James Cameron’s decision to blow up the premise of his Terminator series resulted in one of the most successful sequels of all time. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eponymous cyborg was portrayed as a cold-blooded villain in the first film, but returned in Terminator 2: Judgment Day as a hero protecting the very family he was originally meant to destroy.
The change spawned many of the most iconic moments of Schwarzenegger’s film career — but the actor wasn’t convinced it would work.
At a panel discussion at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures ahead of Wednesday night’s screening of Terminator 2, Schwarzenegger praised Cameron’s writing skills before recalling his initial skepticism about the restructuring.
“The reason it became a big hit was largely due to Jim Cameron. Jim Cameron is a genius writer. He had this brilliant idea, even though I was suspicious at first,” Schwarzenegger said. “He said, ‘I want to make you a good Terminator.'”
Schwarzenegger says he tried to convince Cameron to step up the brutality of the first film, but the action icon admitted his desire for violence was partly motivated by his box-office rivalry with Sylvester Stallone.
“I said, ‘What do you mean by a good Terminator?’ In the first case, I killed 68 people,” he said. “In the second, I have to kill 150. We’re going up! Cut their throats, shoot them with a cannon and run them over with a car.’ I had to trump Stallone. I said my whole mission was to be number one at killing a lot of people on screen.”
Not concerned about Schwarzenegger’s feud with Stallone, Cameron decided to go ahead with his original plan. If anything, his pleas prompted Cameron to cut even more violence from the script.
“He said, ‘Arnold, cut it out. You are a very sick guy. “I’m going to make sure you don’t kill a single human being in ‘Terminator 2,'” Schwarzenegger said. “I said that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. How can this be “Terminator 2” without me killing anyone? Throw in at least a few symbolic corpses.”