Terminator: Children of Tomorrow - Can the lost franchise be saved?
It won’t be easy, in fact, it’ll have to be damn near perfect, but maybe there is hope yet for a worthy Terminator sequel!
‘There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.’ Who would have thought Sarah Connor’s famous maxim on destiny would serve now as more of an ironic thorn in the franchise’s side than driving force behind the original two, and only good, Terminator films? Not Hollywood, that’s for sure. In fact, it’s taken thirty years and four failed reboots for Skynet and likewise, the studio pulling its strings to realise there is no grave but what they’ve dug for themselves. With the latest and perhaps final attempt, Dark Fate’s, failure to land with fans, as well as the box office, it appears the closest sequel we’ve had to a good Terminator film will end up being the final nail in the coffin for the beloved franchise.
But does it have to be this way? Is there any life left in the stone Hollywood has attempted to bleed dry for three decades now? Or should the lost franchise just be left to die in peace?
Well, to answer that question, we need to first understand why the last four sequels/reboots haven’t really worked and why the original two worked so well. Keeping with true Terminator fashion these can be broken down into two good points. Firstly — and I’ll try not to sell them short — but The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day respectively are two of the most critically acclaimed, successful and beloved movies ever made. They have some of the greatest action, set pieces, one-liners and special effects ever put to film and include perhaps the most memorable performances of the entire cast’s career. Beyond that though, what these two films have that elevates them to the elites of cinema is an emotionally resonant story filled with characters we care about tackling the relationship between humans and machines. And all three are cultivated and choreographed to perfection by writer/director/producer James Cameron.
Which leads nicely onto the second and most important point that particularly separates the sequel that works from the rest that don’t; because Cameron’s vision was for two films, the second is every bit a natural extension of the first, with the film tackling the same subject matter, plot and characters, yet in much greater depth, detail and dimension. For instance, the sequel is still about a time-travelling Terminator trying to kill the biggest threat for the machine’s future. Except now one Terminator is a protector. They still have to survive and destroy the upgraded antagonist, but they also seek to destroy Skynet; and while John is the instigator of events from the future, in this film he has an active role to play as a child learning to be a leader, as does Sarah and the T-800 trying to balance warrior parenthood.
But what T:2 does so effectively, that stands out particularly over the other sequels, is expand upon the message and themes of the original, adding extra layers and exploring the existing thematic questions of Human vs Machine/Creator vs Created in a way that feels like an organic extension of the original. This is, no doubt, largely due to them being part of Cameron’s singular vision; a further result of which is that by their conclusion, all questions he set out to explore are answered and the Connor’s mission is accomplished: The future is saved, Skynet is dead.
Now while that’s great for these first two films, it also means if you try creating further sequels that feel like an organic development yet logical extension of the story, you’ll find yourself in a knife fight against the T-1000. Indeed, the reasons why Judgment Day works so well are also (both directly and indirectly) the same reasons the other sequels failed. Essentially, Cameron set the bar so high and closed the loop so succinctly on his own story that even he couldn’t crack it open (he co-wrote and produced Dark Fate), let alone anyone else.
‘We’ve finished the story….there are no backdoors in this film…we wrote the movie so that the fat lady sings.’ William Wisher, co-writer of Terminator 2, on its conclusion of the franchise.
The apocalyptic sized hurdle Hollywood has faced ever since is how can we organically or by brute force reopen the saga to new ideas and still have them make sense within the established timeline? After all, if the machines were destroyed in the present/at the end of Judgment Day, how can they continue to pose a threat in the future and come back to wreak havoc?
Well, over the last thirty years the attempted sequels have come up with varyingly creative ways of overcoming this hurdle that can be boiled down to two approaches: either suggesting the future war is inevitable just because — enter contrived explanation — as in Terminator 3 & Dark Fate or by suggesting that other machines were sent back through time before Skynet was destroyed as in Genysis and Dark Fate.
These two methods were tiptoeing around the true continuation of the Terminator saga but weren’t quite able to hit the nail on the head. Indeed, most of them dedicate a large amount of screen time jumping over their own plot holes simply so they can justify their existence (Genisys), and inarguably leave far less time for the characters and their journey’s.
In the end, each film follows a very similar narrative structure and comes down to a combination of saviour humans and protector Terminators attempting to reshape the future while staving off an attack from a superior model. It is, ironically, a lack of an upgrade to this formula that is a symptom of the key underlying issue of each subsequent sequel, and one that has meant each film has been doomed to fail.
So, what is that missing ingredient behind it all? Given the above, is it even possible to make a successful and well-received Terminator sequel, or is the idea of a successful continuation of the franchise like trying to crack an unbreakable shell?
And the answer, yes it is possible to make a good Terminator sequel. The key is just very hard to assemble and lies in understanding what the correct thematic, plot and character direction is for the continuation of the franchise. In other words, if we were to make a sequel to Judgment Day work, how could we expand upon the originals in a way that feels like a natural extension of the story? Judgment Day did this by taking the black and white — human vs machine — of the first movie and escalating it into the grey, human and ‘moral’ machine vs insurmountable amoral machine in the second.
It’s these thematic threads (which translate into plot ideas) that subsequent sequels managed to skirt around, but never truly come close to realising. Indeed, there are glimmers of a good story intermixed within all of them, but what needs to be done, is applying ideas in such a way as to extend the franchise naturally to fit in with the leftover thematic thread from T:2.
And that thread is: can we teach the Terminator to be moral? To translate this into a story idea that can crack the shell for the sequel: the future war with machines is inevitable only as long as our fear of Artificial Intelligence leads us to try and destroy them; Skynet will always retaliate and an apocalyptic war will always be the result. Thus, the new thematic question that triggers and is at the heart of a sequel that works should be: can we teach Skynet to be moral/compassionate and prevent a war before it begins?
If we learn that the only way to truly stop a war in the future, is not by destroying the conception of the machine in the past (as in Judgment Day), but changing the way in which they’re viewed and treated upon their inevitable creation in the present, then there is finally room for growth. Indeed, the only way to evolve as a franchise organically is to suggest that human mistakes are still creating the war with the machines, and the only way to stop it, is by changing our relationship with them; in essence, to move forward together as John was doing by teaching the Terminator in T:2 how to be more human. In both original films, it takes the combined efforts of man, woman, and machine to kill the threat posed. In this new film and going forward, this same effort by all three needs to be exerted to kill the idea from the past that there has to be a war, so they can move forward in a future without one. Once this has been understood as probably the only way a new film can work, then Hollywood can start to build characters and a story around it.
Okay, so how does this translate into a story that’s unique and yet still in line with the originals? I’ll tackle this head-on in my next article and expand on the story as well as how the Terminator can still reclaim the old magic while updating it for the modern era.
As always thanks for reading and let me know what you think.
