Five Ideas That Could Save The Terminator Franchise

A lot of fans still don’t believe that The Terminator franchise is over and done with and to be honest, they shouldn’t. There’s still plenty of stories to be pulled from this franchise, but they need to not only follow the continuity of the original story but perhaps forget that Dark Fate even happened in the first place. The idea for Dark Fate was to pretend that act like Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genisys never happened to start with, so nixing the idea of Dark Fate shouldn’t be much of an issue. But even if that doesn’t happen it would be a good idea to expand and tell more stories about the Resistance and how it really managed to form, and how it spread to other survivors as people banded together to stand against the machines. Here are a few ways that the Terminator franchise can be saved. 

5. Stop fixating on one or two terminators. 

It’s understandable why the story only fixated on two terminators since the main star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, needed to be front and center for the first once since sending him back in time to kill Sarah Connor was the main point. But with T2, T3, and so on, fixating one or two of the terminators became kind of a drag, especially in Salvation when the main terminator became a hybrid model used for infiltration. Keeping a broader focus on the characters in the story and reminding the audience that there is an army made up of machines and various killer robots would be a welcome change. 

4. Make John Connor a legend, but a peripheral character.

So much has been placed on John Connor’s shoulders over the years that some people finally got tired of hearing about him, while others were of the mind that he was a needed character for a while. But after T2, which is where things should have ended for a while, it would have been fine to build his legend and then focus on someone else for a while instead of continuing to recast and retcon John’s story in an attempt to explain why he became who he was, and how and why those around him would eventually come into his orbit. He was seen as vital to the Resistance for a long period of time, but it might be wise to steer clear of him for a bit. 

3. Stop with time travel, stay in the future for once. 

Salvation did this and it was somehow still deemed a crap movie by a lot of people. It had plenty of faults but also plenty of moments when it actually wasn’t bad at all. But a glimpse of the past and perhaps a few flashbacks might be necessary, otherwise, it feels wise to stay in the future where the real struggle is happening and human beings are no longer confused by terminators, why they have to react a certain way, and how to avoid being terminated or rounded up like cattle. Staying in the future would be preferable since a lot of us already know how the past goes and how things come to judgment day. 

2. Find a suitable balance that’s diverse enough for the majority of fans. 

Things don’t need to be specifically made to empower women and they don’t need to be entirely masculine, but a healthy balance between the two would be nice since lo and behold there are plenty of movies out there that show men and women being empowered in various ways during one action sequence or another. Considering that this is a story about the survival of the human race, it’s easy to think that it should be as equal as possible when talking about humanity. Women and men of all types should be featured as needed and in equal measures in a story such as this since it affects everyone. 

1. Focus on new characters in the same war. 

Essentially this doesn’t mean eschew the characters that already exist, but instead, it alludes to the idea that there are bound to be many, many people that are exemplary in this war, and focusing on just a few of them leaves a very narrow and incomplete view. Finding new and interesting characters to follow for a while might be a nice switch since it could open up the world in a very big way that’s only been done in the books so far. If the worldview of the movies widened in a noticeable way it feels as though people might become interested again since the narrow view has been done more than once, and it’s time to pull the camera back and see what else there is to see. 

The Terminator franchise has a lot left to offer and it’s fair to state that the fans might want to see it expand in a few ways.