Linda Hamilton on all those Terminator movies she wasn't in: "They're very forgettable, aren't they?"
Never one to shy away from dropping some dark, apocalyptic truths on the people who need to hear them, Linda Hamilton tossed some perfectly aimed shade at the non-Linda Hamilton-containing bits of the Terminator franchise today. The actress was at a CinemaCon event promoting the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate—which James Cameron had to apparently pretty much beg her to come back for—when she was asked about the three Terminator movies she didn’t happen to appear in, Rise Of The Machines, Salvation, and 2017's Genisys. “They’re very forgettable, aren’t they?” she responded, savaging the three movies in much the same way Sarah Connor casually kicked the shit out of that awful, creepy mental institution guard in T2, right before she does that giddy little skip that’s permanently burnt itself into our action hero-loving minds.
Hamilton went on, continuing to blast the series with the sort of deadly accuracy that can only come from being trained by the guy who was trained by the son who you yourself trained, because time travel: “You start something and you’re invested in the franchise, but somehow the characters that you care about weren’t there. Too many people, too many story points. So I think we’ve done a good job of narrowing down the focus again so it will echo the first two films.”
Dark Fate—which is being directed by Deadpool’s Tim Miller, under Cameron’s watchful eye—is billing itself as a direct sequel to 1991's Judgment Day. That includes bringing back Hamilton as regular-person-turned-one-woman-army Connor; talking about the process of signing back on for the film, Hamilton was blunt about struggling with the decision: “I gave it probably six weeks of intense thinking and consideration before deciding to do it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I didn’t want it to look like a shameless money grab,” she said. “I am living this quiet, lovely life that doesn’t involve being a celebrity, and you really have to think, do I really want to trade that in again for another 15 minutes?”