Can James Cameron save the Ter­mi­na­tor franchise?

James Cameron appears to have tak­en a pity­ing glance at the pop­u­lar movie fran­chise he launched in 1984, stop­ping short of reach­ing out and declar­ing, Kyle Reese-style, ​“Come with me if you want to live.”

He’s been busy of late work­ing on his mul­ti­ple Avatar sequels, so in all like­li­hood he won’t be writ­ing and direct­ing a new Ter­mi­na­tor film any­time soon. In 2019, how­ev­er, the rights revert to him – the orig­i­nal own­er – and he’s mad keen on shep­herd­ing the jug­ger­naut sci-fi prop­er­ty back to health. He wants Dead­pool​’s Tim Miller to take charge of what is already being billed as a reboot/​final chapter.

Before their respec­tive releas­es, Cameron had noth­ing but kind things to say about Ter­mi­na­tor 3: Rise of the Machines, Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion and Ter­mi­na­tor Genisys, even going on cam­era in the case of the lat­ter to con­vince us that this time the film­mak­ers had got it right. Fans have every right to be wary of being bull­shit­ted again, because let’s face it, the Ter­mi­na­tor mythol­o­gy (includ­ing the Sarah Con­nor Chron­i­cles TV show) has become a gigan­tic mess post-Cameron. The fates of numer­ous failed sequels would be a cau­tion­ary tale if Hol­ly­wood ever learned its lessons. Instead, pro­duc­ers sim­ply hit the reboot but­ton and hope for a dif­fer­ent outcome.

Both The Ter­mi­na­tor and Ter­mi­na­tor 2: Judge­ment Day are major Hol­ly­wood suc­cess sto­ries pre­cise­ly because of their Jim Cameron-ness. It’s not a stretch to sug­gest that he’s the only direc­tor who could have pulled off such a feat. T3, Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion and Ter­mi­na­tor Genisys all suf­fer through a lack of cre­ative input from the franchise’s vision­ary cre­ator, the guy who fever-dreamed a met­al skele­ton clutch­ing a bunch of knives (The Ter­mi­na­tor is essen­tial­ly a sci-fi twist on a slash­er movie). In his absence, oth­er direc­tors have pissed in the soup, to bor­row Cameron’s own charm­ing turn of phrase. 

The first two Ter­mi­na­tor films work well as a con­cise two-part sto­ry, aid­ed by two espe­cial­ly strong per­for­mances from Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger. For our mon­ey, T2 is Arnie’s finest hour, the Aus­tri­an Oak human­is­ing the mon­ster in the style of James Whale’s Bride of Franken­stein. In 1991, the switcheroo from Big Bad to Big Lug was unex­pect­ed and inspired. By 2003, the shtick was get­ting stale, the comedic beats not quite hav­ing the same effect as before. In Ter­mi­na­tor Genisys, it’s a rou­tine absolute­ly rid­dled with mag­gots: at one point Emil­ia Clarke’s Sarah Con­nor refers to the T‑800 as ​“Pops”, and the rea­son giv­en for the machine appear­ing old­er is that Skynet used real human skin cells on their machines.

It’s not just the repeat­ed flog­ging of a dead horse, the sequels post-T2 wreck the nar­ra­tive by manip­u­lat­ing fur­ther the idea of pre­des­ti­na­tion and the casu­al loop to jus­ti­fy their exis­tence. If you look too close­ly at the sto­ry dynam­ics and time-trav­el the­o­ries, even at the cen­tre of Cameron’s own laud­ed films, they fall inward like a col­laps­ing pas­try. Cameron knew this, but he also knew that most audi­ences wouldn’t fever­ish­ly obsess over the details (he wasn’t quite vision­ary enough to fore­see the rise of mes­sage forums which would exhaus­tive­ly decon­struct such points). It just had to sound plau­si­ble and cool enough for the view­er to climb on board and enjoy the thrills.

So how can Cameron res­cue the Ter­mi­na­tor fran­chise? Our first sug­ges­tion would be to ditch Arnie and rein in the com­e­dy. The T‑800’s clas­sic one-lin­ers (“I’ll be back”, ​“Has­ta la vista, baby”) – let’s for­get all that. The uncom­fort­able truth is that Arnie has become a mill­stone around the franchise’s neck. The same thing hap­pened with Rip­ley in the Alien fran­chise, and Rid­ley Scott’s upcom­ing Alien: Covenant looks all the more promis­ing for hav­ing seem­ing­ly left Sigour­ney Weaver on the sidelines.

The next Ter­mi­na­tor film should also fol­low the lead of Neill Blomkamp’s cur­rent­ly post­poned Alien sequel by pre­tend­ing that every­thing after T2 was just a bad dream. Didn’t hap­pen, move along, noth­ing to see here. That way, Cameron can tru­ly take own­er­ship of the time­line and bring Sarah Con­nor back in a way that doesn’t feel forced. The chase thriller ele­ment is bust, too. But the tech-noir night­mare vibe of T1 hasn’t real­ly been touched upon since. The tone has got­ten increas­ing­ly lighter. Why not return to the dark?

One lin­ger­ing prob­lem is that every­thing is tied up (per­haps a lit­tle too) neat­ly at the end of T2: the liq­uid met­al T‑1000 is destroyed; the sur­viv­ing T‑800 arm and pro­cess­ing chip from T1 is chucked into the fur­nace; and T2’s repro­grammed T‑800 makes the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice. Cameron has said that he wants to fur­ther explore humankind’s rela­tion­ship to tech­nol­o­gy and how will­ing­ly we give our­selves over to it. He’s right about that, but the trick is to turn these high­fa­lutin con­cerns into a block­buster filled with great action and gen­uine excite­ment, all the while pro­vid­ing a smart con­tin­u­a­tion of a sto­ry which didn’t real­ly need extend­ing in the first place.

It’s a toughie, but if any­one can get the fran­chise back on track, it’s James Cameron.