in the movie was beginning to do some heinous things.
We would argue that the Terminator franchise is a bit of horror and science fiction mixed into one, and what better way to drive home the idea of horror than to showcase how the A.I. Skynet program began to hunt down humans? There is a wealth of possibilities behind wanting to focus on the A.I. aspect of the franchise, which we would be incredibly interested to see. Still, we aren’t sure that the franchise could survive without Arnold Schwarzenegger carrying the movie.
Another interesting idea could be how the Terminator that Arnold Schwarzenegger plays was built in the first place, and how he was sent back in time to try and kill Sarah Conner, and then subsequently sent back to protect John Conner. There could be a lot of hope for the franchise to be rebooted in a way that does not return to the storyline used in the past six movies that have already been made. It could rely more heavily on science fiction and move away from just being about the action aspect.
Hollywood is full of reboots and remakes anyway, and the Terminator franchise being rebooted should not come as a shock to anyone. However, the big shock is that James Cameron has openly stated that the hope is to now focus on the artificial intelligence within the universe that turns into a human hunter. We would love to see how the first humans deal with the robot uprising, and if they are even prepared for it.
James Cameron also stated that this proposed Terminator reboot is only being discussed right now, so we are likely to not see the movie for a couple of years, assuming the wheels have already begun turning on a proposed script for the movie. We could even see Arnold Schwarzenegger return in some grand way to the franchise, which also makes complete sense.
