Last Saturday, I started looking at the way Genisys (2015) collapsed the entire franchise with a single choice. First we had to look at the background. Now, I can tie the whole thing together.

Basically, there are two problems. Number one, the writers added a third element to the time travel loop. They gave Skynet knowledge of John’s whereabouts and what he knew. Number two, in order to make the time loops work, the future events alluded to in the prior films must take place within a short span of time to keep the franchise consistent.

I briefly addressed the first problem last Saturday, and I’ll come back to it later. For now, the second problem is the one I think the writers of Terminator Salvation also ran into when they were trying to reconstruct the future war and tie the events of that war with the events of the previous three films.

Where we started

The first movie makes it clear that Skynet is defeated. Sending the first Terminator, the T-800, back in time was a last-ditch effort. Kyle Reese was then sent back because John had captured the time machine and needed to send somebody right away to intercept the T-800. Kyle Reese saved Sarah Connor and the first Terminator was destroyed; thus Skynet lost the war.

Therefore, in order to account for why the other two Terminators were sent as well, there needed to be a rogue element. That rogue element was a remnant of Skynet, sending more Terminators after realizing that the first Terminator had failed. Then John and Kate must learn of this rogue element in order to send Terminators of their own. But the rogue element must also be close by and have limited resources; otherwise, there’d be an endless army of Terminators sent up and down the timeline and another endless army of anti-terminators sent to intercept them. The story becomes chaos unless the events happen close together.

What might have worked

Picture the following alternative scenario I’ve developed to illustrate the problem:

John sees that the first Terminator is being sent and thus sends Kyle Reese. Perhaps John and the Resistance find their time machine in a large Skynet factory rather than a work camp. They have access to plenty of T-800s that were shut down because Skynet was defeated, so they begin working to hotwire one of them in case Kyle is killed. Then, because they’ve captured Skynet’s main base and have access to all the robots’ movements, a computer tells them that another Terminator has been sent to a different point in time. So they send their hotwired T-800 to deal with it.

But this revelation also shows that Skynet had another time machine. So John and the Resistance go looking for it. Let’s say Kate stays behind and continues hotwiring T-800s while John and the Resistance search for this remnant of Skynet. The Skynet remnant then has enough time to send the T-X —prompting Kate to send another hotwired T-800 — before John and the Resistance find the last time machine and destroy what’s left of Skynet.

The problem with the passage of time

This or a number of other possible scenarios could have tied Genisys to the first three movies. But the crucial point is that it all needs to happen during a brief period of time. If you allow time to elapse in the future, then you raise the question of why there aren’t robots and future warriors running up and down the timeline. This creates a narrative mess.

I think this might be why the writers of Terminator Salvation (2009) chose to deal with the prophecy of John’s death the way that they did. Basically, to have John killed and then have Kate take up his mantle implies that too much time passes in the future between the moment the T-1000 and the T-X are sent back.

Making movies about a future war is probably fun until a writer has to reconstruct the events of that war after the first three films have been made. Terminator Salvation was meant to be a trilogy, and I think the writers figured out pretty quick that the only way to make the story work was to have John find either one or both time machines at the climax of that trilogy. Anything else would create chaos for the Terminator lore. So, they needed to remove the time that had elapsed between the sending of the second and third Terminators. They did this by creating a roundabout way for John Connor to “die,” which took place earlier in the trilogy.

But as convoluted as any future scenario that explains the first three films might be, it’s hypothetically possible to make something work. That’s because the writers need only deal with two fundamental variables, the Terminators and the anti-Terminators. However, once you add a third variable, Skynet’s knowledge of John’s movements, the entire story falls apart.

Now, not only do the writers have to deal with the Terminators and anti-Terminators, but they must also deal with Skynet’s remnants — who, in this film, know they must thwart John — finding ways to do so up and down the timeline before and during the war. Skynet would be trying to move the time machines. It would be building even more time machines than it had planned to build initially. It would be throwing every Terminator it had at John at every conceivable moment throughout the timeline. Skynet’s remnants’ fatal knowledge of what John knows pushes the franchise into an infinite regress of hypothetical timelines.

