Justin Lin Wants To Resurrect Sarah Connor In 'Terminator 5'

It's so early in terms of Terminator 5, separating fact and fiction can be difficult. We know producer Megan Ellison has the rights. We know Justin Lin is attached to direct and Arnold Schwarzenegger will star. We also know that those two have had conversations, some of which included James Cameron, about where the story could go. However, since there's no script, Schwarzenegger is about to make The Last Stand and Lin is directing Fast and Furious 6 next, both of which are scheduled for 2013 release, anything beyond that is rumor and speculation. Terminator 5 is still several years off.

In a new interview, though, Lin hints at the fact that he believes the Sarah Connor character is crucial to the franchise and though she was offhandedly killed in the third film, his inclination is to bring her back. Read what he had to say after the jump.

The interview in question was conducted by Moviehole. It's a good read, especially since Lin talks about the fact that The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift is basically the final film in the series. But I digress. Here's the Sarah Connor Stuff:

MovieHole: In some respect it was like, just seeing Arnold at the end of the last one, the last 5 seconds, even though he was a computer generated version of, people were excited the same way they saw Vin at the end of Tokyo Drift. It kind of reminded, you know, reminded everyone this is the guy, this is the franchise king.

Lin: Yeah, exactly. And I think that you know if the right version, if you go back to the thematic drives of the first one especially, I think that's a way to be able to reengage with that franchise.

MH: And there's going to be a way to resurrect Sarah Connor. I'm missing Sarah Connor.

L: I mean, Sarah Connor is such a big part of the franchise, you know. Yeah, I mean I've always been surprised how in part 3 she was just like... It was like one line and she was gone.

MH: She was dead, yeah, yeah. It was insulting, yeah.

L: Yeah, like leukemia and... But I think the great thing about this franchise is you have... You can actually have different canons because you have the element of time travel. So, there's a way of kind of respecting all the works but also able to create a new time line.

MH:That's right. You can go back and right the wrongs.

L: Yes.

It's encouraging that Lin is acknowledging the wrongs of the previous films. Plus it sounds like he's aiming to do what Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles did. It righted the wrongs from the later films by just sort of going off on its own post T2 timeline.

The problem with righting those wrongs though, is the same problem the TV show ran into. If you time travel back to the 1980s when the first film took place, or the 1990s when T2 took place, Sarah Connor should technically look the same as she did then and – no offense to Linda Hamilton – but she doesn't look like she did in 1992. Lena Headey did an awesome job on the TV show but on the big screen, some people could be confused by a new Sarah, especially with Schwarzenegger still there. The TV show returned no original cast members.

These are issues that will surely get figured out in the next few years as this story and script is being fleshed out. Lin also dropped this in, suggesting if the story and script don't work, he won't do the project:

I have my criteria set and if it's not right, I shouldn't make it. I think a lot of the stuff has been very good, we'll see how everything fleshes out on that end too.

What do you think about this?