James Cameron Had A Hard Time Writing Arnold Schwarzenegger Into Terminator 2
By 1991, James Cameron was well on his way to becoming one of Hollywood's best filmmakers. With the first "Terminator," "Aliens," and "The Abyss" already under his belt, the director was ready to deliver what would be considered one of his best movies (if not the best) with "Terminator 2: Judgement Day," firmly cementing his legendary status.
In the process of making the movie, Cameron went through a production budget that grew from $80 million to around the $100 million mark, continuing his trend of pushing budgets beyond their limits. Thankfully, "Terminator 2" was a big hit, bringing in $515 million at the global box office and placating the suits at Carolco who had watched Cameron burn through their initial budget, and then some, making the movie.
Much of its success was clearly down to Cameron's filmmaking prowess. But there's no doubt Arnold Schwarzenegger in the starring role was one of the biggest drivers of ticket sales. Arnie was at the height of his stardom with "T2," having starred in the original "Terminator" movie and building a legendary action career in the years since. Now it seems wild to think of "T2" without its star, but in the initial stages of working on the movie, Cameron was struggling to incorporate Schwarzenegger into his script.
The T-1000 is in, Arnie is (almost) out
For "T2," James Cameron had to go bigger than that comparatively miniscule $6.4 million movie that kicked off the franchise back in 1984. Now, with a massive budget at his disposal and the obvious advances in CGI, the director revisited an idea he had for the original movie, which he had dismissed at the time due to technical and budgetary limitations. As "The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron" author Rebecca Keegan told Vulture in 2015, the director had gone as far as writing the T-1000 into the first Terminator movie, but cut it out once he realized how ambitious it was for the time and financing he had.
The T-1000, played by Robert Patrick in "T2," is of course the liquid metal antagonist that is sent back in time to kill future leader of the human resistance, John Connor (Edward Furlong). As Cameron told The Ringer in 2021, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator was initially supposed to be destroyed part-way through the first movie, prompting Skynet to send back the T-1000, an "experimental, one-off super weapon that they've created, that even they're terrified to use."
When it came time to revisit the T-1000 and write "T2," Cameron said he immediately thought "Let's bring that guy back. Let's make him the adversary." But that created a problem. If the T-1000 was going to be the machine that was sent back in time, where did Schwarzenegger, the movie's big star, fit into the equation?
'What do I need a T-800 for?'
In an interview with Female to commemorate the film's 3D theatrical re-release in 2017, James Cameron admitted that he initially struggled with the question of "What do I need a T-800 for? What do I need Arnold for?" before very quickly coming up with the idea of "What if [the human resistance of the future] reprogrammed one to be a good guy, a protector?" The result was the excellent storyline we all remember from "T2," wherein Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 cyborg becomes a kind of surrogate father to a young John Connor, adding a whole extra emotional dimension to Cameron's script and completing the "dysfunctional nuclear family" at the core of the story.
In retrospect, making Arnie the good guy was a masterstroke. Not only did it provide that extra emotional dimension to the film, it played upon Schwarzenegger's growing popularity and gave the audience a real action hero to root for. It seems like such a simple idea now, as most great ideas do. But at the time it must have been daunting to make such drastic changes to a formula that had previously worked so well in "The Terminator." That film had launched the career of not just Schwarzenegger but Cameron himself, so to suddenly make the Terminator a good guy must have seemed at least a little risky to everyone involved in "T2."
Obviously, the whole thing paid off, but if the subsequent attempts at sequels have proven anything, it's not that easy to make changes to the "Terminator" formula and still come out with a quality product. Perhaps Cameron could revisit the series once he's done with the "Avatar" movies — though, by that point, he'll probably need a time machine of his own to have enough energy to even get to set.