James Cameron Is Right About the Terminator Franchise’s Best Future

James Cameron said that a new Terminator reboot would be about AI rather than robots and the veteran director is right to make this necessary change.

According to The Terminator creator James Cameron, the director would want any franchise reboot to focus on the more relevant contemporary concern of AI instead of haywire robots, which is a wise choice from the blockbuster veteran when it comes to the potential plot of Terminator 7. James Cameron has never followed the rules of Hollywood movie-making. Famously, the ambitious director first envisioned the concept of the Terminator’s eponymous villain as part of a fever dream, with Cameron conjuring up the image of a robotic rising like a phoenix from a ball of flames before creating the characters, the story, or even the movie’s title.

This inventive approach has continued to pay off for Cameron, whose risky Avatar: The Way of Water choices recently netted the veteran another Best Picture nomination from the Academy Awards. However, Cameron’s love of risks and his uncompromising vision hasn’t always been a formula for box office success. For example, it was Cameron who insisted that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s original T800 had to appear in director Tim Miller’s 2019 flop Terminator: Dark Fate. Nevertheless, Cameron’s recent comments on the Terminator franchise’s best potential future prove that the director is still a font of great creative ideas.

Related: M3GAN Proves The Terminator Franchise Can Return

Cameron Is Right: Terminator 7 Should Be About AI (Not Robots)

While M3GAN’s box office success arguably proves that the Terminator franchise has a future, Cameron’s comments in a December 2022 interview prove that the original creator of the series still knows how to revive the series and keep it feeling fresh. Per Cameron’s comments on the Smartless podcast, “If I were to do another Terminator film and maybe try to launch that franchise again… I would make it much more about the AI side than bad robots gone crazy.” This switch could be enough to reignite interest in the ailing franchise.

The Terminator movies haven’t had a clear path since the second installment in the series. While the first two movies are sci-fi classics, the second sequel derailed the franchise with its convoluted, knotty plotting. While this was already a major issue, to make matters worse, Terminator: Salvation’s heavily recut story turned the franchise into a post-apocalyptic war story rather than a chase thriller, only for the next Terminator sequel to reboot the franchise’s story all over again. While Terminator: Dark Fate at least regained the original movie’s R-rating, the sequel’s story made things worse by rebooting the franchise’s almost incomprehensible timeline a third time.

Clearly, the Terminator saga needs a new plot. A story of AI gone wrong could provide this, giving the Terminator series a more topical subject of focus. When The Terminator arrived in cinemas in 1984, the uses of robotic technology appeared to be limitless but, in the decades since, androids have grown less relevant as the world moved online. Now, AI is the biggest source of anxiety in sci-fi movies. Since, unlike Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar 3, the Terminator movies don’t tell a cohesive singular story, Cameron’s franchise can safely switch to a new version of the titular villain without confusing existing fans.

Cameron’s Terminator Reboot Could Still Struggle

However, just because the Terminator movies could benefit from a new villain doesn’t mean that this switchover will be a smooth process. After all, the fact that concerns over AI are so widespread means there are already plenty of other movies exploring the ethical issues with artificial intelligence. Some of these are worthy, self-serious dramas, but plenty of them are also fun blockbuster action movies in the vein of the Terminator franchise. While the killer doll movie M3GAN borrowed from The Terminator, the horror-comedy’s blockbuster success could ironically prove that it’s too late for a Terminator reboot to take on this issue as there are already major movies touching on these themes.

Related: Did Terminator: Salvation’s Failure Kill The Franchise’s Potential?

The other, bigger problem with Cameron’s idea is that focusing on a haywire AI would move the focus of the Terminator series away from the title character and, by extension, Schwarzenegger’s part in the project. After all, any Terminator reboot without the T-800 is arguably not a true Terminator movie. This could prove problematic for Terminator’s potential reboot, which might struggle to garner enthusiasm around the idea of a Terminator movie that lacks the original, iconic killer robot. That being said, Avatar: The Way of Water is setting box office records and Cameron is right about the Stranger Things timeline, so the Terminator series could yet benefit from his advice heading into a potential Terminator 7.

Next: The Next Terminator Must Correct 1 Fatal Sequel Villain Mistake