Lance and James Cameron

[Guest WhiteWolf]

I was looking around for a thread that dealt specifically with the realtionship between Lance and director James Cameron because I had found an interesting little piece of Lance trivia and wanted to share it. Surprisingly, no such thread existed, so I'm just going to start one.

Before I do that, I thought I would share this, also:

Neal Stephonson, author of Science Fiction books SNOW CRASH and THE DIAMOND AGE, as well as other not-quite-SF books CRYPTONOMICON and THE BAROQUE CYCLE trilogy, has given a lecture on the identity of science fiction at Gresham college. At one point during the lecture, he compares Lance's portrayal of Bishop in Cameron's movie ALIENS to that of Leanord Nimoy as Spock or Hugo Weaving in the Matrix movies and LORD OF THE RINGS. He describes Lance of being particularly great at conveying an implied intelligence behind the eyes, a character that the audience can immediately understand. If you have about forty minutes (and are interested in SF movies and literature), I suggest you listen to the lecture, and perhaps give his books a try.

Here's the link: https://fora.tv/2008/05/08/Neal_Stephenson_..._Literary_Genre

Anyway, back to Lance and Jim Cameron.

I was watching my Special Edition DVD of THE ABYSS yesterday, and had the optional text commentary going because I "geek out" on things like that, especially for a movie I've enjoyed as much as THE ABYSS.

Sure enough, I came across some Lance Henriksen trivia. Nothing big, really, just interesting. Lance was originally supposed to play a minor role in the film, that of Commodore DeMarco, the senior naval officer who spends the majority of the movie on The Benthic Explorer, the surface ship well above the main action of the movie. He couldn't play the part, however, due to scheduling conflicts. The text didn't offer what it was that Lance was doing instead. I guess I just thought it was interesting, given that there have been a lot of films Lance has done and I've wondered why he bothered, and that there must have been some other things he hasn't done and must have passed on for one reason or another. So I was watching the movie and trying to imagine Lance playing the part, and or course I enjoyed the performance of the other actor much more with Lance's face and grizzly voice wearing the khaki navy uniform and telling Ed Harris about the sunken Nuclear submarine.

Lance and Cameron have had a very interesting working relationship over the years. I remember seeing the interview Lance gave where he said that he was originally supposed to play the part of the killer cyborg in THE TERMINATOR, and thinking how funny it was that Lance had lost a role to Arnold Swarzennegger, given how very different the two actors are.

I also bring it up, because Cameron is in the pre-production process for some super-huge SF film called AVATAR, which he isn't even planning on releasing for two more years or something like that. And every now and then over at SciFi Wire I hear about new actors signing up to play parts in the film. On other James Cameron regular already includes Sigorney Weaver (and rumors about Michael Bhein?). So I was just thinking, oh I don't know, maybe Cameron will find something for Lance to do in the film at some point? Stranger things have happened, I suppose. Or maybe just wishful thinking.

[ethsnafu]

Now this is not all that related to the original post but consider me frugal, I'm all for not creating new topics unless there is an absolute need to do so but as this does discuss Lance's possible casting in Cameron's Terminator I think it's as close to damn it.

Now if like me you are thoroughly confused as to the truth behind this rumor you probably don't know what to conclude. I have legions of interviews with Lance saved to my hardrive and the version of events does differ quite remarkably in some of them. In a few interviews individuals confirm the story and then in others Lance himself believes it to be a rumour but whatever the truth may be the story of Lance almost being the Terminator isn't going to go away any time soon.

Here is a new list of Top Ten Movie Recasts with our man making number 10 in the list. See who we could have had and see who we got in some incredibly memorable roles over the years.

Eth

[Guest teedub]

In several recent interviews, including the one I saw in person, he admits that he was just plain wrong about the Terminator casting. He originally thought it was only a rumor that he was supposed to be the Terminator so he had been denying the story over the years. But he recently did some commentary for another new release of the movie (how many DVDs do we need of this???) and producer Gail Anne Hurd said: "No, Lance, you were *always* supposed to be the Terminator."

So there you go.