Director James Cameron's classic sci-fi epic Terminator 2: Judgment Day is returning to theaters August 25th in an immersive 3D conversion overseen by Cameron himself. In anticipation of that release, I spoke with actor Joe Morton, who portrayed Skynet inventor Dr. Miles Dyson, about his memories of making T2, working with Cameron, and where the franchise went after Cameron parted ways with it. (Also be sure to check out what Morton also told me about playing Cyborg's dad in Justice League.)
Be mindful of SPOILERS ahead for Terminator 2: Judgment Day ...
IGN: It must be a little strange for you to do interviews on a movie that you made twenty-five years ago. Probably back in the day, you never would have thought that you'd still be doing press for it this many years later, huh?
Joe Morton: I agree with you, I'm really sure I didn't think I'd be doing press on Terminator 2 twenty-five years later. However, Terminator – it doesn't feel like revisiting anything in a way, because Terminator never really seemed to really go away. It seems to be on television a lot. Everywhere I go, someone stops me and says, oh, you're that guy from Terminator 2. So, it's something that has, you know, been around me since the movie came out.
IGN: Do you have a lot of people blaming you for the coming apocalypse or something? Because you invented Skynet?
Morton: Actually, most people view it the other way around, that because I decided to, you know, blow up Skynet, that I actually am responsible for saving the world.
IGN: There you go! See, now that's the cup half full way of looking at it all! What are your most vivid memories of making that picture?
Morton: Well, there's lots of things, I suppose. I mean, the big one is, the day that we were shooting my death scene. And that's one of the reasons why I think this movie has sort of always hung around me, which is that, people always comment on that particular scene. And the day that we did it, first of all James allowed me to do the stunt myself, which was great. And then, when we're actually shooting the actual death, we couldn't come up with anything that we really liked. And I told him that I had been in a car accident a year or so beforehand, and my lungs had collapsed. Since the character had just been shot in the chest, I assumed his lungs were collapsing, and showed him how I was breathing. At which point, we both got excited about the idea, he set up the lights, and et cetera, et cetera, and we shot the scene. But before we finished that scene, he was halfway through, he hadn't really quite finished the end, he decided he wanted to simply take a look – you remember, right after this scene, Linda sort of scoots around to the other side of the laboratory, and the SWAT team blows out all the windows. Well, before we brought out the camera to shoot any of that stuff, James wanted to see those windows blown out, simply so he could see what it looked like, in order to shoot it. And that to me was a big deal. I had just come from doing Brother from Another Planet, with maybe $360,000, not $360,000,000. So that was a big deal to me.
IGN: It's funny you bring that up, because I had forgotten until I started kind of brushing up again on this movie. It was the most expensive movie made at that time, right? Up until that time, wasn't it?
Morton: I believe so. If not the most expensive, certainly one of the most expensive.
IGN: Cameron seems like he is one of those guys that is not daunted by anything as a filmmaker. Were you aware, or was there any sort of pressure, making the movie? What it was like to be on the set of, at that point in time, the most expensive movie?
Morton: Well, I mean, I think I looked at it as a massive undertaking, because as I say, I was used to something much smaller. So to me, all of these trucks and all of these trailers and these large sets, he even gave me – James gave me a video of people who were working with artificial intelligence so that I could get into the mindset of the science of what it was to create artificial intelligence. So, there was money being spent in a way that I had never been around before. So the whole thing to me was enormous. I just thought this was – wow.
IGN: Just walking from the food truck to your trailer must have been like, well, there's about six John Sayles movies right there that could have been made.
Morton: Exactly, exactly. Exactly.
IGN: Do you think anything scares or daunts James Cameron as a filmmaker?
Morton: My idea of who James is, my impression of who he is, I think all that yelling and screaming, all the stuff he has a reputation for doing, comes because there is so much pressure. I think that it's – you know, if you're doing a movie that's costing you millions and millions and millions of dollars, and there's a so-called schedule and budget that you're supposed to not go beyond, but you're trying to make this movie in terms of you vision, et cetera, et cetera. You now, I don't care how calm, cool, and collected you are, it's going to get to you on some level. I think the way he expresses it is, as someone once said to me who sort of was on the end of one of his tirades, is he's done every job on that floor, so he knows exactly how that job should be done. And his impatience when it's done too slowly, or it's done sloppily, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, one of the other things that we were doing while we were shooting the film is, he was experimenting with some new kind of steady-cam, that he was kind of playing with because he was working with the guys who build the steady-cam cameras. So, I mean, I think there's a constant kind of, you know – I guess, in a way – this is gonna sound odd. In a way it's kind of like having an illness, in that some days are better than others. And I think that James is the same way. That the illness of having to make this movie, with all the money and all the pressure, there were some days that were better than others.
IGN: Terminator 2 has really aged very well, especially the visual effects. What do you attribute that to? I mean, I have my own personal theory that I think it's because people remember the CG effects and how groundbreaking they were, but if you actually watch the movie, there's so many practical effects, and I think there is something to be said for giving you just enough of something real that you buy the rest of it then, when you do see it.
Morton: Oh, I agree. I mean, I think that that's what he was he was brilliant at doing in that movie, was, as you said, creating certain effects that were digital, and other effects that were practical. I mean, it was just simple things, like – well, simple. That whole sequence where the helicopter is chasing the truck, and then one truck is chasing the other, and then it slams into the steel melting place. And that whole sequence is just brilliant. I also found out that no one else had any cable for a long time, because we apparently rented all the cables like that five mile road. But yeah, I think that one of the things James probably learned from the original Terminator was that, you know, proper use of digital equipment alongside practical effects really, really works. Because the beauty of the first film is really the very end of the film, when the skeleton sort of arises.
IGN: The franchise has struggled in the twenty-five years since James Cameron walked away from it. Despite trying to reboot itself, and even bringing back Arnold a couple of times. Why do you think that is?
Morton: I mean, I think it's just a lack of vision. I think that what happens sometimes is, you can't necessarily make a new hot dog, all you can do is figure out a better way to dress it up. And I think the original idea of mankind versus the machinery that he has wrought upon himself is fully sort of realized in Terminator 2. And to go beyond that, you have to come up with something beyond that. And I don't think any of the other sequels beyond Terminator 2 ever really accomplished that, they kind of just retold the story in some way, using sort of the same ideas, but with different characters. And even the one where they kind of bring John, you know, back, again, is just kind of a revamping of the original idea, and I think that has its limitations. And that the only way to really sort of do a Terminator movie at this point would be to come up with whatever you think the next step would be, if mankind were to find himself in conflict with machinery that he's built.
IGN: Cameron will get the rights back to the entire franchise in about a year and a half, in 2019. And he is kicking around doing a new trilogy around it, producing it. But he was saying that, even for him, how do you take this in a new direction when, in the era of drones and AI actually being a thing, and we're getting closer to giving machinery an actual ability to have a kill function, for it to decide, do I kill this or do I just disarm it? It's very tough to compete with reality at this point. What are your thoughts on that?
Morton: Oh, I completely agree. I mean, I think that, you know, that's what I meant before. You have to sort of go and pull beyond what was already accomplished in the first two films. And figure out, so, where are we left? I mean, it's beyond – you know, it is what he said. It's drones, and it's robotics, and it's – you know, I mean, we have robots who are building our cars for us. I mean, our telephones are amazing devices. So, yeah, I think that whatever the next step is, I think maybe the next step is for us to sort of turn around and do stuff that is more quote-unquote human, understanding what we're doing to ourselves in terms of the artificiality.
James Cameron's new 3D conversion of Terminator 2: Judgment Day hits theaters August 25.
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