Just Stop Already! Issue #6: Terminator Movies

 

Just Stop Already!

 

Movies are a great art form, but Hollywood is a business, so if something translates into a financial success—whether it’s a genre or type of movie or a trend—chances are it will be exploited and repeated until people are sick of it. But, sometimes producers, writers, and/or directors want to cut corners, or are just desperate to make money, or are creatively bankrupt. All of these factors result in frustrations for the audience that take on many forms, and in this series I explore some of the tropes, trends, bad habits, and financial exploits of Hollywood films. Sometimes when it comes to movies, I feel like saying…just stop already!

 

Issue #6: Terminator Movies

 

I used to call myself a Terminator fan—used to being the key words. What changed? Primarily, the addition of four sequels that failed to live up to the first two films, but I also changed throughout the years as I watched the first, second, third, and fourth over and over. While the third and fourth got worse every time I re-watched them, the first and second just seemed to get better. As of writing this, I have not seen the fifth or sixth since theaters when they first came out.

It wasn’t long after I watched The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day for the first time that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines came out in theaters, in 2003. I don’t know if the reason we didn’t go see it was because it was R-rated (both Terminator films are among the first, if not the first R-rated films I ever saw) or because we just didn’t know it had come out, but I don’t remember exactly when I saw the third Terminator for the first time. I remember buying it on DVD from a pawn shop after I had bought the first and second on DVD, probably around 2006, and had seen the others a few times. I liked the third movie a lot the first time I saw it, but recognized something was different about it compared to the first two. Many of the special effects were more modern (and better, especially compared to the first), the action was cool, it was funny, and it finally caught up to the post-apocalypse by the end, which we had only glimpsed before. But there was something…missing. 

Then, in 2009, the sequel I had waited to see for so long came out: Terminator: Salvation. It was firmly set in the post-apocalyptic world of the machines, there were new and old terminators, and John Connor was played by Christian Bale, who I recently had seen in one of my favourite movies from the year before, The Dark Knight. I saw Salvation on opening night, and I thought it was good! But, again, there was something missing. It was different from the first two, and definitely different from the third one, but better, or even as good? I couldn’t tell just yet. I liked the action, the special effects were pretty cool, and the casting was good, but nobody else seemed to like it all that much, including many Terminator “fans.”

During the intervening years between 2009’s Terminator Salvation and 2015’s Terminator Genisys, I went from teen to adult, and from enjoying movies as a hobby to movies being a full-on obsession. 2015 was the year the reboot replaced the sequel. Three big “sequels” that came out were not just following up a previous installment from years back, they were also trying to start up dormant franchises in slightly new directions with the same old elements you came to love about them in the first place, only with some new characters in addition to returning ones. First there was Jurassic World, then Terminator Genisys, and finally Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At first, Terminator Genisys seemed like it had potential. Arnold Schwarzenegger was back in a bigger role (reduced to just a quick CGI cameo in Salvation because he was busy in politics at the time) as an aged T-800, and many pivotal characters from past movies had been recast and dropped into a plot that was heavy with time travel and sought to rewrite the future yet again, but in an even more action-packed and unexpected way than T2.

When Genisys came out, I still called myself a Terminator fan. The first two were (still are) among my favourite movies, and the second one in particular was (still is) in my top ten of all-time. Terminator 3 hadn’t aged well. Yeah, some of the action was still cool, but the jokes and callbacks weren’t funny to me anymore, the characters were kind of annoying, and I didn’t like the idea that it made T2’s ending pointless. Salvation had likewise deteriorated in quality, to me. The action was cool, but it just wasn’t as cohesive as the first two movies, which I later learned was largely due to the writer’s strike which resulted in shooting the movie without a finished script. The R-rated version on Blu-ray is what should have come out in theaters in the first place, though it still didn’t significantly boost the quality of the storytelling. You know how when something looks bad, but something worse comes along, and it makes the thing that looked bad before not look quite as bad anymore? That’s pretty much what happened to Rise of the Machines and Salvation when Terminator Genisys came out.

