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James Cameron admits ‘The Terminator’ is “cringeworthy”

Fri 20 September 2024 9:34, UK

Even though it wasn’t his feature-length directorial debut, James Cameron would be the first to admit that he views The Terminator as his first movie, especially when he spent so long trying to distance himself from the one that came before.

After cutting his teeth under the tutelage of B-tier legend and influential producer Roger Corman, Cameron was upgraded to the director’s chair. It was supposed to be a Corman picture, but he sold the sequel rights after executive producing Joe Dante’s Piranha, and Cameron only ended up wielding the megaphone when Miller Drake was fired.

For a long time, Cameron refused to acknowledge Piranha II: The Spawning as his work, but that stance gradually softened. However, The Terminator never faced such issues after the story literally came to the filmmaker in a dream, even if post-release litigation did see Harlan Ellison settle a lawsuit and receive credit.

It was a lean, mean, relentless sci-fi thriller that cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger’s nascent superstardom, gave rise to several quotes that have been fixtures of pop culture ever since, and put Cameron on the map as an auteur who could turn what could have easily been a forgettable genre flick into a stone-cold classic.

Understandably, some aspects of The Terminator look and feel dated when reappraised through a modern lens, but for the most part, it holds up. Ignore some of the unconvincing practical effects and janky stop-motion, and it remains a visceral and propulsive delight.

It’s a great movie and one that was integral to Cameron’s ascent up the ladder towards his current status as a regular game-changer and trailblazer, but he’s hardly precious about it. In fact, the three-time Academy Award winner admitted to Empire that certain parts of the film make him cringe.

“I don’t think of it as some Holy Grail, that’s for sure,” he said. “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.'”

Cameron elaborated that it was largely the production value that caused him to cringe, but he drew the line at the script. “I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue,” he continued. “But I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write.” His scripts have been a regular source of criticism, but all he had to do was state the facts to illustrate that he didn’t care.

“You know what,” Cameron asked entirely rhetorically. “Let me see your three out of four highest-grossing films; then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.”

James Cameron’s plans for a new Terminator movie

Last month, Cameron revealed his plans to make a new Terminator film, but he also admitted the challenges that could come with trying to write another movie in 2024.

Cameron has specified that he is interested in creating another installation of the classic movie franchise, but it remains to be seen whether it will materialise. Due to the nature of the current climate, the director highlighted one of the main problems he faces with making another Terminator is how closely some of the themes may resonate with real live events.

In a conversation with The Guardian, Cameron shared, “We’re at a point right now where it gets it gets harder and harder to write science fiction because we’re living in a science fiction world on a day to day basis.”

The filmmaker continued, “I’m working through some of the themes that I want to bring into a new Terminator film or possibly even a kind of a reboot of a larger story framework and it’s difficult right now because I want to let the smoke clear on the whole thing.”