If there's any series/franchise ripe for a true comeback: It's The Terminator.
It's pretty widely agreed that every movie after 2, which is over 30 years old now, kinda sucks to varying degrees (Tho 3 might have it's moments).
They've tried to soft-reboot it not just once, but twice, both being pretty abysmal failures.
In the right hands, I think it's very possible for there to be another critically-acclaimed and successful Terminator movie, I don't think it's impossible.
The problem with the Terminator franchise is that it involves some ongoing, ever-evolving conflict between Skynet/AI and humanity, and every movie is expected to evolve that conflict to some degree. With Predator, all you need to know is that there's a race of aliens who hunt humans like game animals. You can watch them in any order.
If you did a similar "side story" for Terminator , you'd have to explain where in the story timeline you are (which would require familiarity with the world), or find some way to explain it (which would slow down the story and make the movie feel unsatisfying since none of the overarching conflict is resolved). It might be possible, but I can't imagine a studio greenlighting another Terminator film without trying to find some way to emulate elements of the previous films, which would over-complicate and ruin it. Predator films are all just "alien hunts humans", and you can slap that anywhere, any time. That's why Prey worked.
It's definitely a significantly different beast compared to the Predator series. I think the only real way to make it work is completely reboot the timeline, a hard reboot, and just tell a new story akin to the 1st Terminator. I think the main reasons the movies after 2 have failed is because they all tried to stay in the same general universe with Arny and whatnot.
The solution
Every movie has SkyNet going after another link in the Connor family tree
It tries and fails with Sarah Connor, so it goes after her Father, then his mother and then her father on and on and on until it's Terminator versus Synapsids in the Permian Era
Terminator kicks that fish thing back into the ocean when it tries crawling on land for the first time
And then SkyNet is destroyed by the Saurians and their mighty empire
I think the problem with Terminator as a franchise is that time travel becomes too complicated as a plot device after a while. Terminator and T2 just use it to hang an action movie premise on, but that only works for two movies before the concept just runs out of steam. Some of the later movies might have been on to something by just having them be war movies set in the future, but they got too weird and complicated for their own good.
Dark Fate wasn't that bad. I at least liked the part where the terminator killed scores of border patrol agents, that was pretty based.
dark fate would've been amazing 15 years earlier when its hamfisted hollywood feminism would've been ahead of the curve rather than behind it.
I had that same thought. Like if T3 never happened and Dark Fate was our T3 that would've been alright.
Agree with other posters that Schwarzenegger is too closely tied to the Terminator to pull a Prey. I don't think he has the chops to pull it off anymore.
Something like Alien is ripe with potential, because you can bring in a new cast and have no problems so long as there's a xenomorph afoot. Similar to predator. I've got some hope for that Alien series from the Fargo show writer.
Any idea when that is coming out? Feels like it was announced forever ago.
Alien series from the Fargo show writer
I love that I can search for literally that and get a link to Noah Hawley's Wikipedia page and then a news blurb about him saying it isn't another Ripley story.
I had a spec script for a serial killer murder mystery, where the twist is that there's an alien killing people too, and the detective starts to realize that, but the colony authority decides it's just the serial killer, and the detective and the serial killer and the alien all get caught up in this three way confrontation at the end. Probably the with the serial killer and the detective teaming up to kill the alien, leaving the serial killer ambiguously dead and the detective ambiguously infected.
I'll be the dissenting voice who says that the Terminator series can exist independently of Schwarzenegger.
But first off: who says it has to? Salvation and Genisys may have varied between passable and janky, but Dark Fate Young Arnold is 100% out of the uncanny valley and if you tell me otherwise you're lying. Dude has been fine with his likeness as the terminator so if we can have young Mark Hammil being Luke on TV I say we can keep having Arnold forever.
I think the real problem is a question of where the hell you even go from here and why? Terminator 3 is basically just Terminator 1 and 2...but worse. Salvation was the obvious next step forward in the series to show the actual war, much like how the real Alien 3 was supposed to show the Aliens on earth finally...but they squandered that one. Then there were the soft-reboot attempts with Genisys and Dark Fate which ultimately didn't work.
I feel like the robot sent back in time to assasinate a target is a pretty played out concept on its own. Ridiculous as it was I feel like maybe the Rick and Morty episode about the snake terminators might have actually been onto something with the way it parodied the escalation of the entire thing?
Terminator 3 is basically just Terminator 1 and 2…but worse.
Terminator 1: The future is terrifying and it will kill you unless you fight back
Terminator 2: The future seems inevitable, but with the power of community and comradery and the willingness to sacrifice for others, it can be overcome
Terminator 3: Forget everything we said in the first two movies, the grimdark future is inevitable, weeeee! Zoom! Boom! Kablewy!
I feel like the robot sent back in time to assasinate a target is a pretty played out concept on its own. Ridiculous as it was I feel like maybe the Rick and Morty episode about the snake terminators might have actually been onto something with the way it parodied the escalation of the entire thing?
The double edged sword of R&M (and South Park, et al) is the way they step back and look at the absurdity of Capitalist Realism while also sorta giving up in the face of it.
My personal favorite part of the R&M Terminator episode was Snake Jazz.
anytime you're dealing with time travel themes, it just gets more and more silly. Terminator 2 was just a rehash of the first movie but with a bigger budget and better special effects.
Terminator 1 was about fighting off a creepy superhuman stalker.
Terminator 2 was about fighting the police with your guerilla revolutionary mom and robot dad.
More like rebooted 3 times- remember Terminator Salvation?
Coincidentally, that was the only post-T2 movie with any potential to be interesting since it was something new and not a rehash of the same old time traveling assassin bot plot but it's a shame they completely fucked that one up too.
idk I think Terminator is too associated with Schwarzenegger to have its own Prey, while the Predator can hunt new actors in each movie and be played by anyone wearing the suit. even in that kinda shitty Christian Bale and the guy from Avatar Terminator prequel, Salvation? they had a cgi Schwarzenegger cameo. after that I think they brought him back for the next 2 movies because they realized that's who people want to see
I'm sure there's been dozens of comic one shots that take place and tell a story in the post apocalyptic robot hell world, I'm sure someone could make a decent enough movie out of one.
