A huge action set-piece featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character is currently undergoing negotiations between studios and respective countries. While Spain is a fallback location for a plane crash sequence; it looks like they wish to film this particular scene in Schwarzenegger’s homeland- Austria. The last time Arnold was in Styria he was awarded with an honorary ring of the country.
Schwarzenegger is known for making filming location requests for his movies and technically refused to star in Terminator Salvation due to the studios not meeting his requests of filming his elongated cameo in California. Schwarzenegger wanting to bring Austria in on some Terminator action doesn’t really come left-field and it’s all good press for ‘his’ machine if this does come to pass.
The scene itself will apparently require a crew of 400 people and the primary desired location to shoot is a military airbase Zeltweg and other shoots for additional shots in Murtal a district in the state of Styria, Austria.
meinbezirk.at has a report on the current set scouting by the production team of Terminator (2019) aka Terminator 6 (translated below).
Airplane scene
On the one hand Schwarzenegger will play a role in the continuation of the cult film and on the other hand parts of it could be shot in the Murtal. The air base Hinterstoisser in Zeltweg is in discussion as a location for a plane crash scene. The negotiations are running in the background, according to reports was already a production team in the Murtal to visit the military airport.
negotiations
The project is not yet fixed, an airport in Zaragoza (Spain) is the second option in the conversation. The ball is now in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Defense, there you have to deal with the issue and negotiate various permits and framework conditions. An official information about it is currently not available.
shooting
Nevertheless, the planning for the potential commitment is already in full swing. With a surcharge for Zeltweg it would already be so far in the summer. The shooting with a crew of around 400 Arnold Schwarzenegger would take place sometime around the end of July and early August and take about two weeks. A decision is expected in the coming days.
In the original proposed Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines script (starring Linda Hamilton) fans would have seen the T-X take control of a plane (as the T-X could control other machines) and tried to bring it hurtling towards Sarah and John Connor, will this be something similar?
For a movie that started out wanting to keep costs down and with storytelling at its heart; it so far sounds like costs are ramping up, hopefully this will not result in investors tainting the project with PG-13 expectations and cash-in nonsense. We are tolerating things thus far to give this movie a fair and solid chance to get things right, to be open-minded and hopeful.
Is a plane crash sequence exciting? It really depends how practical it will be or if Arnold is going to be hanging on to the wing of an anti-aliased-to-the-hilt CGI Boeing Commercial Airplane like he’s superman again… is the reality just a half constructed plane on hydraulic mounts tilting up and down in front of green screen with a wind machine blasting Arnold’s jowls around like he’s a dog with its head out of car window at full speed? Is the other option smashing down a plane for real (or a miniature) and for them to do something really out there and spectacular…?
Is this really the “Real T3” or just Terminator Genisys Mark II? This doesn’t sound like the gritty low-budget horror sci-fi movie most fans wanted this to be.
Our opinion? Get rid of the plane sequence and do something more realistic instead and make this the first Skydance movie to not have some plane/falling through the sky easter egg before it just becomes an eye roll gimmick moment in every Skydance movie. You either want the next Terminator movie to be over the top and extreme or you want it to be really grounded in reality and this plane business doesn’t fit the last sentiment. Maybe we are wrong but it just feels too predictable… are we just filming a sequence in Austria for the sake of it, or is it important to the story and necessary? A freight train has previously been mentioned, would it not be cooler to do a great big chase sequence on that instead and smash that off the tracks with miniatures and pyrotechnics, or FOR REAL?