James Cameron Revisits The Terminator At 40: ‘I Was Just A Punk Starting Out’

Few filmmakers stand as tall as James Cameron – the man who has consistently blown away the competition, whether with Aliens or Titanic, or the box-office-shattering Avatar and Avatar: The Way Of Water. But his journey really started 40 years ago, when a little film called The Terminator came out of almost nowhere and propelled itself straight into the public imagination. It’s easy to see why. Brain-melting time-travel plotting. Iconic lines of dialogue (“Come with me if you want to live!”). Punchy action with gnarly kills. A sweet and sincere love story at its core. And – perhaps most importantly – Arnold Schwarzenegger on hulking form as the titular killing machine, an instant cinematic icon whose power has never diminished. It’s a film that began a four-decade journey for Hollywood’s most successful director.

Now, in a major new interview, Cameron speaks to Empire in a massive celebration of all things Terminator – going right back to where it all began. “I was just a punk starting out when I directed The Terminator,” he says. “I think I was 29 at the time, and it was my first directing gig.” Though he was fired from Piranha II (on which he technically got his first director credit), “Terminator was my first film,” Cameron clarifies, “and it’s near and dear for that reason.”

While The Terminator became a thing of Hollywood legend, Cameron is clear-eyed on the film these days. “I don’t think of it as some Holy Grail, that’s for sure,” he tells Empire. “I look at it now and there are parts of it that are pretty cringeworthy, and parts of it that are like, ‘Yeah, we did pretty well for the resources we had available.’” Those qualms? “Just the production value, you know?” he elaborates. “I don’t cringe on any of the dialogue, but I have a lower cringe factor than, apparently, a lot of people do around the dialogue that I write.” The box office results speak for themselves. “You know what? Let me see your three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films — then we’ll talk about dialogue effectiveness.” Nay-sayers: terminated.

For Cameron, the key to The Terminator’s longevity was the casting of Arnie – not the subtle, skulking killer he first imagined for the role, but the super-muscular robo-tank who helped forge the film into what it became. “I think a lot of filmmakers, especially first-time filmmakers, get very, very stuck in a vision, because of insecurity,” Cameron reflects. “I’m proud of the fact that we weren’t stuck enough to not be able to see how it could work with Arnold, because it wasn’t our vision. Sometimes, when you look back from the vantage point — at this point 40 years — we could have made a great little film from a production-value standpoint, and it would have been nothing if we hadn’t made that one decision that captured the imagination of people.” Hasta la vista, baby.

Read Empire’s major new James Cameron interview – talking the ongoing legacy of The Terminator and its sequels; the thematic preoccupations that have reverberated throughout his career; his changing relationship with the original film; and what the future holds for the franchise – in the November 2024 issue, on sale Thursday 26 September. Pre-order a copy online here.