Only a few science fiction franchises can be as confusing and convoluted as Terminator. What began as a simple action thriller eventually morphed into an interconnected world of jumbled timelines, alternate futures and, as the first Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, said, a script sloppy.
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Eternal action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger turns 75 this year, and he's been introspecting about the ups and downs of his acting career. As might be expected, it is impossible to separate Schwarzenegger's career from that of the Terminator, with the two now inseparable.
The Austrian bodybuilder recently spoke about the current state of the Terminator franchise in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where he speculated about the future of the time-traveling series and whether it garnered enough sympathy from fans to continue for a few more years.
“The franchise isn't over. I'm over.” Schwarzenegger firmly believes that there will be more Terminator films, and with the recent news that James Cameron is working on the script for a new film in the series, he was right. However, if what he says is his true opinion on the subject, Dark Fate might just be the last film we see from the iconic T-800 – and for some fans, that's great news.
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Schwarzenegger is very aware of what he owes to the Terminator franchise, and in the interview he shows a real love for the world, the franchise and the mythos behind the Terminator. However, his tone changes dramatically when he discusses the most recent entries in the series – Genisys and Dark Fate. He briefly discusses Salvation, but admits that he didn't play it because he was busy being the “Governator” at the time.
Want to know why Genisys and Dark Fate were box office flops? According to Schwarzenegger, this is “because they weren't well written.” This is a fact that not only Terminator fans know, but also those involved in the development of the films, as Schwarzenegger revealed during the interview.
Both films attempted to return to the original Terminator timeline – a risky move for a long-running franchise like this. Altering the image of characters like Sarah and John Connor, and essentially erasing multiple films from existence – in the case of Dark Fate – through a temporal paradox is not the kind of thing that unites fans of ‘a franchise. Rather, it's what you do when you want your series to be like the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
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As independent action films go, the recent Terminator films may not be all that shocking. The problem arises when comparing them to the rest of the franchise, the legacy and the overall plot built by the prequels on the timeline of the war between humans and Skynet. This is where there is a problem with your films not being “well written”.
It only takes one bad chapter to ruin an entire saga, and in the case of Terminator, it seems like the bad episodes just keep piling up. Hopefully James Cameron's next AI-inspired film will finally manage to bring the franchise back to its origins.