James Cameron has confirmed that Terminator 6 is the direct sequel to the Terminator 2: Judgment Day directed by him overlooking the events that took place in the subsequent films. Before leaving the franchise in 1991, Cameron had directed the first two Terminator movies and now he is aiming for a grand return to the franchise by taking over the role of producer for this film alongside working on the four sequels of Avatar.
Terminator first appeared on big screen in 1984 and since then audiences have seen the good, the bad and the really bad of those films and now Cameron has returned to revive the franchise which was almost extinct. The timeline of the film might be even more tangled than the extremely confusing X-Men universe and Cameron has revealed the starting point of the “rebooted” Terminator 6 scheduled to release in 2019.
The 63-year-old director spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and accepted that he and Tim Miller (co-director) decided to base the film on the premise that was loved by the fans in the past:
“This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. And we’re pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our multi-verse. This was really driven more by [Tim] than anybody, surprisingly, because I came in pretty agnostic about where we took it. The only thing I insisted on was that we somehow revamp it and reinvent it for the 21st century.”
The decision to overlook the parts which failed to take off might be a great thing as the old “alternate timeline” concept can help erase the forgettable memories. It is well known that the Terminator franchise steadily lost its appeal after the success of Terminator 2: Judgement Day and that makes a good case to go back to the roots.
As per critics, the 2003 film Rise of the Machines was a decent work, the fact that Judgment Day’s collection of $521 million wasn’t surpassed by any of the follow up films is a proof that the audiences also didn’t like the films much. Therefore, Cameron is doing the right thing by going back and picking things up from where he left them.
In the same way, you also need to appreciate Cameron and Schwarzenegger for their efforts of revamping the Terminator for the modern audiences without giving it a feel of an attempt to encash the brand only. Arnold is already 70 and this is a great time to bring in some young blood and portray the generational transformation.
Let’s just hope that with Arnold Schwarzenegger being joined by the comeback lady Linda Hamilton and Cameron coming on board to create the reboot, we are going to see another highly successful combination that would be a critical as well as a box office winner.
