Linda Hamilton reveals why she returned for Terminator: Dark Fate

July 15th 2019, 5:25pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Producer James Cameron and DEADPOOL director Tim Miller's new TERMINATOR movie TERMINATOR: DARK FATE will be unleashed upon the masses this November and in a recent interview ahead of the film’s panel this week at Comic-Con, Linda Hamilton and Miller talked a bit about the new movie including Hamilton's original apprehensions about returning and why she ultimately felt this was the right time.

Linda Hamilton on TERMINATOR: DARK FATE:

There is a real gift in that so much time has passed, and that gives me so much more to explore with the character. Sarah Connor is the same person but I wanted to see how the difference in events have changed her and shaped her and send her forward. There was meat there. I didn’t want to just recycle the same idea. It’s a woman who has a different mission, a different story, so I wanted to see what we could do with that.

She continues:

It’s not like riding a bike, I’ll tell you that. [Laughs] Of course, one assumes if you put in the same hard work, you get the same results, so I went straight back into training really hard and it’s like, “Oh my god, you need hormones to put muscle on!” So just starting with the basic cosmetics of the character and all of the things that I had to sort of include in my new reality as Sarah Connor.

But, really, it’s about building her backstory and figuring out where she’s been and who she is today. You have a character but so many things have impacted her in the last 30 years that it was like starting over, and yet, there is an echo of the younger Sarah Conner in everything that I had to create. But no, I worked damn hard. I spent a year-plus training really hard and working on her walk and exploring her deep sorrows and just so many elements, and more so, because there is a path there.

By the time we started, I felt ready, but a year-plus before that, I was pretty overwhelmed with a sense of obligation and duty and love for the character, just really trying to make sure that we honored the past and created something new for the future.

And finally she reveals:

She’s a woman without a country. Her original mission has changed due to circumstances and she really doesn’t have a team anymore, she just has a thirst for vengeance, so that makes her very alone. She’s still a wildcard, but a wildcard without a real true mission is a lot more unpredictable. Basically very hard for her to find her humanity, so once again we get to take a journey on that level, to have some deep things that need to be rediscovered for her survival.

Director Tim Miller then added:

I honestly believe this would be the best version of the movie after the second one. This will be more clear when you see the movie, but the first two movies really deal with time as a loop, what’s happening is the same thing that happened before and everybody is fighting to ensure that happens again. And Jim had this lucky break that he only broke that rule at the end of Terminator 2 when Sarah destroys Cyberdyne, it’s the first thing that happened that hadn’t happened before, and so it was going to change the future — but no one knew how. And I don’t think the movies that came after it really explored that in a clean way like I believe we are, with true consequences, and it makes perfect sense for Sarah to be the one to face those consequences since they were her choices, to begin with.

On top of these choice new quotes from Hamilton and Miller, today we also have two new stills from the upcoming movie. Check them out below!

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE is directed by Tim Miller (DEADPOOL) from a screenplay written by David S. Goyer, Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray based on a story conceived by James Cameron, Charles Eglee, Josh Friedman, David Goyer, and Justin Rhodes. Cameron and Ellison are the sequel's producers and Dana Goldberg serves as executive producer alongside Don Granger, Edward Cheng, Tim Miller, John J. Kelly, Bonnie Curtis, and Julie Lynn. The film will star Schwarzenegger and Hamilton, along with Mackenzie Davis, Gabriel Luna, Natalia Reyes, and Diego Boneta.

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE is scheduled to be released on November 1, 2019.