Caffeinated Clint
A few days ago Latino Review reported a rumour that Justin Lin’s proposed new “Terminator” feature would reunite the original cast of the 1984 film – thus Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger (Okay, and maybe as Bill Paxton as Punk#1) reprising their iconic roles.
Now Lin, who is shopping his “T5” pitch (and it’s just a pitch; no script) around, has come out and declared the news Baywatch-chest false, saying only Schwarzenegger is currently attached to the package.
Yes, that we knew.
So is that someone ruling out Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor?
Is this where we all sigh?
Hell no!
And here’s why : it could be that Lin does indeed plan on bringing back Hamilton and Biehn to reprise their roles of Sarah Hamilton and Kyle Reese respectively for the new film but just hasn’t approached them yet, and won’t until there’s a studio and predominatly, a script; or, it could simply mean that Lin may be considering recasting Reese and Connor (ouch!) but doesn’t want to put that out there just yet (for safety reasons; “Terminator” fans are known to workout!) – which also makes sense (considering the age of both Hamilton and Biehn now). In other words, there could definitely still be some truth in Latino Review’s earlier scoop (and the site has a very solid scoop base so I’m willing to believe it) but the jury is still out, and will be out for quite some time.
Here’s what Lin has to say to MTV in relation to the rumours anyway :
“No. I don’t know where that came from. Everything has just been between me and Arnold, you know? Just us going out and trying to find the right partners. I have certain elements, but it’s never been about, ‘Hey, let’s bring everybody back!’ I just don’t process that way. To me, thematically, there are certain things that I want to see in a ‘Terminator’ movie. A lot of that does draw back to creating this timeline that is an extension, closer tonally to the first and second movies. But to me, it’s not as mathematical as, ‘Hey, let’s get everybody back together and we’ll shoot the movie.'”
One thing that’s nice to hear is that Lin doesn’t plan on picking up where “Rise of the Machines” or “Salvation” left-off but rather do some kind of direct sequel (a’la “Halloween H20”) to the first two flicks – and again, this is why I stress it’s likely Connor and Reese do appear in the storyline of the new film (whether they’re played by Hamilton or Biehn remains to be seen).
“I always feel like what’s great about the ‘Terminator’ franchise is that there’s time-travel and there are different timelines to play with. There are also a lot of gaps from what we love about all of the ‘Terminator’ movies, so there’s a lot of things we can do and play with. To me, all of that, I don’t really want to discuss it now. That’s part of the fun of developing. But the bigger questions for me are always the characters and the themes. You want to start there. But obviously, answering your question, [‘Terminator’] does have that capability, finding fresh ways of going back without destroying other [movies], because you can tell your own stories.”
This new “Terminator” film is still a ways off; Lin and Schwarzenegger have yet to lock down a studio and for that matter, a script.
