Tim Miller says James Cameron wanted the killing of John Connor to happen in Terminator: Dark Fate

Terminator: Dark Fate seemed to have the cards in its favor to set the franchise back on the right track. It had the return of James Cameron in a creative role to contribute ideas, plus, not only would Arnold reprise his signature role, but Linda Hamilton would once again become Sarah Connor. It was shooting for an R-rating and the director of the recently successful Deadpool was at the helm. Alas, audiences did not respond to the film that attempted to be the true follow-up to one of the greatest action movies of all-time.

A large amount of the criticism came from the killing of John Connor, who was an important figure of the franchise. Director Tim Miller recently spoke with Variety and talked about how James Cameron wanted this subversive element to happen in the movie. Miller explained, “I’m a nerd, so I’m trying to do what I would want to see as a nerd. Now, my Terminator movie didn’t exactly set the world on fire, even though I approached it with that principle, which goes to show…” He continues, “Nobody sets out to disregard someone’s closely held childhood dreams. It’s no cause for vitriol. A lot of people didn’t like Terminator: Dark Fate for reasons I had nothing to do with. One, because it was the sixth film and another because we killed John Connor at the start, but if Jim Cameron wants that to happen – which I agree with by the way – then that’s what you do.”

Cameron would recently hold firm on his stance on the film, “We achieved our goal. We made a legit sequel to a movie where the people that were actually going to theatres at the time that movie came out are all either dead, retired, crippled, or have dementia. It was a non-starter. There was nothing in the movie for a new audience.” As such, the box office numbers were a disappointment, at least compared to what James Cameron is used to. “Our problem was not that the film didn’t work. The problem was, people didn’t show up. I’ve owned this to [director] Tim Miller many times. I said, ‘I torpedoed that movie before we ever wrote a word or shot a foot of film.’”