Five minutes with… Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger
The duo tell us of their joy at being back together; plus we hear from newcomers Mackenzie Davis and Gabriel Luna, who are in awe of their Hollywood costars.
The role of kick-ass action hero Sarah Connor may have made Linda Hamilton a household name, but she was content in putting the Terminator films behind her nearly 30 years ago.
Hamilton first kicked cyborg butt in James Cameron's 1984 blockbuster hit The Terminator as a waitress-turned-warrior who was relentlessly hunted by Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 humanoid machine in a bid to stop her from giving birth to a son. That son would be the future leader of the human resistance against a terrifying AI system that would wipe out the human race.
The novelty of having a strong, powerful female lead in the film - as well as its groundbreaking special effects - made The Terminator a critical hit and launched the careers of both Hamilton and Schwarzenegger.
Hamilton then returned as Sarah Connor alongside Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 in a tougher, more headstrong survivor guise while being chased, once again, by another terminator, an advanced T-1000 model hellbent on killing her son John Connor.
T2 was another blockbuster hit, equalling its predecessor in terms of critical reception and lasting legacy.
Speaking now in a dimly-lit London hotel room with Schwarzenegger beside her - who is still visibly thrilled to be reunited with his on-screen sparring partner after 28 years - Hamilton admits it took "a little bit" of convincing to get her on board for Terminator: Dark Fate.
It was Cameron's involvement as a producer that partly swayed her into coming back, as well as knowing the new film would act as a direct continuation of the events of T2, bypassing follow-up films Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003), Terminator Salvation (2009) and Terminator: Genisys (2015).
"I had the original invite from Jim and took a number of weeks to really figure out if I was, not was up to it... but I always said that I had retired a champion with the first two," Hamilton explains, referring briefly to her exhusband Cameron, to whom she was married briefly in the late 1990s and with whom she has a daughter.
"It was a great character, it was very complete within itself and that was enough for me," she adds.
"I didn't want to come back and have it be diminished returns each time, less and less of Sarah Connor."
"And then there's the tradeoff," she says, noting her private, very non-Hollywood lifestyle.
"Do I really want another 15 minutes? I like my life, you know, normal," she says with a shrug.
"But I thought that I had a big canvas to play with because so many years have passed and... who is Sarah Connor now? I felt there was a real opportunity there."
Addressing the somewhat lacklustre critical reception of the three interim Terminator films, Hamilton insists Dark Fate has the right ingredients to entice fans back to the franchise.
"In spite of the huge action it is so far beyond anything I did my last time on Judgment Day we have brought it back to a smaller number of characters that you really care about and that's what creates the emotional impact," she reasons.
Schwarzenegger, who reprised his role in two of the other three movies, agrees, adding: "And we have Linda back, which is really fantastic because I think Jim Cameron was absolutely right. He told me about the story and then he said, 'And we're gonna bring Linda back'.
"I was very excited about that because she was really missing. And of course, she's the number one badass there is!"
The importance of Hamilton and Schwarzenegger's first major on-screen reunion after nearly three decades was not lost on new cast members Mackenzie Davis and Gabriel Luna.
"This was such a big part of her life," says Blade Runner 2049 star Davis. "And I don't think she thought it was going be a 'break' she'd finished her work with this character and this series, but it had demarcated a lot of important events in her life.
"For her to come back, it was a big deal and we all really wanted to make her proud and for this not to be a mistake."
In Dark Fate Davis plays Grace, a human soldier-cyborg hybrid from the future who needs to protect Colombian actress Natalia Reyes' character Dani, an unsuspecting young woman living in Mexico City who becomes the target of a super-advanced terminator, a Rev-9.
This threatening new breed of android, an advanced liquid metal Terminator prototype with the ability to split into two separate units, is played by Agents Of Shield star Luna.
Directed by Deadpool's Tim Miller, the film sees Sarah Connor join forces with Grace and recruit Schwarzenegger's ageing T-800 to help protect Dani against the terrifying Rev-9 in a storyline mirroring that first Terminator release.
Luna was overjoyed to work with Hamilton, and notes her impact on the other female cast, saying Davis and Reyes looked up to her "as this queen lion of the pride".
Schwarzenegger was just as impressed, not just by Hamilton getting well and truly stuck back into the action, but also the new female leads who took to Miller's vision for demanding physical action and gutsy stunts with ease.
Miller is, as Schwarzenegger describes him, "a crazy, insane guy", adding for clarity: "He's a very physical guy, and so he believes the impossible is possible.
"When he has something on the page, there's a stunt where you're jumping all over the place and you have these extraordinary fight scenes, and then he actually wants you to do it, not to rely on visual effects or anything like that.
"We worked really hard, we rehearsed the stunts for many, many hours, and I was really impressed with the women in our movie because they were as tough as the guys."
Despite Dark Fate's stupefying stunts and mind-blowing special effects, the cast are adamant the film is more than just that. Fans, they say, will be convinced by its plot and its emotional impact and, of course, by the return of Hamilton, arguably the main ingredient in the Terminator saga.
Hamilton herself points out: "As our director says, you can blow up a thousand buildings but it doesn't matter if you don't care about who's inside the building."
With her back, audiences will at least care if she's in one of those building being blown to smithereens. And that could just be the secret to the film's success.