The pitch for the new Terminator film is calling for all hands on deck.
We already know that, after a few other projects are out of the way, Arnold Schwarzenegger, body-builder turned actor turned governor turned actor again, will be returning to his most famous role as a robot from the future in a new Terminator film.
More details about that pitch, which is working under the title Terminator 2012, were released today.
Director Justin Lin wants to center the film around a revival of the entire original cast, by which I assume he means Linda Hamilton and Mick Biehn, who played the damsel in distress and the hero respectively in the first Terminator film, while Schwarzenegger played the villain.
Unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got so far, and those other actors have not yet commented on the plan.
It is a mystery how this would even work. What kind of story could be made from the reunion of these three actors, all now twenty seven years older than they were when they filmed The Terminator?
They can’t reprise their old characters, since one is an ageless robot, and the other two, not only died before they aged, but they only ever interacted with one another during that first story. Will they be getting together just to play different characters?
I suppose with lots of CGI and motion capture, they could pull off some kind of prequel, but that’d be confusing as well, considering that the characters were decidedly unremarkable before the events of the film. They could remake the original film, I guess, but if they’re going to just use CGI versions of the same actors, what’s the point?
The announcement certainly raises a lot of questions about the future of the franchise, but we’ll have to wait for answers, especially considering Schwarzenegger’s other planned projects, which will be coming first:
The Governator is an animated series about a governor which features Schwarzenegger’s voice behind an armored superhero politician, the production of which includes comics, television series, and a 3D feature-length film.
He’s also going to star in Cry Macho, based on the 1970’s novel about a retired stable-hand who kidnaps his former boss’s son. A serious flick which will mark a return to real acting (though he only did very little dramatic acting even in his hey-day).
Schwarzenegger has made himself a busy guy, but we have yet to really see if audiences actually want this much from him.
