James Cameron is not, as long cinematic experience has it, the easiest man to work with. His demanding, forthright style has been documented time and again, though the results speak for themselves. It might not surprise you to learn, then, that he clashed with director Tim Miller while producing Terminator: Dark Fate.
"I would say many [disagreements],” Cameron tells CinemaBlend. “And the blood is still being scrubbed off the walls from those creative battles. This is a film that was forged in fire. So yeah, but that’s the creative process, right?"
And that continued right through editing. "It wasn’t a slam-dunk at the time," Cameron says of the rough cut. "I felt there were a lot of pathways that were taken that were unnecessary. I’m an editor myself, so I gave notes that were both broad, and very specific. I continued in that process up to about two and a half months ago when we locked picture... I never went to the set. I’ve yet to physically meet the new cast because I never went to the set. But I was very involved in the writing and I was very involved in the cutting of the film. And to me, the cutting is really an extension of the writing."
Miller is not a man to simply roll over and let someone else dictate what to do, even if that someone is James Cameron. According to Cameron, he had a much easier time working in a similar capacity on Alita: Battle Angel with Robert Rodriguez. "My work with Robert on Alita was very different," he admits. "Robert loved the script, loved everything, said, 'I just want to make this movie. I want to make the movie the way you see it.'' I was like, 'No, you got to make it your movie.; I had the reverse experience with Tim, which is Tim wanted to make it his movie. And I’m like, 'Yeah, but I kind of know a little about this world.'' So I had the matter and the anti-matter version of that producurial [sic] experience." For more from Cameron, head to CinemaBlend's site.
The reviews for Dark Fate have been mixed/positive and now comes the big challenge of the box office. As to whether Miller will want to work with Cameron again, that's a question for him to answer.