Judgment Day is behind us, but the threat of Skynet still hangs heavy in the air as "Fast Five" director Justin Lin and original star Arnold Schwarzenegger join forces for "Terminator 5."
"I've talked to Arnold and I feel like there's a take that I'm excited about, a 'Terminator' movie there that I've always wanted to see and I still haven't seen," Lin told MTV News in an exclusive interview about the new "Terminator" outing. A lot has been reported about Lin and Schwarzenegger's approach to the post-apocalyptic action series, but the "Fast Five" director insisted that recent buzz about the franchise's original cast rising against the machines one more time simply isn't true.
"No. I don't know where that came from," he said of that particular report. "Everything has just been between me and Arnold, you know? Just us going out and trying to find the right partners. I have certain elements, but it's never been about, 'Hey, let's bring everybody back!' I just don't process that way. To me, thematically, there are certain things that I want to see in a 'Terminator' movie. A lot of that does draw back to creating this timeline that is an extension, closer tonally to the first and second movies. But to me, it's not as mathematical as, 'Hey, let's get everybody back together and we'll shoot the movie.'"
Lin, who says that his vision of "Terminator" is more in line with James Cameron's original movies than Jonathan Mostow and McG's more recent entries, added that he doesn't feel like he has to adhere to the continuity set forth by "Rise of the Machines" and "Salvation."
"I always feel like what's great about the 'Terminator' franchise is that there's time-travel and there are different timelines to play with," he said. "There are also a lot of gaps from what we love about all of the 'Terminator' movies, so there's a lot of things we can do and play with. To me, all of that, I don't really want to discuss it now. That's part of the fun of developing. But the bigger questions for me are always the characters and the themes. You want to start there. But obviously, answering your question, ['Terminator'] does have that capability, finding fresh ways of going back without destroying other [movies], because you can tell your own stories."
Speaking of timelines, it's not entirely clear whether Lin will focus on "Terminator 5" as his next movie, especially when he has other projects including a "Fast Five" sequel on his plate: "We're talking to different studios, but it has to be the right situation. If it's not right, then I could totally move on and I should move on. Probably in the next three or four weeks, I'll have a very clear picture [of what my next movie will be]."
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