Terminator: Dark Fate, which hits theaters today, is being heralded as a minor return to form for the long-running sci-fi franchise, and while it doesn’t come close to matching the brilliance of the first two installments, the return of James Cameron to the series has unsurprisingly yielded the best results since his last go-round with the T-800 way back in 1991.
As a franchise that’s existed in some form or other for 35 years, it would be easy for Dark Fate to lean heavily into nostalgia and simply attempt to recreate the property’s previous high points, an approach that admittedly didn’t work out too well for Genisys. However, in a recent interview, director Tim Miller discussed walking the fine line between honoring Cameron’s previous Terminators without veering to far into blatant fan service.
Here’s what he had to say:
“I feel like because I love it, and I can sit there and imagine someone on the internet or in a movie theater watching this movie. And decide what is fan service, and what is honoring the franchise. I’m done with ‘Hasta la vista, baby’. Honestly, I was kind of done with ‘I’ll be back’. I’ll be honest. I had to be forced to use ‘I’ll be back’. Then I said, if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it differently. We’re gonna give it to Linda, and we’re gonna throw it away.”
It sounds as though Miller was pressured by the studio into including the franchise’s most iconic line, and deciding to get Sarah Connor to say it was his way of subverting expectations, with the dialogue so closely linked to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Of course, as the sixth installment in a decades-old series, Terminator: Dark Fate was bound to feature some callbacks to the past, as is the case with most long-running brands these days, but at least the director of the movie tried to do something different with the franchise’s most memorable line.
Tell us, though, are you happy that Miller included it? Sound off down below with your thoughts and be sure to catch the film in theaters this weekend.
