Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger back for a new Terminator movie

For fans of the 1984 thriller The Terminator and its 1991 action sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the sequels have been a consistent disappointment. I'm hesitant to get my hopes up too much—although I didn't hate Terminator Genisys as much as others did, it certainly wasn't the movie that its trailer had me hoping it would be—but there's a new Terminator movie in the works. Against my better judgment, I'm already quietly excited about it.

A few things make this movie different from the execrable Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the just-plain-boring Terminator Salvation, and the aforementioned Genisys, and all of them are cause for optimism.

First, the original and best Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton, is returning to the role. Hamilton's Connor transformed from a carefree big-haired waitress into a toned and trained killing machine of her own; her big-screen replacement in Genisys, Emilia Clarke, didn't have an ounce of her tough screen presence.

Second, James Cameron is returning to write the new story. Cameron hasn't been involved with the series he created since Judgement Day, which, like the original, he both wrote and directed. He has built a writing team that includes David Goyer (writer of the Blade trilogy, the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Batman trilogy, and less promisingly, the two most recent Superman films), Charles Eglee (who together with Cameron created TV series Dark Angel), and Josh Friedman (creator of the Terminator universe TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Cameron will be producing the new film. It will be directed by Tim Miller, who directed Deadpool.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will, unsurprisingly, also be making a return in some capacity. As part of a new trilogy, Cameron is writing the film to introduce new, younger characters—he says he's looking for an "18-something woman" to be the lead—but it will have "Arnold's and Linda's characters to anchor it."

As such, this will be the first Terminator movie since 1991 to bring Cameron, Hamilton, and Schwarzenegger back together. That's an encouraging start. But better yet is where Cameron intends to position the new film: it's going to be a direct sequel to Terminator 2. That's right: no more Rise of the Machines, no more Salvation, and no more Genisys. We should be able to delete these particular cinematic horrors from our neural net processors and live our lives as if they never existed.

Now if only we could rewrite The Matrix to repair that damage...