When I reviewed the first Terminator film, I said that, while I loved the movie, I was concerned that the time travel twist at the end might lead to problems in sequels down the road.

At the time, I’d seen reviews of the last two movies. I was informed that they were bad, but I hadn’t watched them myself. By the time I’d finished the review series though, I was surprised by how justified my initial concern turned out to be.

But something else that helped kill the Terminator franchise too, something nobody seems to have mentioned. In the second movie, a degree of parody suggests the writers felt a certain amount of loathing for their own creation. I think this loathing had more to do with the downfall of the Terminator franchise than the confusions created by time travel.

The Terminator became the Dominator

The Terminator series is really about Sarah Connor. But the Terminator itself became the focus of the franchise, probably because Arnold Schwarzenegger is such a famous actor. Then, as the story progressed, it became about John, with the result that Sarah was never really given her chance to shine, at least not in the minds of the writers.

The truth is, thanks to Terminator 2, she’s seen as one of the most iconic female action stars in history, second only to Ripley. But for the creators of this story, that wasn’t good enough. She still needed her moment to shine. There’s been one series focusing on her, but she never got her own movie, and I think she should’ve. However, the creators’ efforts to correct this error ruined everything.

Terminator 3 was an awful movie, but it did provide a stable framework for the war with Skynet, and Terminator: Salvation established how John became the leader of the Resistance. It also fixed the issues Terminator 3 had created, particularly when it came to the goofy prophecy about John’s death.

The creators should’ve worked with what they had. I can think of one easy way to bring Sarah into the story. Since Sarah was dead in the third film, they could’ve said she faked her death before traveling into the future to help John. I’m sure there are better ways to bring Sarah Connor into the future, but the point is that if the creators wanted a movie focused on her, they should’ve kept the old timeline. Instead, they tried to reset things twice, which makes everything that came before seem meaningless.

The risks of banking on nostalgia

Given this problem, the audience has one of two choices. They can either ignore the old films, or they can ignore the new ones. People are choosing to ignore the new ones. Creators often seem more than happy to use nostalgia to entice an audience, but for some reason, many refuse to admit that nostalgia is powerful enough to make people stay away from new films if those films undermine what they loved about past ones. No amount of money spent on production values is ever going to change that.

So, the creators now find themselves in a situation where they feel they must restart the series again and again, hoping to capture the original magic. But they never seem to realize that if they make the old victories meaningless, the new victories will be meaningless as well, and no one is going to care about whatever new story comes out. There will always be a scattering of hangers-on, but who can say if those souls are numerous enough to turn a profit? My bet is that they aren’t.

Even time travel needs story rules

As for the time travel issues, I’ve written about them extensively in these reviews. The bottom line is that the stories that contain time travel must make an enclosed loop. The events in the future must have a direct effect on the things in the present or the past, and that chain of cause and effect must be clearly shown. Without a loop, without a clear chain of cause and effect, a time travel story will always devolve into a multiverse story, and multiverse stories destroy emotional stakes. If there is an infinite number of Sarah Connors, the audience won’t care if one of them dies. In the first and second Terminator films, the writers understood this.

Terminator 3 added a fatalistic approach to time travel, declaring that events such as Judgment Day are predestined to happen. These events can be delayed but never stopped. Some people hated this twist— myself included — but it is fair when it comes to time travel stories, and the writers of that movie still kept everything within a contained loop. Terminator Salvation dropped the time travel narrative and decided to push the story forward, which was a good choice because it was time to do that. But I believe the poor performance of Terminator 3 doomed Terminator Salvation. It was predestined to fail.

And things fell off the rails entirely once Terminator Genisys arrived. The writers were foolish enough to add third parties sending robots into the past. In so doing, they collapsed the timeline. Dark Fate stooped even lower by trying to end the Skynet timeline and force-feeding the audience a new “John” (Dani). The writers of Dark Fate even went so far as to take a plot hole in Genysis and turn it into a driving feature of the movie: an infinite regress of Terminators traveling to limitless points in the timeline…   

By doing this, they destroyed the self-contained loop that was holding the Terminator franchise together. Now, the writers have nothing left but to add more Johns, more Skynets, more Terminators, and more Kyle Reeses, turning all these classic archetypes into tired tropes. The ironic element is that there will never be another Sarah Connor because the creators actually like that character.

Some have said that they prefer to watch only the first two Terminator films. They ignore the rest. I wouldn’t go that far. I’d say all of the first four films are worth your time. The third movie is clunky, but there’s a difference between a bad movie and a movie that collapses the story. My recommendation would be to watch the last ten to fifteen minutes of Terminator 3 because the final scene is very well done.

The movies, rated

In chronological order the movies are as follows:

The Terminator

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Terminator: Salvation

Terminator: Genisys

Terminator: Dark Fate

I would rank them as follows in terms of merit:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The Terminator

Terminator: Salvation

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Terminator: Genysis

Terminator: Dark Fate

More Terminator films?       

Do I hope the Terminator franchise rebounds? Not really. Unlike the creators of the Alien franchise, who quickly realized it was a mistake to kill Ripley and tried to fix it, I don’t see the creators of the Terminator franchise recognizing their mistakes. It’s been said that James Cameron is working on another film, but I’m not optimistic. Unless he can find a way to bring both Sarah and John back, I think the franchise is dead.

Next Saturday, I will look at A Sound of Thunder (2005).

Here is last Saturday’s part of my extended review of Terminator Dark Fate. The previous parts can be reached from there:

Terminator Dark Fate: A sickening conclusion. There is no actor alive who could deliver some of these lines in a believable way. I feel confident saying that the franchise is destroyed and will never recover, unless the creators admit that they’ve made some mistakes. But that isn’t likely.