This article originally appeared onDen of Geek UK.

Ad content continues below

Its amazing how modern it still looks.

Its a lovely, clean restoration theyve done on this.

It had a lot of skilled people working on it!

Well, Im astonished.

3D conversions Im not usually all that crazy about, but I think this one works.

So how did you first get involved with T2 back in 1990?

I understand you were working at Carolco at the time, as a producer.

I was, yes.

Hed seen it, and he was impressed by it.

So I worked with [Wayne Lock?]

I thought, Why does a guy like Jim Cameron want to meet me?

I mean, Id been producing this little TV thing!

As you know, that turned out to be a ridiculous concept!

[Laughs]

So thats interesting.

He originally had in mind a really low budget then?

Going into it, he said he really wanted to.

Just to give you an example of how far off the mark he was!

Dennis Muren at ILM had been working conceptually.

So its not like I went into it blindly.

I think we were using every mainframe in northern California when we were doing the film!

You mentioned the secrecy surrounding the script, which was unusual at the time.

Yes, I think thats part of it.

Although it was pre-social media, there were always leaks of scripts.

People werent really even using emails, so all this stuff had to be physically produced for every iteration.

Were you at Cannes when the film was announced?

No, I was not.

But it was family and friends it was people who worked at the ranch.

It gave us a good indication.

Ive rarely been in a room where there was that much enthusiasm.

People were stamping their feet and clapping for ten or 15 minutes.

Do you think it took a studio like Carolco to make this film?

Because I think Cameron himself said at the time that no other studio in Hollywood would dare touch it.

I dont think any other studio would have.

Ive got to say that Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar really put their money where their mouth is.

It was very, very difficult, and very tense.

I guess its worth it.

But how did you ever spend this amount of money?

And Jim just said, as quick as you like, Oh, I dont know.

[Laughs] As if he had nothing to do with anything!

It was pretty funny.

Join Amazon Prime Start Free Trial Now

You made the effects first, didnt you.

You front-loaded the digital effects.

Yes, we had to.

Again, its about the throughput time.

On no film can you predict exactly where you gonna need to change your original concept.

As I say, I think we had every mainframe in northern California working to render this down.

-There mustve been a certain amount of relief when you saw those digital effects rendered.

It was so ahead of its time, you werent even sure whether theyd work or not.

Oh thats absolutely correct.

Fortunately, they worked.

And believe me, we were rendering these effects up until maybe two days before.

Wed get up in the wee hours to see another timing.

Before that, on the shoot itself, you had the release date to meet, too.

Youre competing with other studios products for those dates, and youve made certain commitments.

Those are monetary commitments as well.

The pressure was tremendous, literally from the first day.

I dont know if thats true or not.

[Chuckles] Yes!

Throughout the production, we tried to do things… We came up with lots and lots of crazy t-shirts yes, many of them with sayings of Jims.

at the steel mill set early the next morning on January 1st.

It was that kind of atmosphere.

Could you shed some light on who came up with that?

Well, Jim really came up with that.

Its more hopeful in a way, although grim.

Was it in one of the early test screenings that you realised it had to change?

We would screen the film just for ourselves throughout post, as effects came in for example.

And youd watch dailies every single day on the film.

Is it correct that Billy Idol was originally considered as the T-1000?

Yeah, yeah he was.

Mali Finn was an extraordinary casting director.

She passed away a few years ago.

She had marvellous instincts.

He had developed some ideas about how he would behave as the T-1000, with those darting eyes.

He really came in with the whole character.

So it wasnt just his physicality it was his technique.

He was almost like a snake or something.

Its difficult to imagine anyone else in that role now.

Stephanie Austin, thank you very much.

The new, restoredTerminator 2: Judgment Dayis out now on 2D and 3D Blu-ray.