We can now reveal that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been offering his assistance to 3D CGI models of his current self (The Guardian) and his younger 1984 CGI (The Terminator) in Terminator Genisys. He has been assisting with 3D scans of himself and motion tracking/lip synching. This means that young CGI Arnold will deliver lines previously delivered in the 1984 movie but present day Arnold’s lips will be the ones doing the talking… We presume lines like “nothing clean right” and “your clothes give them to me” will be delivered by ‘The Terminator’ before ‘The Guardian’ turns up to tell ‘young Arnold’ “you won’t be needing any clothes”.
It’s great that Arnold is offering this level of assistance and support, this is also the same level of assistance he was originally supposed to offer in 2009’s Terminator salvation but didn’t due to the studio having not agreed to film in California (a term that was dictated by Mr Schwarzenegger in the end of his run as Governor of California) to bring attention to tourism and movie work/jobs to the state; the studio was in a level of financial difficulty and under pressure from hedge fund Pacificor- which inevitably resulted in bankruptcy preventing the Salvation trilogy from transpiring.
Very much like Terminator Salvation; scans of casts taken at the Stan Winston studio (in 1984) were used for Arnold’s CGI 1984 face and also a body double Brett Azar has been utilized, while with Terminator Salvation Roland Kickinger did the role of body double.
In Terminator Salvation it wasn’t very long before Arnold’s exterior was ‘blown away’ to have a CGI Terminator Endoskeleton fulfil the rest of the sequences in the fight scenes with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) and John Connor (christian Bale), a young Schwarzenegger T-800 was meant to retain Arnold’s appearance (and perhaps even talk) in the fight that went into the Terminator factory where T-700 Endoskeletons were being mass-produced.
Overall, we would ask fans not to compare the digital cameo in Terminator Salvation to the ones we will see in Terminator Genisys, as to compare scenes that are not balanced in fairness and quality on a production level is unfair. While Genisys will no doubt be an improvement (from what we have seen) to what was seen in Salvation- Arnold did not support his digital appearance in the same way even though he had greenlit the appearance and even made a trip to the set to meet christian Bale and to talk about the digital cameo.
One thing is for sure; if Mr. Schwarzenegger had supported/participated in Salvation’s Digital sequence in the same way that he is participating in the Genisys’ scenes- the fans would have had a much better sequence in Salvation. Overall; it just feels like we shouldn’t have had that sequence in the movie (Salvation) without that level of support from Arnold. It would have made more sense for him to not be in that movie at all. So, it seems that the quality of the Arnold CGI in Terminator Salvation was let down by a failed tourism agreement and a lack of participation.
Finally we will reveal that there will be plenty of CGI Endoskeleton action in both future and other timelines! We may tease more about this in the lead up the movies release!