Trailers for films have become such an important part of the process of creating films that their production can be almost as large as the film itself. But trailers have a fine line, because they need to tell people enough about the film to interest them, but at the same time not give away too much to spoil the film. But sometimes films deliberately give out their important twists, which apparently was the plan of one of the best science fiction films of all time, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In the original Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays an unstoppable killing machine sent from the future to kill someone.
When the sequel opens, it seems that a similar dynamic is created. Arnold is presented as a potential villain, and only when two Terminators from the future meet face to face, we learn that the machine, which was once a villain, has now become a hero. However, this would be a surprise only for those who have never seen the trailer for the film. In an interview with James Cameron from Empire, the director admits that he fully agreed to reveal the unexpected twist, because he felt that this detail sells the film. Cameron explained…
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All of us have had our battles with the Suits, but the case you mention was not a battle. The Carolco guys, Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna, were good partners with me on T2, and I led the charge on marketing, including showing Arnold as the good guy. It wasn’t a Sixth Sense kind of twist that’s revealed only at the end of the film. He’s revealed as the Protector at the end of Act One. And I always feel you lead with your strongest story element in selling a movie. I believed our
potential audience would be more attracted to seeing how the most badass killing machine could become a hero than they would be to just another kill-fest in the same vein as the first film. Sequels have to strike a delicate balance between honoring the most loved elements from the first film, but also promising to really shake things up and turn them upside down. Our marketing campaign for T2 was exactly that promise, and it worked.
It was never hidden in the lead-up to the release of T2 that Arnold, who was largely unknown when the first Terminator was released but was a major action star by the time of the sequel, would be the good guy the second time around. But that made the fact that the movie treated it like a twist seems strange. And it almost certainly would have been a cool twist for an audience to experience in the theater if the detail had been left behind the curtain.
Of course, you can imagine a situation when James Cameron as a director would have wanted this twist to remain hidden, but the studio managers decided that they needed this detail in order to sell the film better.
Cameron, of course, had his share of battles with studios. But James Cameron is a director who also perfectly understands the commercial aspects of Hollywood.
It is difficult to argue with the fact that James Cameron made the wrong choice. “Terminator 2” had a huge success at the box office, which today looks small, because the director made so many films that were even bigger, and is considered one of the best films of the 90s. Perhaps the revelation of unexpected twists in the trailers of “Terminator 2” and the fact that it did not harm the success of the film is one of the reasons why it was decided to reveal the unexpected twist in “Terminator”. Genisys, although it didn’t work very well.