The Last Termination of Connor
After four failed attempts to resurrect the Terminator series, it’s time for Hollywood to accept the truth: Terminator 2: Judgment Day murdered the franchise.
“Not true!” I hear James Cameron, Jonathan Mostow, McG, Alan Taylor and Tim Miller cry: “T2 was a mega-blockbuster-smash-hit!”. Granted. However, the reason it became a mega-blockbuster-smash-hit is because it ended the Terminator story.
All the wrong elements are credited for the film’s success, and this fatal misunderstanding is what has led Hollywood down the wrong path for decades. Yes, the film had a mind-bending (for the time) liquid-metal villain, terrific action sequences and enjoyably quotable dialogue (not to mention Arnie at his absolute muscle-rippling, gun-toting zenith) but underpinning all that was a rock-solid, thoroughly satisfying, complete story. At the film’s climax our heroes didn’t merely ‘live to fight another day’, they saved three-billion lives, prevented the apocalypse, changed the future and ended the story. And as with any truly resonant final chapter, their victory was tinged with tragedy. In order to prevent the ‘Rise of the Machines’, a sacrifice was required — that of the only father-figure John Connor had ever known. The film left cinema-goers satiated, sharing in Sarah Connor’s feeling of contentment:
“The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope.”
By contrast, T3 was like the sight of your old uncle Arnie lurching around in shades trying to show off his muscles: it was neither cool nor funny. Salvation and Genisys (ugh) were in competition to deliver the most incomprehensible storyline possible and also managed to appeal to no-one, least of all the fans. All three were loud, explosiony and expensive — and as instantly forgettable as a head-cold.
Now, inexplicably, the creator, writer and director of the only worthwhile Terminator films has decided that the best way to honour his work is to return to the franchise and produce a ‘proper’ second sequel, which: kills off John Connor in the opening moments; tells us that Judgment Day did happen after all. Awesome.
This begs the question: If nothing means anything; if none of the (apparently) numerous ‘saviours of mankind’ aren’t really all that important; if the future is immutable regardless of the heroic actions and sacrifices of our protagonists — then why am I watching these stupid movies?
It’s a depressing thought that the Terminator franchise has now given us double the number of terrible films as good ones. Although, looking at the box office performance of Dark Fate, the series might have just arrived at its own Judgment Day.
Maybe one day, if we’re lucky, our machine overlords will find a way to send a Terminator back in time to destroy all the wretched sequels. I’ve got my fingers-crossed for Skynet.
The Trouble with Trilogies
Curiously, while each of the Frankenstein attempts to reanimate this dead franchise were hailed as launch-pads for new trilogies, nobody ever tried to just bookend The Terminator and T2 — and make those films into a complete trilogy.
Jonathan Mostow, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines:
“As far as “T4” [goes], if “T3” is as big a hit as we hope for it to be, there’s every chance. If the fan base demands the story to continue, we’ll be happy to see if we can figure out something as exciting and smart to continue the series.”
“If we have good fortune we have indeed planned out two more ‘Terminator’ pictures… There’s an arc of story [in the new sequels].”
Alan Taylor, Terminator Genisys:
“There are other stories, and I know how [the writers] want to end the final one, and it’s a great idea. And there are questions that we are raising in this one that we don’t answer. Who sent Guardian back? We still don’t know that. So there are things yet to be explored.”
James Cameron (speaking for director Tim Miller), Terminator: Dark Fate:
“We looked at it as a three-film arc, so there is a greater story there to be told. If we get fortunate enough to make some money with Dark Fate we know exactly where we can go with the subsequent films. […]
I think you start simple and then you elaborate, and you can elaborate over a series of films. If they’re made by the same people with the same intentions and the same philosophy, then there can be a kind of a story arc across multiple films. But that said, I think Dark Fate stands alone as a pretty good one-time story.”
“Pretty good” eh? I’m sold.
I think I can detect a theme here… it’s always the next film that’s going to be really great. But, to quote master Yoda just for a moment: “All his life has he looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing.”
Cameron never had googly-eyes dreaming about sequels when he was making The Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which is why those films are so laser-focused on telling their own stories, and feel complete in and of themselves.
But at least they did end up making a trilogy of failed trilogies. (Dark Fate even spoiled that.)
1991 Spectacle vs 2019 Spectacle
In terms of computer-generated imagery (CGI), we have come full circle from 1991. ILM’s liquid metal T-1000 dropped audiences jaws in the Nineties, and — like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park — looks just as good thirty years later.
However, times have changed. What everyone expected to happen was for cgi to develop in sophistication to the point that it would be indistinguishable from reality. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, (with some notable exceptions) effects quality plateaued and its use has become ubiquitous. Spider-Man (pick any one you like) looks fine — still weightless and rubbery — but fine. Daniel Craig’s face pasted over that of a stuntman during the Istanbul motorcycle scene in Skyfall looks fine, but still clearly fake. Dark Fate’s Rev-9 liquid metal/rigid endoskeleton hybrid terminator looks… fine. I mean, clearly CGI spectacle, but fine.
