James Cameron, the director who entered the Hollywood spotlight with the fantastic horror/action/sci-fi epic The Terminator, has shared his thoughts about the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the titular role. Basically, the director believes the film’s legacy has held strong because of the incorporation of the movie star, who was still being overshadowed by an awkward Austrian language, even after starring as Conan the Barbarian.
In a conversation with Empire magazine, Cameron celebrates the 1984 film by being his usual self and coldly looking back on the 40-year-old film. “I don’t think of it as some Holy Grail, that’s for sure,” the perfectionist director says when revisiting the movie. Nevertheless, Cameron shares his opinion on how important it was to go with an “unconventional” casting:
“I think a lot of filmmakers, especially first-time filmmakers, get very, very stuck in a vision, because of insecurity. I’m proud of the fact that we weren’t stuck enough to not be able to see how it could work with Arnold because it wasn’t our vision. Sometimes, when you look back from the vantage point — at this point 40 years — we could have made a great little film from a production-value standpoint, and
it would have been nothing if we hadn’t made that one decision that captured the imagination of people
.”
Could you imagine someone else as the Terminator? It is virtually impossible. Cameron’s vision in casting the Austrian Oak was part of his courageous attitude when trying to accomplish a different kind of time travel film. Of course, one struggles to see someone else as the Terminator, but as important as Schwarzenegger’s presence is, Cameron’s direction was essential in turning the villain into one of the most iconic antagonists in movie history. The T-800 is a cold-blooded machine that always looks authentic, and Cameron doesn’t sacrifice the character’s integrity with unnecessary theatrics. It’s all part of his design.
James Cameron Looks Back on The Terminator
As proud as he feels about The Terminator, Cameron also looks back and scrutinizes his feature film debut. And before you correct us, we know his first directing credit was for Piranha II: The Spawning, but Cameron doesn’t think of that as his first (he was fired from the project after he worked two weeks and a half on it): “I was just a punk starting out when I directed The Terminator. I think I was 29 at the time, and it was my first directing gig. Terminator was my first film, and it’s near and dear for that reason.”
However, Cameron does recognize the film has some flaws. Not that they affected the reception by critics who still hold it at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the few films from the 1980s to have such a merit. Made on a budget of a little more than $6 million, The Terminator would end up making $78.3 million, not bad for a film Cameron wrote based on a nightmare he had. The director uses several scenes from the movie in his very valuable contribution to Masterclass, and while he knows the dialogue could be better, he seems to hold it very close to his heart:
“I look at it now and there are parts of it that are pretty cringeworthy, and parts of it that are like, ‘Yeah, we did pretty well for the resources we had available.’ Just the production value, you know? I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue, but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write. You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”
The Terminator
is available to stream on AMC+.