When Terminator: Dark Fate arrived in theaters in 2019, it did not make the splash that studio execs had been hoping for. The big-budget film, which serves as a legacy sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day by ignoring all of the other installments, brought back both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton with a special appearance from Edward Furlong. Despite all of this, Dark Fate barely managed to crack $261 million at the worldwide box office, and this was still in pre-pandemic times. This performance resulted in more than $120 million lost, given the high production cost.

In a new interview with THR, Gabriel Luna — who played an advanced Terminator in the film — looked back upon Terminator: Dark Fate and how the sequel didn’t do as well as expected. He wonders if the time between Terminator movies played into that, as he feels that film itself is great given the action and performances in the sequel.

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At the end of the day, the box office numbers aren’t what matters most to Luna as a “hired hand” on the project. He can only speak to the film itself and the work he put in along with director Tim Miller and his co-stars, feeling “extremely proud” of Terminator: Dark Fate. As Luna, who can now be seen in HBO’s hit series The Last of Us, puts it:

What Went Wrong With Terminator: Dark Fate?

     Paramount

Last month, producer James Cameron also shared his thoughts on Terminator: Dark Fate bombing at the box office. He blamed his own insistence on making sure Arnold Schwarzenegger would be back, feeling that coupling this with Linda Hamilton’s return made the sequel feel too dated.

“All of a sudden it wasn’t your Terminator movie, it wasn’t even your dad’s Terminator movie, it was your granddad’s Terminator movie,” Cameron told Deadline.

That followed comments from director Tim Miller who’d also told Deadline that he was “wrong” to make the film, figuring that perhaps that franchise has maybe given all that it can in its current form.

“Terminator’s an interesting movie to explore, but maybe we’ve explored it enough,” he said.