We admit we were a little confused when James Cameron revealed last week that Linda Hamilton would be returning to the Terminator franchise to once again portray Sarah Connor. The series’ timeline had become awfully muddled, to say the least, ever since Cameron and Hamilton exited the franchise after 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The last two films especially, Terminator: Salvation and Terminator: Genisys, both attempted failed soft reboots of the franchise that didn’t really jibe with what happened in T2, which explains why Cameron is now revealing that the next Terminator film will officially ignore all of the movies that came after T2.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron had this to say about the next installment in the 33-year-old franchise:
“This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2. And we’re pretending the other films were a bad dream. Or an alternate timeline, which is permissible in our multi-verse. This was really driven more by [director Tim Miller] than anybody, surprisingly, because I came in pretty agnostic about where we took it. The only thing I insisted on was that we somehow revamp it and reinvent it for the 21st century.”
This is certainly good news for longtime Terminator fans, many of whom consider the first two movies — the only ones to feature the trio of Cameron, Hamilton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger — to be the only real canon entries in the franchise. The idea of saying the other films take place in an alternate timeline also makes sense, since the series has several going already, this functions as a way to not put off whatever fans those films may have.
It’s unclear when this new Terminator film could make it to theaters, but if Cameron is excited about it and considers it the first proper sequel to T2, then count us in.
