James Cameron cut important scene from sci-fi masterpiece – because it was filmed with paid friends (!) and was way too bad

JamesCameron is known to almost everyone today with the sci-fi epic of the Avatar films. But he already had his first breakthrough in the science fiction genre in 1984 terminator, who inspired an entire franchise with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right from the start, the director didn’t put up with anything to deliver the best possible film – and radically threw out a scene in which “actors” played too badly for him.

Sci-fi masterpiece Terminator: James Cameron actually cut important scenes because of unwanted actors

The Terminator tells the story of a time-traveling killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that hunts down the future savior’s mother (Linda Hamilton) in the past. Linda Hamilton was initially unconvinced by Schwarzenegger. But even the investors didn’t fully believe in the success of the film.

As Terminator producer Gale Anne Hurd recently disclosed, the sci-fi film was created through an “output deal” between producer John Daly and Orion Pictures. That means the then-unknown small filmmaker James Cameron retained creative control, but Orion got exclusive distribution rights to the contractor’s work. Over and beyond the financiers wanted to have personal friends in the film. Hurd stated:

They insisted To place non-actor financier friends in these sceneswhich ruined it for us. […] I believe [Produzent John] Daly insisted because the lenders had been promised a return on their investment that they had not yet seen. Daly never believed the film [Terminator] would be a success.

But James Cameron, as the sci-fi director of Terminator, had different ideas. Bad enough that still paid untrained performers as full-fledged actors became, they played badly too. As a result, her scenes ended up being completely axed by the eventual Avatar filmmaker. Or as Hurd puts it:

Jim [James Cameron] was luckily never satisfied if something was ‘just okay’. Even back then. The cut Terminator scene was actually important to understanding the sci-fi film deleted scene is actually quite significant in the context of the film was. She played at the heart of Cyberdyne Systems, the company that would create Skynet in the future. So the ultimate antagonist of the Terminator films, who was supposed to lead the human world to its downfall with artificially intelligent killer robots like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800.

You can watch the deleted Terminator scene here

The deleted Terminator scene at the end of the film would have shown like Cyberdyne came into possession of the technological chip in the first place, which was then used in the Terminator machines. But instead of witnessing the beginning of the future (with the time paradox of a technology left behind from the future), the sequence just flew out.

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