James Cameron is returning for ‘Terminator: Dark Fate‘ and now the producer is opening up as to the future of the franchise. While there is no guarantee that a sequel to the movie will go into production, or that they may even own the rights for another outing, that hasn’t prevented Cameron from brainstorming where he’d like to go. While a new trilogy is being proposed assuming audiences love the movie, he is quick to point out that ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ was designed as a standalone feature.
As to where Cameron would like to take the next film or two if they happen:
“I feel like one of my major motivations on this film or coming back to the, hopefully, franchise, was to explore the human relationship with artificial intelligence. I don’t feel we did that in Dark Fate. I feel that we set the stage, or we set the table for that exploration, and that exploration would take place in a second film and a third film. And we know exactly where we’re going to take that idea. What we wanted to get in the first movie was this idea that it’s just going to keep happening. The names will change, but the basic conflict is going to continue to take place until it gets resolved one way or the other. And so I believe we’ve set that table and if, like I said, if we get the opportunity, we know where to take the story so that it doesn’t become… I think you start simple, and then you elaborate, and you can elaborate over a series of films. If they’re made by the same people with the same intentions and the same philosophy, then there can be a kind of a story arc across multiple films. But that said, I think Dark Fate stands alone as a pretty good one-time story.”
The best way to world build these days is to focus on giving audiences a solid story that they can expand upon at a later date. A bonus about ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ having the potential to being expanded is that it did have one highly important effect on how the movie was crafted:
“We’ve got a lot of thinking about what things look like up in the future to draw upon, and we sort of know where our storyline is going in broad strokes because we actually had other–I don’t know if you noticed, but the story credits for the movie are a little weird because you’ve also got Chic Eglee and Josh Friedman in the story credits because we sat in the room and we broke story across three movies before we focused down onto the first of the proposed three, which is Dark Fate. So there’s really a plotline that runs all the way out through a third film, if we get to that stage. And the reason for that is you spend a couple of weeks to future-proof yourself so you don’t paint yourself into a corner and you could still do the things that you want to do. So yeah, there’s a lot of good thinking that exists already on that.”
Say what you will about where the “Terminator” franchise has gone since ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’, having Cameron and his track record being in charge of the films once more has given me hope for the movie. While many fear that the “Avatar” series might bring his streak of high-quality filmmaking to an end, it is hard to argue that the director hasn’t had massive success over the years, and he knows how to deliver money making movies.
‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ will show us what happens the day after judgment day on November 1st, 2019!
Source: Collider
