Terminator’s Sarah Connor was inspired by another science fiction character

There’s so much to like about 1984’s Terminator that it’s hard to imagine how difficult it was to make. Director James Cameron worked on a shoestring budget under incredible time constraints and was constantly forced to make changes when things went wrong. Still, he created a sci-fi horror classic that does nothing to betray its troubled production. Much of his directorial debut (we’re glossing over his role in Piranha 2: Birth ) simply worked, but for Cameron, without Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor at the center of the film, it wasn’t.

Producer Gale Ann Hurd saved “Terminator” from a happy ending. If some studio executives had their way, the iconic scene that unfolded Cameron’s nightmare vision of a Terminator exoskeleton rising from the fire would have been cut in favor of a final shot of Kyle Reese (Michael Bean) and Sarah Connor embracing. Imagine the legacy of this film without the intense climax that culminates in Sarah’s incredible final line as she smashes Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800: “You’re fired, b****.” I think it’s arguable that The Terminator wouldn’t have been the enduring sci-fi classic that it has become if Sarah hadn’t taken matters into her own hands, defeated the Terminator herself, and started becoming a certified badass.

For Cameron, who has a history of writing powerful female leads, having Sarah act as her own character was an integral part of the story, and it seems he was at least partially inspired by another legendary woman in sci-fi.

There’s a reason Linda Hamilton said no. “Terminator: Dark Fate” tried to tone down Sarah Connor. She understood that the heroine is one of the greatest heroines of all time in the history of cinema, and that to deprive her of strength and toughness would be to completely undermine the character. James Cameron wouldn’t have it any other way either. When he first wrote The Terminator, he was already signed on to write and direct another sci-fi project that would feature the Sarah Connor archetype.

Cameron spoke to Bell ringer about the Terminator story ahead of the film’s 40th anniversary, revealing he already had plans to direct a sequel to Ridley Scott’s seminal 1979 space horror Alien after being drawn to Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. “The only movie I really wanted to make was Aliens,” he said. “It wasn’t even called ‘Aliens’ at the time.” But I already signed up for it before I even started working on The Terminator, and I wrote this script before I started working on The Terminator. of the Alien sequel and his enthusiasm for Ripley’s return to the big screen, he added:

“I was drawn to Ripley. I mean, you know, just the iconic Ripley, which is just, it’s the story of the last girl. It’s a very elevated version of the horror story of the last girl, but it’s done very, very well and with a wonderful cast (…), so I think there are things you do instinctively.”

These instinctive things can be said to create another female sci-fi hero that reflects Ripley’s character.

While James Cameron did not confirm that Sarah Connor was based on Ripley in his Ringer interview, the director spoke of writing The Terminator as a “horror story with the last girl” in much the same way that he saw Alien as an example of that of a specific horror genre. “I wrote this female-centric story,” he said of The Terminator, continuing, “and I think I was making one last horror movie for girls with a tech component.” So it seems fair to assume that some of Cameron’s fascination with Ripley and her story of the “exalted final girl” came through in his Terminator script, and that this is what he was talking about when he said there are things you do instinctively.

Interestingly, Cameron instinctively or not instinctively continued Sarah Connor’s portrayal of Ellen Ripley in 1986’s Aliens and 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In the first, Ripley takes on a much more traditional heroic role, having undergone his baptism of fire in “Alien” and serving as a much more capable figure in the sequel. With “T2,” the exact same goes for Sarah Connor, who breaks out of a mental hospital before assembling an arsenal of weapons to unleash hell on Cyberdyne Systems, creators of the human-destroying artificial intelligence Skynet.

So, in a way, Ridley Scott’s original Alien not only helped give birth to Sarah Connor in The Terminator , we could have done without the flawlessly perfect T2 — which is a good thing, given that Alien was thematically tied to the idea birth and rebirth. It’s a shame chronicle “Terminator”. became so confusing and the movies so terrible after T2. Maybe if we ever get another movie from the saga, it should take some cues from what Ellen Ripley has been doing now. But then what will be needed Sigourney Weaver’s one condition that must be met to get Ripley back for another detour – a revival we’d all certainly like to see.