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The big bad of the Terminator movies is the future - or, at least, a future that's dominated by a killer AI. According to Terminator franchise co-creator James Cameron, though, the future of the Terminator franchise will have to deal with the threat of nostalgia if it will have any kind of future. To put it in other words, he wants to kill off every thing you know and love about the Terminator franchise to make the next installment of the Terminator franchise.

(Sorry, Arnold.)

"This is the moment when you jettison everything that is specific to the last 40 years of Terminator, but you live by those principles," Cameron tells Empire magazine. "You get too inside it, and then you lose a new audience because the new audience care much less about that stuff than you think they do."

Cameron knows that all too well, after returning to co-write and produce 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate which jettisoned the continuity of all the movies & TV shows after 1992's Terminator: Judgement Day, but went back to the nostalgia well to bring back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was planned to kick off a new trilogy of Terminator movies but were contingent (as most things are) on the first one making a profit - which Dark Fate did not.

"That’s the danger, obviously, with Avatar as well, but I think we’ve proven that we have something for new audiences," says Cameron.

What Cameron is proposing, if (or perhaps that should be when) there's a new Terminator movie is that they lose even actor returns, as well as possibly the T-800s, T-1000s, and all of that - unless there's a way to do that that isn't nostalgia-based. But if the Terminator franchise is stripped down, what remains? The threat of AI. If you say that's too topical or too soon, remember that was the root of the first Terminator film.

"You’ve got powerless main characters, essentially, fighting for their lives, who get no support from existing power structures, and have to circumvent them but somehow maintain a moral compass. And then you throw AI into the mix," says Cameron. "Those principles are sound principles for storytelling today, right?”

"So I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator films will not only be possible, but they’ll kick ass. But this is the moment where you jettison all the specific iconography," says Cameron. "It’s more than a plan. That’s what we’re doing. That’s all I’ll say for right now.”

While Cameron doesn't reference the recently released Terminator Zero anime series on Netflix, that seems close to it - although having it feature a T-800 does include that "specific iconography" Cameron says they aim to "jettison."

How to watch the Terminator movies & TV shows in order (release or chronological)