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James Cameron has a plan for the future of the ‘Terminator’ franchise

The franchise has had a string of failures after its early successes.

By Joe Allen Sep 19, 2024 2:45 PM

The Terminator — BFA / Alamy

Over the course of his long and storied career, James Cameron has been involved in a number of franchises. His first, though, was the Terminator franchise, which launched in 1984 and has had a pretty confusing history in the decades since. Some movies, like T2, have worked stupendously. Others, like Terminator: Genisys, are probably best forgotten.

The most recent installment in the franchise, Dark Fate, was positioned as a direct sequel to T2, but it didn’t do very well at the box office. Even so, Cameron isn’t worried about the future of his very first franchise. In an interview with Empire Magazine, the director explained that he has a plan for the future of Terminator.

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“This is the moment when you jettison everything that is specific to the last 40 years of Terminator, but you live by those principles,” he explained. In Cameron’s vision, that means getting rid of many of the characters that fans have grown to love, and telling entirely new stories set in the same universe, one where AI has defeated humanity.

“You get too inside it, and then you lose a new audience because the new audience care much less about that stuff than you think they do,” he explained. “That’s the danger, obviously, with Avatar as well, but I think we’ve proven that we have something for new audiences. You’ve got powerless main characters, essentially, fighting for their lives, who get no support from existing power structures, and have to circumvent them but somehow maintain a moral compass. And then you throw AI into the mix. Those principles are sound principles for storytelling today, right?”

Cameron added that he is confident in the future.

“So I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator films will not only be possible, but they’ll kick ass. But this is the moment where you jettison all the specific iconography.”

It’s unclear when we might see another Terminator sequel, but given history of this franchise, it’s only a matter of time.

Joe Allen is a freelance writer at Digital Trends, where he covers Movies and TV. He frequently writes streaming… Read Full Bio

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