Over 30 years removed from its release, the existence of Terminator 2: Judgment Day seems like a no-brainer. Writer-director James Cameron was coming off a string of hits that began with the first Terminator in 1984; its star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was the biggest star in the world, and it would eventually create special effects that changed Hollywood as we know it. However, none of that would’ve happened if Linda Hamilton hadn’t agreed to come back.
In a fantastic, can’t-miss interview, James Cameron recently sat down with Vanity Fair to go over every single film across his career. It’s well worth a watch for Cameron fans (we embedded it below) and is chock full of fascinating tidbits. One that stood out is in regard to Terminator 2 and the steps Cameron took before writing the script.
“I really wanted Linda in the film,” Cameron said. “And I said [to the producers], ‘Have you approached her?’ ‘No.’ I said, ‘All right, well, let me approach her, because I need to know if she’s in or out before I can even write a script…’ So I went to Linda… we had dinner. She was pregnant at the time. I said, ‘All right, we’re gonna make a Terminator movie.’ She said, ‘I have one thing that I want.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ ‘I wanna be crazy.’”
Yes, Linda Hamilton was only coming back for Terminator 2 if Sarah Connor was crazy. Or, something like that.
“Her hypothesis was that what she had been through traumatically, her vision of the future, had basically driven her nuts,” Cameron continued. “We eventually modified that so that she was on the edge. She wasn’t really crazy, but we don’t know until partway through the film, where she goes to shoot the guy and try to unwind the future, and she can’t do it. So her moral compass is still intact, no matter that, in that moment, she knows she might be consigning four billion people to their deaths. So we worked together collaboratively.”
In the end, that seems like the right balance to give the character a nice big arc. He talks more about it in the video too, along with finding Edward Furlong to play Sarah Connor’s all-important son, John, the struggle to get the CGI effects right, and so much more. And that’s just the Terminator 2 section. Each film has wonderful little tidbits, so definitely check it out below.
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