James Cameron’s New Promise Can be the Only Thing That Can Save Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dying Terminator Franchise

It has been 40 years since one of the most prolific science fiction franchises of our time, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, debuted on the big screen. Ever since the actor debuted as the ultimate cyborg to save the future of the human species in the first film, released in 1984, it has spawned five more films, games, series, comics, and more.

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Terminator in the film series The Terminator | Credit: Carolco Pictures

Yet, now it lies dying, having lost much of its charm with each successive film. While Schwarzenegger himself had exclaimed last year that the world has moved on, the franchise creator James Cameron himself candidly reiterated similar claims, at the same time giving us the only solution that can save it.

James Cameron Hasn’t Given Up on the Terminator Franchise, Reveals Idea to Save it From Ruin

James Cameron | Image by Angela George, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It was 40 years ago, back in 1984, that the first film, The Terminator, was released with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead and James Cameron at the helm. Set against a backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world where there is a war raging between a synthetic intelligence called Skynet and the last remaining human, it was an immediate hit.

And so the science fiction franchise has gone on to have five more movies starring the former Mr Olympia as the famous T-800. However, while the first two (helmed by Cameron) were critically acclaimed, the quality of the franchise fell with each successive film, leading to the disasters that were Genisys and Dark Fate.

Despite the loss and setbacks, Cameron still believes there is hope to salvage it all, especially given the reception and acclaim the animated series, Terminator Zero, has been receiving lately. Celebrating 40 years of the franchise, in a cover story for Empire, he revealed what the future plan of action should be.

This is the moment when you jettison everything that is specific to the last 40 years of Terminator, but you live by those principles. 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.

Without Schwarzenegger’s brooding cyborg, Sarah Connor, and the T-1000, it is hard to imagine what the future of the franchise will look like. But Cameron is confident that moving away from the original iconography, telling new stories, and starting anew, is what the Terminator franchise needs to survive.

James Cameron is Confident Moving Away From the Original Elements is Exactly What the Terminator Franchise Needs

James Cameron’s idea can revive The Terminator franchise | Credit: Carolco Pictures

Few franchises have managed to create an impact on the world and minds of the audience as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator franchise has. However, its last few films have been nothing but a disappointment, leading the Hollywood legend to exclaim he is done with the franchise since the world wants to move on with a different theme (via The Hollywood Reporter).

So while the man who made the franchise such a huge part of popular culture and discourse has taken himself out of the equation on his own, it is also what James Cameron has in mind. Even though it is an unthinkable vision to have a new set of characters and AI threats fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, Cameron is positive that this is what it needs.

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 reasons in his new interview with Empire, and then remarks with absolute certainty over his his plan,

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.

Although he seems busy creating the world of Avatar, the esteemed filmmaker revealed that he has also been brainstorming something new for Terminator. With such hopeful promises and definite ideas, there is a possibility that the technology-laced franchise might just make it back to the big screen, or as the Terminator would say ‘I’ll be back.’

The Terminator is available to be rented on Amazon Prime Video.