Everyone knows at this point that Arnold Schwarzenegger was nowhere near James Cameron’s first choice to play the title character in The Terminator, but by the time the credits rolled on the classic sci-fi thriller, the big Austrian had established the relentless killing machine as a cinematic icon. The franchise might finally be over for good now after Dark Fate delivered the fourth subpar sequel in a row and bombed at the box office, but dragging the series out for 35 years is still an impressive achievement.
These days, when you hear the word ‘Terminator,’ your mind instantly jumps to Schwarzenegger’s leather and sunglasses wearing T-800, but there’ve been plenty of other actors that have played a Cyberdyne Systems model over the years. Robert Patrick’s T-1000 is obviously the benchmark, but we’ve also seen Kristanna Loken, Sam Worthington, Jason Clarke and Gabriel Luna embody various incarnations across the franchise’s expansive mythology.
New fan art from SPDRMNKYXXIII puts an interesting and awesome twist on the legendary cybernetic organism, though, by imagining Nicolas Cage in the role, and you can check it out for yourself down below.
In all honesty, if they decided to resurrect the Terminator franchise and reboot it for the fourth time in a little over a decade, hiring Nicolas Cage and letting him run wild would certainly be enough to get people talking. Let him play a model that’s suffering from hard drive problems, get him to unleash full-blown Cage Rage and you’re off to the races. The memes alone would be enough to dominate the conversation, and it would definitely be a million miles away from the robotic performances that the rest of the Terminators have been cornered into giving over the years.
