Tim Miller on finishing Sarah Connor’s story with Terminator: Dark Fate

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

It's been close to thirty years since Linda Hamilton played Sarah Connor in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, but she'll be stepping back into Connor's shoes for TERMINATOR: DARK FATE. The upcoming film finds a new Terminator (Gabriel Luna) sent from the future by Skynet with orders to terminator Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a hybrid cyborg human (Mackenzie Davis), and her friends. Thankfully, Sarah Connor (Hamilton) is on the case. While speaking with Fandango, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE director Tim Miller teased how the film will complete Sarah Connor's journey.

I always looked at it as examining the consequences of the choices she makes. And this movie has a time travel aspect, of course, but all of us kind of faced the same problem where you make decisions in your life that will have big consequences in the future based on the path you pick and the decisions you make, and sometimes you have to make those decisions without a complete understanding of the implications of those decisions. And it's something, I think, that everybody can relate to, and often, as I'm sure we've all experienced, sometimes those decisions don't work out well.

"So I think that this movie was about Sarah examining the implications of those decisions. And it's almost like Jim set it up for a sequel, even though you didn't feel like you were waiting for a sequel at the end of Terminator 2," Miller explained. "When Sarah says, 'I don't know what the future holds, but for the first time I've faced it with hope.' Turns out she was wrong. But it does feel like there needs to be a further explanation of it because she said, 'I did some shit here and I don't know what happens next.' That’s where we come in and say, 'Well, this is what happens next.'"

Tim Miller also spoke of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE returning to the R-rating of the original films. However, it wasn't always a sure thing that DARK FATE would walk away with an R-rating. "Well, the decisions are always about economics, and I don't think I'm divulging any secrets when I say it was undecided, when we started, exactly how that was going to be handled," Miller said. "On the filmmaker's side of the equation, we all wanted R because that's the DNA of Terminator and the best version of the movie is an R-rated movie. But there's also the economic equation of you can certainly bisect the audience a bit by doing that." Miller continued:

So how do you do it? And we hadn't come to a decision by the time we started shooting, so I covered myself. I got language that would only belong in an R-rated film and I covered the action in such a way that we could go R-rated when the time came. And it came early enough that that decision was made that I could still switch to that sort of slightly different path. And much of that is how you handle the VFX anyway. If you have a guy with blade hands and he stabbed somebody, you can do that in PG-13 or R. Really, the difference is whether [the blade] comes out the back. And does it have a spurt of blood with it that differentiates R from PG-13? And lots of other little things, too, but the language was a big issue because you can't stop Linda Hamilton from saying, "Hey, motherf**ker." She likes to cuss.

Miller also touched upon James Cameron's comments that TERMINATOR: DARK FATE could be the start of a new trilogy. Although it does bring certain storylines to a close, Miller said that DARK FATE has a similar ending to TERMINATOR 2 in that it could be seen to open more doors. "If you look at Terminator 2 from a slightly different angle, it opened up a lot of storylines because Sarah says, 'I don't know what happens next,'" Miller explained. "I think its hubris to say that we were trying to establish a new trilogy and that's what we set out to do. But on the other hand, you certainly don't want to get caught flat-footed if the movie is successful, and you want to have some idea of where the story could go. And we certainly do open a lot of doors, but I don't feel like the movie ends in an unsatisfactory way, unless you thought Terminator 2 ended in an unsatisfactory way. "

The official synopsis for TERMINATOR: DARK FATE:

More than two decades have passed since Sarah Connor prevented Judgment Day, changed the future, and re-wrote the fate of the human race. Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) is living a simple life in Mexico City with her brother (Diego Boneta) and father when a highly advanced and deadly new Terminator – a Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna) – travels back through time to hunt and kill her. Dani's survival depends on her joining forces with two warriors: Grace (Mackenzie Davis), an enhanced super-soldier from the future, and a battle-hardened Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). As the Rev-9 ruthlessly destroys everything and everyone in its path on the hunt for Dani, the three are led to a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) from Sarah’s past that may be their last best hope.

TERMINATOR: DARK FATE will hit theaters on November 1, 2019.