I had to check back on my reviews for the fifth and sixth Terminator movies to refresh myself while writing this, because, as I said in the intro, I haven’t seen them since, and I don’t plan on watching them again anytime soon, if ever in this lifetime. I’ve had a similar realization about Terminator 3 and Salvation: I’ve seen them enough times now that I don’t really need to watch them over again when I revisit the first and second films, but I would definitely watch three and four again over five and six, and not just because I’m slightly nostalgic for them. Genisys was a desperate attempt to reboot the series and start a new trilogy, as was the 2019 re-reboot Terminator: Dark Fate. Unlike Genisys, which tried to follow the continuity of the previous films up to a point before detouring into a new timeline, Dark Fate just wiped the sequel slate clean of everything that came after T2 and tried to be the new Terminator 3, but did so in an instantly ill-fated way by killing off John Connor.

I could have done a Just Stop Already entry for some of my other favourite franchises, like Alien or Predator or Jurassic Park, but the truth is the Terminator franchise is the one I truly feel needs to stop. There have been decent movies in all of those aforementioned franchises beyond just the second one, but while I could say that’s true for Terminator as well, the fifth and sixth demonstrated that the series is destined to just keep going downhill. Terminator 2 is one of the best sequels ever in terms of its storytelling, but in terms of turning The Terminator into a franchise, it was actually the worst sequel possible. First and foremost, it’s too good. It cannot be topped. The other problem: it ends in a satisfying way and hints that the future of the series is unknown, but it isn’t necessarily over. The most obvious direction to go in, it would have seemed to me, would be to do a movie in the post-apocalypse, pretty much like what we got with Salvation, only better. Instead, Rise of the Machines just redid the same kind of plot as the first two.

The first Terminator had some action, but it was a pretty low budget production, crafted by a young, talented director who relied more on tension and horror to fuel the compelling narrative and propel the characters. T2 had a far bigger budget which allowed for more action, and while it didn’t rely on horror or tension in the same way as before, it is still quite tense and serious and scary at times, yet also far funnier. It created a unique appeal that could not possibly be duplicated—and that is what doomed Rise of the Machines to mediocrity. T2 now feels like lightning in a bottle. Terminator 3 tried to be as action-packed and as funny and as serious and as horrific and as tension-filled as before, but it just couldn’t balance all of those things very well at all. Salvation didn’t even try to be funny, really, it was just trying to be bigger and more action-packed than T2, which again, led to a less enjoyable and less successful sequel. I used to think the third, fourth, and fifth movies sucked because of a lack of involvement from James Cameron, but after having a hand in the story and production of Terminator: Dark Fate (even selling out so hard that he helped market the damn thing), I realized not even the original creator could save the franchise anymore.

Terminator was a full-fledged film franchise after the third movie, but it was heading down a path of self-destruction. It seemed the studios forgot some of those essential elements of The Terminator and T2 and decided all that really mattered was making a movie that had more action and humour than T2. The Terminator is a beloved classic, don’t get me wrong, but it hasn’t had the same kind of overall lasting power in the pop culture consciousness as T2 because T2 is a summer blockbuster to its core. The Terminator franchise had to live up to that, according to producers, because it had to make as much money as T2, which was a lot. When profit is the priority, the result is bringing back the wrong kind of elements, such Schwarzenegger himself. He may be the best part of the third, fifth, and sixth, but the effort to bring him back felt more desperate with every return he made.

James Cameron did the same thing to the Alien franchise that he did to Terminator. He made the Alien sequel, Aliens, an action movie on top of being a horror sequel, and then most sequels after that tried to be an action movie too, even when it was unnecessary to do so. The Alien franchise might have finally broken that curse, but I don’t think Terminator ever will. T2 will be remembered as one of the best action movies of all-time until the end of time, but if/when they do bring Terminator back with another sequel or reboot, it would be nice if they went back to the horror roots of the first movie, which is still remembered as one of the most original of its kind from the 1980s.

Many fans have suggested a simple, low budget, character-focused horror movie without any returning stars to bring the franchise back, but I doubt that will happen. If Terminator 7 ever gets made, and it’s just the same kind of big, loud, obnoxious attempt as the last two, I will not go see it. It would take something totally unexpected and completely different with the name “Terminator” attached to get me to see it. Hollywood, I know you will probably still bring back Terminator again one day, but please, just stop trying to drive down the T2 road. There’s no pavement left to drive down. Back it up, and take a different path. 

 

Related: 

-Top 10 Terminator: Dark Fate Mistakes

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2019/11/top-10-terminator-dark-fate-mistakes.html

-Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991): Favourite Films Series

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/08/terminator-2-judgment-day-1991.html