Terminator legend Linda Hamilton, spoke to Collider about Terminator: Dark Fate, the complexity of the script, the previs and how the 6th (3rd true) installment to the Terminator franchise is a “return to form”.
COLLIDER TERMINATOR: DARK FATE INTERVIEW (TRANSCRIBED BY THETERMINATORFANS.COM)
Collider: I’m so excited to see this and I have to say, on camera, I can’t believe I’m talking to you about a Terminator movie.
“Right? Me either.”
Linda Hamilton
Collider: Can you talk about the fact that this [Dark Fate] is not taking place after the other sequels; this is right after Terminator 2… ?
“Right. Well we wanted to keep the storyline clear. Obviously with time travel it can be interrupted at any point and then just shot off in so many different directions – as a matter of fact I think I died of leukemia but now I’m not dead. So we just kept it trim and took it from the second story onward.”
Linda Hamilton
Collider: What was it about the script – how did you get sold on coming back, was it something you wanted to do, or was it sort of like the script came to you and you were like ‘oh, this is really good’?
“The script hadn’t been written yet so it was really more of a concept, the storyline was explained to me; so it was a leap of faith because there wasn’t really a script yet and it took me a number of weeks to decide to do it because I just had to think did I really want to go back there. You know I kept saying I was retiring a champion after the second one and then to come back and be compared to myself 27 years before – that’s always a winning propostion isn’t it? But in the end, knowing that there was just a world of experience that I could add and stack into this character and create somebody that’s even that much more authentic.”
Linda Hamilton
Collider: So excited to see Tim Miller – this is his first film since Deadpool; I know that he’s going to deliver some incredible action. What was it like working with him, to craft the action, to bring this world to life?
“He’s a genius and there was something called a “previs” where he would have to actually animate the action sequences for us to understand what the hell he was talking about. So you wouldn’t believe how many times I would be like ‘ahhh let me see the previs again! Because he’s over there and I’m doing what?’. I mean it was so complex um, that I mean I’ve never read a script and gone ‘huh?!’, like it was so complex where the characters are and who’s fighting off who and what’s happening with the… you know I can’t give it away but… truly I’ve never done a film where I couldn’t understand what he [Miller] was seeing and what he was trying to invent. So we had to rely on the previs a lot and just basically had our heads together all the time to make sure that we were all on the same page.”
Linda Hamilton
Collider: Terminator 2’s one of my all-time-favorite films, the action, the visual effects, everything about that movie pushed the boundary forward for the cinematic… for what everyone did; do you feel like this film does something similar in terms of the action, in terms of the story, for the Terminator franchise?
“I think definitely we have a good chance, I haven’t seen it but in terms of narrowing down to characters again that you really care about as opposed to just emptying the kitchen sink and having so many different versions of Terminators and so many different characters without a really cohesive story that keeps you interested. I think that we’ve returned to form, that way, and that the action – you know it’s Tim Miller, it’s going to be fantastic. So our job was really… obviously to satisfy Tim but to also, like, reinvent the franchise as a platform for characters that you care about and simpler storylines, so that it grabs the attention.”
Linda Hamilton