If you want to blow a modern audience’s socks off you need to show them something real. The uncanny valley-birthed Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One might have gotten a reaction from the audience (if not the one that was intended), but it was the painstakingly recreated costumes, sets and ships that put big ol’ cheesy grins on their faces. And then there are the see-it-to-believe it stunts of the actual Tom Cruise actually jumping around on top of the Burj Khalifa — or hanging off the side of a plane, or flying a helicopter solo down a mountain — in the recent Mission Impossible instalments. And he seems to trying to top even those death-defying feats in the Top Gun 2 trailer.
That’s where the bang-for-your-moviegoing-buck puck has skated to. An obviously fake CGI plane crash just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
In fact, I’d wager Linda Hamilton’s return to the franchise in Dark Fate was more of an audience draw than any of the Rev-9’s computer-generated party tricks.
Fixing Terminator 3
First of all, we don’t need endless terrible Terminator sequels. The reason they keep coming, like maggots crawling out of the carcass of a T-800, is simply to try to replicate the massive financial success of Terminator 2.
If T2 hadn’t been such a big mainstream hit, the films would never have been considered blockbuster material. The nightmarish, sci-fi-horror of the 1985 original is the true heart of the series, a world away from lame gags, sun-drenched action spectacle and ever-more gimmicky killer robots.
However, I want to end by suggesting how a good T3 — one worthy of the series — could’ve still been possible. There is one (and only one) story left to be told in this universe. It is a closing chapter that needs to be small (in scope and in budget), gritty and nasty; kinda like that old forgotten movie, you know… The Terminator.
Here’s my radical idea: instead of trying to force T3 to be like T2, what if we followed T2’s plot threads and character arcs to where they naturally lead?
Both The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are essentially chase movies, featuring an unstoppable force hunting incredibly vulnerable targets (first a disbelieving waitress, then a teenage boy). Countless collateral deaths could be justified because the stakes could not be higher: literally the survival of the human race.
However, the final victory of T2 cuts both ways. Sarah and John didn’t just survive, they were able to fulfil his destiny early by cancelling Judgment Day itself — but at the cost of John’s future. That act robbed him of his status of being the ‘saviour of mankind’. Nor would he now go on to be a great general or inspiring leader. In fact, his reward is to be a nobody; worse, he and his mother are wanted criminals to boot. No-one will ever learn of their role in saving the world: in the blink of an eye John’s legend evaporated— perhaps, in time, he would doubt it ever existed.
I can see an adult John drifting through life, robbed of purpose, working menial jobs, perhaps also struggling with addiction. He finds a steady job as an Amazon warehouse drone, his only daily interactions are with tablet computers and the synthetic voices of AI smart-speakers. Meanwhile, Sarah falls back on the one thing she knows how to do besides killing murderous time-travelling cyborgs — waitressing.
Both are living in obscurity under assumed names, and have grown distant from one another. While Sarah obsessively watches the news, always on the alert for danger, John devotes his spare time (and money) to trying to find his father. He eventually tracks Kyle Reese (a man actually younger than himself) to an underpass where he finds him living rough, after running away from his foster home. John tries to help Kyle start a new life by robbing his employer and handing Kyle a bag full of cash.
One day at work Sarah sees a news bulletin, which is like a replay of a past nightmare: an elderly couple have been murdered in their home by an unknown attacker; there is no known motive for the killing of John and Francine Connor. Sarah tries to convince her son to leave town, but he refuses; he doesn’t want to be the cause of any more innocent deaths. He learns that there are four more people named “John Connor” in the county-area, including a boy at the nearby high-school.
Later at work, John hears reports of a mass-shooting in progress at the school. He races there in his truck, ploughing through the school gates, straight up to the front door. Carrying a shotgun, he sprints along corridors toward the sound of gunfire, coming face to face with… a T-800. It is the duplicate of the father-figure protector he once knew. [It was the last Terminator to be sent back in time when Skynet was in its death-throes and has been tracking John for years.] For a moment, they look at each other, before John raises his gun and fires. The T-800 is stunned only momentarily, and rises to its feet once more to begin the chase.
John leads the pursuing T-800 out of town into the desert. Sarah and Kyle scramble to find him. Out there, alone in the wilderness, John is forced to confront his destiny and discover if he really does have what it takes to beat the machine and become the man that would have been a legend in another life.
And of course, the role of adult John Connor could only be played by a returning Edward Furlong (who did prove himself a gifted actor in films such as American History X). His potential physical transformation from teen-star to Hollywood burnout, to ultra lean Kyle Reese-esque urban warrior, would be the central ‘special effect’ of the movie, one certain to please fans of the series.
At least, that does it for me. But clearly not everyone would be keen on this premise:
You can’t have John be a 36-year-old accountant somewhere. And really, when you think about it, he could be sort of a pathetic figure as a man who had missed his moment in history and was relegated to this banal, ordinary existence, when in fact had Sarah not chosen to destroy Cyberdyne, he would be the leader of humanity. Nobody wants to see that. […]
You’d think it [killing John off] was probably a controversial decision, but it really wasn’t. […] Everybody was in pretty strong agreement, and the way to start it, was really, you want to have this dramatic impact. You want to slap the audience in the face
— Tim Miller
