Almost 40 years after The Terminator came out, producer Gale Anne Hurd has finally revealed to fans why James Cameron decided to remove a crucial scene from the film.
The scene in question helped explain how Cyberdyne Systems came into possession of the microchip that is used in Terminators, according to Variety. Some felt that the deleted scene would have provided some much-needed context.
But according to Hurd, the scene was “ruined” by the film’s financier and his friends.
“#TheTerminator financier John Daly’s #HemdaleFilms had an output deal with #OrionPictures but hadn’t yet made a hit (that changed with our film and #Platoon). They insisted we use financier friends not actors in this scene, which ruined it for us,” she claimed in a tweet.
She also included a link to the deleted scene.
In a later tweet, Hurd explained that the financier’s friends were not cast to “save money.”
“They were paid as actors, via the #TaftHartley act. I think he insisted they be in the film because the financiers were promised a return on their investment and had yet to receive one. Daly never believed the film would be a success,” she claimed.
But Hurd seemingly confirmed in a later tweet that the scene had been removed because of the quality of their acting when someone pointed out that the financier’s friends’ performances seemed “fine.”
“Jim (thankfully) was never satisfied with ‘just ok’, even back then!” she said in response.
With or without the scene, The Terminator has remained a sci-fi classic. Cameron has previously pointed to it as his original warning against AI, which has recently become a serious concern in Hollywood for both WGA and SAG-AFTRA.
“You got to follow the money,” he said earlier this year. “Who’s building these things? They’re either building it to dominate marketing shares, so you’re teaching it greed, or you’re building it for defensive purposes, so you’re teaching it paranoia. I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger.”
“I warned you guys in 1984!” he claimed. “And you didn’t listen.”
Scroll up to check out the important scene that Cameron removed from The Terminator.