Sarah Connor’s recordings

What the writers of Genisys didn’t realize, although they should’ve, is that the lynchpin of this entire franchise is actually Sarah Connor’s recordings. The time loop this series is built on isn’t just Kyle Reese being John’s father, but the fact that Sarah Connor told John about time travel. Thus John is aware of the existence of time machines. But in the original films, Skynet/remnants don’t know that John is aware of their plans. John’s secret information, passed to him by his mother, is what allows him to both win the war and keep the franchise coherent. When the writers remove the use of John’s secret weapon, the story falls apart.

So, how does this all tie together?

It becomes harder to construct a story that explains how the Terminators are coming back when the war with Skynet is supposed to be over, But, with a little effort, a story could still be constructed. In order to build that story, the future events that prompted the first three films need to take place in a short span of time, meaning that there’s no conceivable way for Skynet’s remnants to learn what John knows about the time machines and form a plan to counter his attack.

Think about everything that needs to happen: Skynet must learn about John’s knowledge — when, how, or from whom is never explained. Skynet must then build a prototype body —something explained later in the film. It must then infiltrate the resistance — again, the details are never explained—and then wait for the opportune moment to attack John. But that is unnecessary because all Skynet has to do is either kill John earlier, kill Kyle, destroy the machine, or move it. If the story is to remain coherent, there simply isn’t enough time for Skynet to do all of this.

One of the most ironic ramifications of the writers’ choice is that this decision destroyed the need for their own movie! In fact, the franchise as a whole is over! Skynet wins because now its remnants have the means to send Terminators after John at any point in time or move the time machine or pretty much do whatever they want. The robots also have the means to keep John and the Resistance from sending back their own fighters because they can prevent John from finding the machine in any number of ways.

I bring all this up because, even though viewers might not be able to articulate all these problems, they will be aware of them. Their awareness will manifest itself in the form of multiple questions running through their heads at once, taking them out of the story. They’ll be asking questions like, “Why didn’t Skynet attack John sooner? How did Skynet learn that John knew about the machine? Why was Skynet following John around? How did Skynet know John was going to be at the work camp instead of attacking the main base? Why didn’t Skynet attack John before he launched the attack on the work camp if it already knew about the attack? On and on and on.

The questions become so numerous that viewers must push them out. They’ll accept the fact that writers didn’t think the story through. But that means the writers didn’t care too much about their script. And if the writers didn’t care, why should they? This ultimately results in frustration and boredom.

I don’t know if such inconsistencies were enough to convince the powers that be in Hollywood to try to make an entirely different sequel, but I feel confident saying that such glaring plot holes are enough to make an audience tune out a movie, either because they don’t understand what’s going on or they’re a little insulted that the writers would present them with such a lazy story. Either way, Genisys didn’t perform well, though it makes a good illustration of the issues science fiction writers face. We’ll cover what happens in the first few scenes after Kyle reaches 1984 next Saturday.

Here’s what I have written so far on Terminator Genisys (2015):

Terminator Genisys Review, Part 1: What was the point? When filming a sequel, it’s important to draw on the previous story, to keep the viewer emotionally invested in the characters. Genisys completely ignores everything set up in Terminator Salvation and Terminator 3 and assassinates John’s character, reducing the emotional stakes.

Terminator Genisys Review Part 2: A colossal monster mash The writers wanted the recreated scenes to be fond “memory berries” for the audience but they ran into problems setting them up properly.
Terminator Genisys is one of those movies where that create a growing sense of unease that viewers can’t quite put a finger on.

Terminator Genisys Review, Part 3: Genisys’ fatal flaw The film was seen in the industry as so bad that another sequel was proposed that effectively wiped its timeline from the canon. A critical plot decision — to give Skynet a key piece of information — makes Skynet’s Terminator strategy seem incoherent.