This is an extension of my Terminator: Dark Fate review, where I was discussing how the franchise has a history of aborted storylines and how that was pretty disheartening for me as a fan. To clarify, I still like Terminator to this day. It’s a great series nonetheless. But all the same, I do wish there hadn’t been so many unresolved plotlines left in the dust as the years went on.
Franchise overview
It consists of six movies:
– The Terminator (1984)
– Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
– Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
– Terminator Salvation (2009)
– Terminator Genisys (2015)
– Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
And a television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which aired from 2008-2009. There’s a whole boatload of comics and novels and video games too, but for the sake of this article, I’ll just be talking about the movies and the TV series.
Even if you only factor in those, however, they do not all sync up with each other. It’s not a series where everything or most everything fits into one massive timeline. Basically, the first two movies have been treated as the absolute, definitive canon for the franchise. Everything else then branches and splits off from Terminator 2, with each new sequel basically doing its own thing and ignoring the others.
However, things didn’t actually start that way. Back in the day, as evidenced by the title, Terminator 3 was a direct follow-up to the first two movies. It wasn’t until The Sarah Connor Chronicles premiered several years later when things slowly but surely got more complicated. TSCC mostly ignores Terminator 3 and acts as its own sequel to Terminator 2, essentially making it an alternate Terminator 3.
When Terminator Salvation came out soon after, it continued on from Rise of the Machines and had nothing to do with TSCC. So at that point, there were two different storylines branching out from the second movie. Salvation was intended to be the beginning of a trilogy. Although since it was still following from the original three movies, presumably things would have capped off nicely as a six-movie saga had these plans been allowed to continue, while TSCC would presumably have finished with its own, alternate storyline. I have read that the show was planned to last four seasons total.
But alas, Salvation underperformed at the box office, and the production company behind it folded soon after, causing their plans for the fifth and sixth movies to evaporate. TSCC, meanwhile, was cancelled after its second season and leaves off on a pretty maddening cliffhanger. Salvation’s ending is thankfully less open-ended and unresolved, but it’s still obvious they had more to tell there too.
When a fifth movie eventually did materialize, it was done as a partial reboot. I say “partial” because Terminator Genisys does incorporate a lot of aspects and mythology from the first two films, but it otherwise starts over with a brand new timeline. It was supposed to be the start of its own stand-alone trilogy, and there was even going to be a new TV series which would tie into it somehow. But then Genisys too underperformed at the box office, and these plans vanished into thin air.
A few years after that, Terminator: Dark Fate tried a different, and yet familiar approach. It disregards the more recent entries and acts as a sequel only to the first two movies. Basically, it’s another alternate Terminator 3. At this point, the franchise looks like this:
And, as with Salvation and Genisys before it, Dark Fate was announced to be the first in a new trilogy. By this point, I was uneasy with their new trilogy plans. It didn’t pan out the previous times; would things really be any different now? I stated way back in my original Genisys review that I was still casually optimistic for the up-and-coming Dark Fate, as James Cameron and Linda Hamilton were returning, which felt significant.
But you know, even at the time, I think deep down I had a gut feeling that this attempt at reviving the franchise wasn’t going to play out either. I even stated in my Dark Fate review that, “If nothing else, I just wanted to see one more good Terminator film on the big screen.” As in, I wanted to see one more new Terminator entry even if nothing further came from it. I guess my mind was already expecting it to underperform, and that it might end up being the last film in the series despite the clear intention for more.
Yet regardless, I was still hoping it would be successful. If it was, it would give us eight Terminator movies to enjoy. Even though the Salvation and Genisys storylines were left dangling, and I’d long since given up on my once-strong hope for a Sarah Connor Chronicles revival (which was my favourite out of all the post-T2 stories), but the Dark Fate trilogy at least would have connected with the original two classics and rounded things out with a five-movie arc of its own.
But no. It didn’t work out. Dark Fate did not do so great at the box office, and once more the trilogy plans collapsed into oblivion.
