Terminator actor Arnold Schwarzenegger bluntly stated he’s done with the Terminator franchise moving forward while also admitting that both Genisys and Dark Fate “were just not well written.”
Schwarzenegger conducted a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter discussing everything from the media slaughtering Last Action Hero due to his politics, his own personal growth and belief in God, his divorce, and his upcoming Netflix series FUBAR.
When he was asked if the Terminator franchise feels done, Schwarzenegger said, “The franchise is not done. I’m done.”
He then added, “I got the message loud and clear that the world wants to move on with a different theme when it comes to The Terminator.”
Schwarzenegger went on to reveal that he knew Genisys and Dark Fate would not perform well due to poor scripts.
He said, “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.”
Schwarzenegger’s admission about Dark Fate is a far cry from producer James Cameron’s comments on the film. Speaking with Deadline last December Cameron admitted he was “actually reasonably happy with the film.”
He continued, “[Director] Tim [Miller] and I had our battles and we’ve both spoken about that, but the crazy thing is we’re still pals. Which is weird. I liked him before the movie, didn’t like him very much during the movie, and I like him now, and I think he feels the same way. We’re both these crazy sci-fi geeks and we like a lot of the same things, and I love his show, Love, Death + Robots. But yeah, we butted heads.”
Cameron then shared what he believed was the problem with the film despite claiming he was happy with it, “I think the problem, and I’m going to wear this one, is that I refused to do it without Arnold. Tim didn’t want Arnold, but I said, ‘Look, I don’t want that. Arnold and I have been friends for 40 years, and I could hear it, and it would go like this: ‘Jim, I can’t believe you’re making a Terminator movie without me.'” It just didn’t mean that much to me to do it, but I said, ‘If you guys could see your way clear to bringing Arnold back and then, you know, I’d be happy to be involved.'”
He continued, “And then Tim wanted Linda. I think what happened is I think the movie could have survived having Linda in it, I think it could have survived having Arnold in it, but when you put Linda and Arnold in it and then, you know, she’s 60-something, he’s 70-something, all of a sudden it wasn’t your Terminator movie, it wasn’t even your dad’s Terminator movie, it was your granddad’s Terminator movie. And we didn’t see that.”
“We loved it, 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,” Cameron relayed.
“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,” he asserted.
Director Tim Miller previously blamed “get woke and go broke” for the film’s box office failure telling Kim Masters on her podcast The Business with Kim Masters, “There was a lot of ‘get woke and go broke’ sentiment that didn’t help us, but…”
When asked to explain he stated, “There was a lot of issues about having three women in lead positions and all of that stuff. There is quite a toxic atmosphere around this film online, which I was really surprised at. I shouldn’t be, but I was.”
During the film’s promotion, Miller described Terminator fans as “closet misogynist[s]” in an interview with Variety. When asked about the reaction to the film’s Dark Fate poster, Miller stated, “If you’re at all enlightened, she’ll play like gangbusters. If you’re a closet misogynist, she’ll scare the f*** out of you, because she’s tough and strong but very feminine.”
He added, “We did not trade certain gender traits for others; she’s just very strong, and that frightens some dudes. You can see online the responses to some of the early s**t that’s out there, trolls on the internet. I don’t give a f***.”
What do you make of Schwarzenegger stepping away from the Terminator franchise? What about his assessment that he knew the film would struggle at the box office because it wasn’t well written?