Why Can't They Make Good Terminator Movies Anymore?
Terminator. Image courtesy of Orion Pictures.
What’s up with Terminator movies these days? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now, since the property is so iconic and occupies such a monumental spot in the history of cinema, and is so full of potential, and yet for years the people who own the IP have been whiffing on the one obligation they have to the human species, which is to make good Terminator films.
Obviously, the original Terminator is a thing of raw, brutal beauty. It created James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It took, really, a pretty simple stripped down sci-fi concept (time travelling killer robot tries to kill people in the 80s) and it lifted it up beyond what it should have been. Terminator 2: Judgement Day, of course, is that rarest of things - a sequel that is better than the original and actually adds to what came before, while also utilizing cutting edge special effects. And then, as they say, things fell apart.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, released in 2003, was the first indication that all was not right. It was a direct follow-up to Judgement Day, starring Nick Stahl as John Connor. And it basically just replayed the plot from T-2. Arnold comes back to protect Connor, again, from another more advanced Terminator who is sent back to kill him, again. The only difference is the bad terminator is a woman this times. Also, Claire Danes is in it. I guess it’s not really terrible, but it is terribly unoriginal. I mean it’s literally the exact same plot as the second film. It speaks to, at the very least, a crippling lack of vision in whoever was charting the franchise’s course at that point.
This was followed in 2009 by Terminator Salvation, which brought in Christian Bale to play John Connor. Arnold did not appear in this film and that was in some ways a good thing because it freed up the film to go in different directions. This is the best of the sequels. It does what the other films couldn’t figure out, which is to explore the post-apocalyptic version of Earth where John Connor is leading the resistance against his machine enemies. The action is actually very good.
And the story is interesting, with Sam Worthington playing a cyborg who doesn’t know he is a cyborg. Of course at the end it degenerates into a senseless and boring CGI spectacle featuring Arnold’s digitally reconstructed face, but it also had an opportunity to end on a super dark and interesting note, which is that John Connor dies but goes on as a cyborg in order to keep the resistance alive. This was thought to be too dark, ultimately, so it was nixed. The film had the opportunity to do something really compelling and subservise, and it chose not to. I feel like that is the real reason why Terminator movies struggle - they have all of this potential, but choose to leave it on the table and just play it safe.
This was followed in 2015 by a “soft reboot” called Terminator Genisys which I have never seen and never will. And after that, somehow fighting very hard against the laws of human nature and the physical world, yet another Terminator film was produced, Terminator Dark Fate which was just fucking terrible. Again, like Terminator 3, Dark Fate simply rehashes the plot of Terminator 2, changing a few minor details in an attempt to fool us. They also gave up trying to de-age him and just had Arnold play an Old Man Terminator, and it’s as awful as it sounds. I mean who amongst us, after watching T-2, didn’t wonder what a Terminator would be like in the twilight of his life living a quiet life of retirement in a cabin? Now I’m not sure what will come next. I believe the rights have reverted back to James Cameron. But the question must be asked - why can’t they make good Terminator movies anymore?
I think there are two main things going on here. The first is that these movies are frequently at the center of intense legal battles over who owns the rights and how the production deals are structured. Many of the companies that have held the rights have subsequently gone bankrupt, and sold them, and with such an iconic IP this simply creates a lot of confusion that makes it difficult for any single voice or vision to give the franchise direction. There’s no Kevin Feige to steer the ship and it shows.
And that goes all the way back to the very beginning in the early 1980s when producer Gale Anne Hurd acquired the rights to the film from an unknown James Cameron for $1 in exchange for getting it made (he later married her, so I guess he didn’t mind the terms that much). The Terminator franchise was thus born in sin, its originator auctioning it away for a pittance and the rights have bounced around ever since, often going to the highest bidder. From the corporate and legal side, it’s just not a good foundation from which to sustain a groundbreaking franchise.
The other thing is that since T-2, the franchise has really struggled to escape from its own shadow. Every installment just rehashes the same plot from T-2. It’s insane. How many times can human people with brains look at this idea, with all of its possibilities, and decide that, yeah, probably the best thing to do is send another robot from the future back in time to kill John Connor or someone like him? How are their brains so broken they cannot fathom a narrative structure that is in anyway different? The one time they dared to be different, with Terminator Salvation, it turned out to be the best of the post-Cameron films. It also, probably not coincidentally, didn’t have Arnold in it.
When you are bound by the weight of this mythology and fan base, and by the contractual need to somehow fit a 70 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger into the script, and the legal status of the rights remain uncertain and there are huge expectations, I guess it’s actually pretty easy to see why they keep making these shitty movies that don’t do any justice to the original Terminator and just keep trying to lazily and stupidly recapture the magic of T-2 by literally copying the plot. And even though it has yet to work, I expect the finest brains in Hollywood will be called in some time in the near future to give it another go. And I expect it will be just as bad.