What could have been
Even though I enjoyed Genisys and Dark Fate for what they were, what I really wish is that Salvation and Sarah Connor Chronicles had been given a chance to finish their storylines, financial issues or not. If they had, chances are that the franchise wouldn’t have fallen into an array of aborted plans.
The other thing about Salvation in particular is that it did something new for the franchise. The rest of the films follow the general template of taking place before Judgment Day, centering around a future saviour for humanity, with both a protector and an evil Terminator arriving from the future to rescue or terminate the future saviour respectively. Genisys mixes it up a little by being less about protecting the future saviour, and more about stopping SkyNet in general, but the broad setup is similar.
Salvation, meanwhile, is the only film to take place long after Judgment Day, with no time travel, instead being a futuristic story about the War Against the Machines. As a fun bit of trivia, it’s also the only film Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t involved in (albeit he does have a cameo near the end, but it was a digital recreation and not the actor himself). As much as I like Arnold otherwise, at the same time it was kinda refreshing to not have his iconic Model 101 be central to the story for a change and to focus more on the other characters.
Regardless, it was an interesting new direction to take the story in. But since Salvation wasn’t successful, Genisys and Dark Fate took a more back-to-basics approach. Not necessarily a bad idea in itself, but it did ultimately give off the feeling of just treading water.
What comes after…?
As discouraging as it was, I can understand why they rebooted things after each new sequel underperformed. Money talks, after all, especially in the film industry. At the time, each reboot almost certainly seemed like the best way to wipe the slate fresh and clean and to start over with a newer, better story that would be more successful. It’s just unfortunate how it kept cutting all the previous stories short in the process. And looking back, it’s clear that the reboots didn’t help the film sales anyway, and so they probably would’ve been better off if they’d just stayed committed to one of their previous iterations. But that’s hindsight for you.
Although this leads me to wonder, what is coming up next for the franchise? Will there be anything else after Dark Fate, or is this truly the end?
I think it’s safe to say that a seventh theatrical film is very unlikely at this point. Or at least, if it does come, it won’t be for a very long time. Genisys had the advantage of merely being the first time they rebooted things, so it was a fresher idea back then, along with the film bringing back Arnold.
Dark Fate, meanwhile, despite being the second storyline reset in short succession, now had James Cameron and Linda Hamilton on board, both of whom hadn’t been seen since Terminator 2, and Arnold was with us once again. But even Arnold, Linda, and James combined weren’t enough to give Dark Fate the success it needed. In part, I think the fact that, well, it was still another storyline reset in short succession was off-putting to audience-goers. As in, “Oh, they’re rebooting it again?” Perhaps if Genisys hadn’t been made, and Dark Fate was simply their first time starting over, it might’ve fared better.
But either way, with the previous films underperforming as they did, a seventh film would really have the odds stacked against it to draw in enough of an audience to turn a profit now.
However, I have read that apparently they are in fact developing something new; an animated series for Netflix, with Mattson Tomlin as its showrunner. I emphasize “apparently,” since I haven’t heard anything further about it since the initial announcement, and there’s otherwise been little information released about it so far, so we’ll see if anything actually comes of it or not. It wouldn’t surprise me either way.
But it got me thinking. Even if another film is unlikely, a streaming service such as Netflix might be a more viable option for another installment. And that got me thinking, if it did come to pass, what sort of continuation would it be?
Would it be yet another alternate sequel to Terminator 2? Since that seems to be the foundational pillar of the franchise more than anything else. Or would the new series follow after one of the later sequels that was left unresolved? Or, would they just wipe the slate clean again and start over with a new continuity? Genisys straddled the line by being a part-sequel/part-reboot, but this new series could go further by being a complete reboot instead.
Well, I don’t think they would try and continue on from one of the post-T2 sequels. Which one would you pick, and why? As nice as it would be to get some closure on some of those dangling plot threads, their relative lack of success makes it seem like a pipe dream.
I could see it being another Terminator 2 continuation though. Or I could see it being a completely new continuity too. Those two options I feel are the most likely. Or maybe they’ll try a different approach altogether? I’m not sure what that would look like exactly, but it’s fun to speculate.