A new Terminator movie is going to be made soon, we just don’t know when it’ll arrive. Deadpool director Tim Miller is onboard to direct and James Cameron is returning to his franchise as the creative mind behind the story, and he’s been exploring new storylines already, including diving into the history of why every T-800 looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In a Q&A, Cameron told The Arnold Fans that the T-800 is returning for Terminator 6 and that the story may very well explore why the T-800 line is based on the one specific human look.
Here are Cameron’s full statement on the subject:
Yeah, you got to ask yourself, ‘Why did they make these characters look and sound like Arnold? There has to be a reason. So yeah, it has flashed through my mind that there has to have been a prototype. There has to have been a guy who’s DNA was harvested from – that they grew the organic outter layer that they grew the Terminator from…and that presumably was a real person at some point. Now, the question is, did that person have some sort of meaning to Skynet on WHY they chose that one (Arnold)? Or was it like a whole rack of Terminators and the one that happened to be the Arnold model just happened to be closest to the door going out to the time displacement center and all the others looked different? I’ve asked myself these questions but it’s never been resolved…so stay tuned!”
Sounds like Cameron has given the T-800s history a long thought. There’s a lot that can be developed from that idea of the T-800’s development included somebody very important, which is why they kept using his likeness.
This may or may not also provide some insight into when exactly Terminator 6 will take place. It might finally connect the original movie with future events that led to the T-800 going back in time (along with Kyle Reese) to kill Sarah Connor. These events have been touched upon in later Terminator movies, but the storyline will probably get reimagined with Cameron’s ideas.
Funnily enough, the story of why the T-800 looks the way he does has been briefly explored. A deleted scene for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines showed a certain Sergeant Candy volunteer to use his body as the prototype for the the T-800. He has a southern accent but one of the leaders doesn’t particularly like it, when another official states, “we can fix it,” with his voice sounding an awful lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. If you haven’t seen it you should, it’s quite comical.
