Rise, again, the machine

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamiliton and James Cameron unite for one more attempt at saving the world from genocidal robots in Terminator: Date Fate, Xu Fan reports.

"I'll be back." It's one of the most iconic cinematic catchphrases, first uttered with menace by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the unstoppable cyborg assassin in the 1984 sci-fi classic, The Terminator.

Now more than three decades later, he is back - again - in the sixth installment of the film franchise, Terminator: Dark Fate, which opens across the Chinese mainland on Nov 1.

Recently, the literal Hollywood giant showed up in Beijing, reuniting with actress Linda Hamilton, whose last appearance in a Terminator film was 28 years ago, in the box-office busting first sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Joining the promotional tour also will be director Tim Miller and new cast additions, Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna and Diego Boneta.

Dark Fate marks the first Terminator film since the 1991's Judgment Day to involve James Cameron, the franchise's creator. While he still doesn't occupy the director's chair, Cameron does serve as producer and co-writer of Dark Fate.

Featuring the return of heroine Sarah Connor and the T-800 series robot, the roles respectively reprised by Hamilton and Schwarzenegger, this new tale follows a human warrior (Davis) who is sent back from 2042 to join forces with the pair to rescue a young woman (played by Reyes), who will become the leader of humanity's resistance against the genocidal machines of the future.

"The T-800 character is an extremely important character for me in my career," says Schwarzenegger, in an interview with journalists in Beijing on Oct 23.

It is certainly a classic big-screen role that underwent, arguably, one of the biggest character twists in Hollywood; in 1984, the T-800 was portrayed as a destructive killing machine, but, by the time the 1991 sequel rolled around, had been reprogrammed to become a protector of mankind. That film went to become the highest-grossing title in the United States in 1991 and set several long-standing records.

"It's fun to play the character not only because of that ... Right after I did the first Terminator movie, I remember that I was offered a tremendous amount of action film roles. It set me in a direction that was exactly where I wanted to go in my career," says Schwarzenegger.

With a low budget of around $6.4 million, The Terminator raked in over $78 million in worldwide box-office receipts, paving the way for both Cameron and Schwarzenegger's march to join Hollywood's A-list.

Speaking about the latest film, Schwarzenegger reveals that the cyborg has spent more than 20 years living among humans, growing a conscience and choosing to sacrifice himself to save mankind.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for the former champion bodybuilder, the 72-year-old actor reveals, was the daily training regimen required for the action-packed film, which involved many fight scenes and the use of military weapons.

Unlike previous Terminator films - with the possible exception of Judgment Day - which tended to have strong masculine leanings, this new chapter exemplifies Hollywood's trend toward promoting strong female roles. The three female protagonists, Hamilton, Davis and Reyes, display impressive courage and toughness to evade the powerful Rev-9 killing machine, played by Luna.

Schwarzenegger also offers high praise for the actresses, recalling a sequence where their characters, all trapped inside a Hummer truck, fall from an airplane flying at an altitude of around 10,000 meters.

According to the script, the truck is suspended on the edge of a waterfall before it is washed into the torrent, and the actresses needed to stay in the water for up to four hours. However, despite the discomfort, they didn't ask for a break before finishing the shoot.

"Hamilton set the bar very high in Judgment Day. I thought that she was never going to match that, but, she set the bar even higher, not only as a female action hero, but for what anyone can do in their 60s," extols the Austrian-American star.

However, in the beginning, it was not easy to persuade Hamilton to reprise her role as she felt that Sarah Connor's story was complete after the denouement of the first two movies and she didn't believe there was room to develop the role further.

"James Cameron had to work pretty hard to get me to come back ... Indeed, the fact that a whole lifetime has passed since we saw her (Sarah) the last time (in the 1991 sequel) was very intriguing to me, because I knew I could fill those 28 years with a background story and come in as a woman of a certain age," interjects Hamilton in the interview.

For director Tim Miller, who can count Deadpool as one of his box-office successes, to inherit the legacy of Cameron was stressful. Teasingly noting that the Terminator franchise is Cameron's "sandbox", Miller says he is "only a guest playing with his toys" and that it felt great to have Cameron's guidance during the entire procedure.

Aside from the changes in plotline and director, there was another less obvious change that ordinary theatergoers may not have picked up on, but quite meaningful for domestic filmmakers.

The new film has Chinese investment behind it - Tencent Pictures joined forces with Skydance Media, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox to coproduce Dark Fate.

So, following the 2018 Hollywood superhero film Venom, a Columbia Pictures production which included Tencent Pictures as a co-financer, Terminator: Dark Fate is set to, once again, test the market potential of the new collaboration model between Chinese companies and Hollywood studios.

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Global 10/31/2019 page14)