James Cameron Made One Change To Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D
When Terminator 2: Judgment Day returns to theaters in 3D, it'll be exactly the same cut of the movie that audiences saw in 1991, only in 4K 3D. However, director James Cameron told Entertainment Weekly that did fix one thing that nagged at him for more than two decades.
"There are no new scenes, nothing's been shortened or extended," says the filmmaker. "But there's one shot that always bothered me in the film, where the tow truck crashes down into the drainage canal and its windshields pop out, and then in the next shot the windshields are back in. So we digitally put the windshields back in place. That's the only fix!"
Cameron said he didn't want to tinker with the narrative at all or add anything new to the special effects, a la George Lucas. But he justified making the change because he said he would've done it if it was possible back in 1991.
"Frankly, if I could have done it at the time, I would have," he said. "That's kind of how I decide whether I'm going to manipulate a film or not. If the technology had existed at the time, I would have fixed that shot."
In a separate piece by The Hollywood Reporter, T2 screenwriter William Wisher recalls that he and Cameron had an exceptionally easy time writing the movie back in the '90s. The pair sat in a room at Cameron's home with one computer and took turns typing and churned out a treatment of about 40 or 50 pages, then each worked on half of the script alone.
"We fleshed it out, then we traded halves and went over the other one and then we put it all together," Wisher said. After another day or two, it was finished. "Jim hit print and printed the script, threw it in a briefcase, and said, 'Okay, car is coming for me in an hour. I got to get to Cannes.' He was going to hand it to Arnold [Schwarzenegger]."
Meanwhile, Cameron is under fire this week after he made derogatory comments about Wonder Woman. "All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood's been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided," he said. "She's an objectified icon, and it's just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I'm not saying I didn't like the movie but, to me, it's a step backwards."
But Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins had a few things to say about that.
While we wait to see if anything else comes of this, Terminator 2: 3D hits AMC Theatres today (Aug. 25) and Cameron said he'll probably help relaunch the franchise with future movies.