Linda Hamilton reveals the difficult time she had saying the iconic line “I’ll be back” during filming of Terminator: Dark Fate. The latest Terminator film sees Hamilton returning as the original bad-ass female action hero Sarah Connor after being mostly absent from the franchise since 1992’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (she did make a voice only appearance in Terminator Salvation, though most people tend to forget this).
Indeed, Hamilton had not only disappeared from the Terminator franchise in recent years, she had left acting entirely and was quite enjoying her life away from the spotlight. But, producer James Cameron managed to woo her back to reprise her most iconic role in Dark Fate, which sees Connor once again grabbing her weapons and going to war against machines sent back from the future. This time, Connor teams with fellow female warriors Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes) and Grace (Mackenzie Davis), the latter of whom is a human/cyborg hybrid, to do battle with a brand new Rev-9 model Terminator (Gabriel Luna) that is capable of causing twice the mayhem by dividing itself into two separate autonomous killing machines. And of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger is also back as the T-800, who has been living among humans in the guise of a grizzled old man named Carl.
For Hamilton, returning to Terminator after all these years proved to be a difficult task, and perhaps the hardest part of that task involved reading the most iconic line in the entire Terminator franchise. Just saying the words “I’ll be back” shouldn’t have been that hard seemingly, but Hamilton explained to Entertainment Tonight (via CinemaBlend) why it caused her so much difficulty that she was forced to do multiple takes:
You can’t say it without sounding like him. It’s at the end of a very intense action scene and it’s weapons and it’s triple digit heat, and you’re just giving it everything and then every time I would finish with that line, I would look at [director] Tim [Miller] and he would go, ‘Sounds like Arnold. Let’s do it again.’
The line “I’ll be back” was of course first uttered by Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator, and became so recognizable that Cameron brought it back for Judgment Day. Later Terminator movies also recycled the line, trying to put different twists on it, to the point where it arguably became ruined. Giving the line to Hamilton’s Sarah Connor in Dark Fate is seemingly a good way to freshen things up again, while signaling Connor’s central place in the story, but clearly the iconic nature of the line caused Hamilton some major problems during shooting.
Ultimately, Hamilton was able to get the “I’ll be back” line out without sounding like she was doing a bad Schwarzenegger impression. Hamilton’s reading of the line was even used in the Terminator: Dark Fate trailer, and got the huge reaction Cameron and company were going for. Of course, it may have been cooler to leave the line out of the movie altogether and not even bother with such obvious nods to previous films in the franchise, but that is not the way of things in Hollywood where nostalgic references and fan-pleasing Easter eggs are all the rage. It sounds like Hamilton would have preferred to not go back to “I’ll be back,” but things worked out in the end.
Key Release Dates
Terminator: Dark Fate
Release Date:2019-11-01
