Can A ‘Terminator’ Film Work Without James Cameron?

There are directors, and then there are auteurs, and then there are people who can create entire universes. Love him or hate him, James Cameron can claim to be all three. Between Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic, and Avatar, Cameron has secured a name for himself as one of the most popular and innovative filmmakers of all time. However, his greatest contribution to pop culture might be the indefatigable Terminator franchise.

Since 1984, there have been major five films and one television show based on a dream that Cameron once had about “a metallic torso dragging itself from an explosion while holding kitchen knives.” Terminator is a major franchise and our love of all things Skynet and Sarah Connor have to do with how good the first two films are. The Terminator wasn’t a massive box office smash, but it’s tightly-wound story, inventive special effects, and cool tech noir look made it a VHS hit. By the time Terminator 2: Judgment Day rolled around, people were already well-versed in The Terminator universe’s lore and Cameron was operating at the top of his game. The results were nothing short of revolutionary.

So, naturally, people wanted more. Audiences wanted more. Hollywood executives wanted more. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted more. Even James Cameron wanted more. However, in the late ’90s, due to a series of financial blunders, Cameron, his long-time producing partner Gail Ann Hurd, and 20th Century Fox all lost their shares in the Terminator franchise. It was out of the hands of Cameron, Hurd, and their writing parter, William Wisher. People have tried to resurrect and reboot Terminator numerous times without this original dream team, but it’s never quite worked. You can cram in Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can bring back Linda Hamilton, and you can even cast big stars like Claire Danes or Christian Bale in major roles, but without Cameron at the helm, it seems you’ll get nothing but a B-movie with uninspired action sequences. Cameron’s two outings were next level science fiction filmmaking that made popcorn flicks look like art.

Terminator: Genisys is poised to hit theaters tomorrow, and early buzz says that the best parts about it are the scenes that meticulously recreated Cameron’s original vision. Bryan Bishop at The Verge writes:

So, it’s not good when it’s not directly riffing on James Cameron’s work. Got it.

The obvious conclusion is that only James Cameron can guide a Terminator feature to glory. It makes sense. After all, he’s the creator. But the beauty of a film franchise is its ability to be a machine that can generate material — films, television shows, comic books, novels, video games, toys, and more — without the guidance of one specific man’s vision. Star Wars might have been George Lucas’s baby, but it can survive, even thrive, without his input. Star Trek was the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry, but has been re-imagined and rebooted successfully by subsequent generations. Stan Lee’s paws are all over Marvel, but its current film empire is the work of many.

So, the irony of the Terminator franchise — which is a story that is all about mankind’s battle against self-aware and self-sustaining machines — might be that it’s one of the few franchises that needs its creator at the helm to work. It would seem that Terminator is not a machine.

[Watch Terminator: Judgment Day Before It Expires On July 1 On Netflix]

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[Photo: Everett Collection]