Last Saturday, we looked at the point at which Kyle and Sarah meet John in a hospital. John helps them escape the hospital. But when Pops shows up, he shoots John; thus, Kyle and Sarah believe John is dead.

But surprise! John isn’t dead. He’s a robot, the new Terminator, the new villain.

Why don’t Hollywood screenwriters understand the importance of what’s at stake?

Throughout these reviews, I have ranted incessantly about stakes — the audience’s emotional stake in the welfare of the characters. I’m about to do so again. I don’t know why modern Hollywood writers have such a hard time understanding this concept because it is one of the first things a student learns in a writing class. A story is about promises and payoffs. Stakes are why we should care. The ending need not be happy, but success and failure must be clearly defined.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m just mad that the writers turned a beloved character into a villain. I won’t lie; that does infuriate me. But there’s more to see here. This movie failed with both the audience and critics, which speaks to something about the human mind…

What makes a story work, and what doesn’t? Lots of very good stories end in tragedy. Breaking Bad is one of them. The Green Mile is another. Gladiator is a third. And I could go on.

What happens when the hero is turned into a villain

A sad ending is hard to do right, but lots of writers try to do in the name of being artistic. Propagandists also do it to defend a nihilistic worldview, but nihilism never works in storytelling, ever. Nobody can tell an audience to care if the world isn’t worth caring about. I believe there’s at least one specific reason why propagandists use nihilism in writing anyway, but there isn’t time to go into that. For now, let’s discuss why turning John Connor into a villain was such a horrible idea.

When it comes to the Terminator franchise, there are two plots: save Sarah Connor, which saves John Connor, which saves the world, or save John Connor, which saves the world. Every movie in this franchise has treated John Connor as the single most important figure in the series. That doesn’t mean he’s the protagonist. It means that all the events in the series revolve around the character’s life or death, or something that the character does. Granted, the franchise is called The Terminator Franchise, but, hypothetically speaking, it’s possible that the protagonists could find a way to save themselves without the robot’s help, and it’s the Terminator who starts the whole mess anyway.

But looking a little deeper, let’s ask this question: What does John represent? What does the future war with Skynet represent? They represent the same thing: the future. However, they represent the future from opposite ends of the spectrum. Skynet represents the threat of desolation and failure in the future — not necessarily death, although one could take it that far if desired — but a life of isolation and hopelessness. John represents a family. He represents hope for a family in the future, a happy ending, a future life with loved ones.

What it means to say that Skynet and John are archetypes

Image Credit: LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS - Adobe Stock

The way writers make fantasy engaging — and sci-fi is a form of fantasy — is by anchoring the hard-to-grasp concepts with familiar ideas. This raises the stakes by making them relatable. If I put a white hat and a black hat in two corners and make them fight, nobody is going to care. Why? Because the audience doesn’t know anything about them save that one is supposed to be evil and the other is supposed to be good. But if I make the white hat a boy on a farm, then the white hat becomes relatable. If I make the black hat a bully or tyrant, then the black hat becomes a familiar opponent. The white hat isn’t relatable because everyone has been a boy on a farm, but because everyone has felt choked by their surroundings, and everyone has desired something more, some form of adventure.

Thus the “boy on a farm” is a classic archetype that portrays an emotion everyone can relate to, longing for more. For the black hat, it’s the same thing. Everyone has been bullied, and everyone has wanted to fight their bully and prevail. I’m appealing to audience emotions, their empathy, giving them a reason to care about the fight between the white hat and black hat by giving them a chance to “relate” to the characters. Even professional wrestling managers understand this by making their wrestlers good guys or bad guys.

Now, how does this apply to Sarah, John, and Skynet? It’s pretty simple. Sarah is a mother, and she wants a son; she wants a family. John doesn’t just represent the hope for humanity; he represents Sarah’s hope for a family, for a future. Skynet represents the outside forces threatening to take that family away. Skynet represents loss.

A writer might not be able to make every reader or viewer care about or understand the stakes of a hypothetical war with robots in the future. But the writer can get everybody to understand the world from Sarah’s point of view because, on the whole, most people want a family — or people who care about them. The writer is  anchoring the future war to present stakes like “Will I or will I not have a child?” This is made even easier with figures like the “good” T-800s, who would represent a stoic man defending the innocent wife and child. You might call this “The Stranger” archetype. Kyle is the “The Mentor,” archetype, defending and educating Sarah as The Hero/Everyman.

If this doesn’t sound  convincing, ask yourself this question: how many other movies about a future war with robots do you know of? I can think of two — The Matrix and The Terminator franchise. The Matrix uses a completely different archetype, “The One” archetype. And that’s just my point. Any successful franchise, one with wide audience appeal, is going to use familiar archetypes to reach the largest number of people.

Net Saturday, we’ll look at how all of this relates to the fate of John Connor.