You know those cinematic universes you hear so much about? Of course you do, you know them, you love them, you can't walk into a cinema without running face first into them. Brilliant aren't they? Brilliant that is, when they work. But do you remember the time before them? Back to the age where your humble blockbuster, if it did well, could be part of a veritable cinematic franchise?
You know it, the half-way house between one shot film entries and rolling cinematic odysseys. You get a film and if it did well you get a sequel, repeat and re-roll until the goodwill and the money stops pouring in. They're still around of course, you might even say it's the bedrock for what we have now in the MCU, the DCEU and all the other U's launched and in some cases, abandoned over the last decade.
Once upon a time though, film series with entries numbering in the dozens was a relatively unheard of thing. Sequel entries were counted in single digits. Usually covering maybe one or two overarching stories and when they wrapped up, they were done. Done as in done. As in these films were rarely envisioned as launch pads for perpetual follow-ups galore. I put to you dear reader, the question of what happens when something envisioned as such, as a finite unit of storytelling that reaches its conclusion has to therefore rise from the blockbuster graveyard again and again and again? Enter The Terminator!
To be honest you can pick any one of the tentpole action movie franchises from God's chosen decade for the purposes of this exercise. However for the sake of argument let's pick the age old tale of the star crossed resistance leader and the murder machines that want him so. You know the deal. Man makes AI. AI has serious misgivings about man and a mild case of nuclear war later, we're moseying on back through time with slim hope and zero clothing.
The original film is a classic of course. A lean mean tale of pursuit punctuated by gunfire, cold-blooded murder and of course, love. An iconic story arc and performance sees a waitress become the saviour of the future. A certain Austrian bodybuilder cements his career in the upper echelons of Hollywood action movies and that theme tune becomes forever embedded on my Spotify playlist.
A few years later would see a shiny new decade and with God's second favourite decade arrived Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The pinnacle of the series and quite possibly action movies in general. Everything was bigger, louder and deadlier. Nuclear flame swallowed the world and all who dwelt within it. A playground on fire, a charred skeleton gripping a chain link fence, a hand peeled off to reveal a metallic horror within and shapeless, formless death on your tail with no single face to call it's own. It's good, oh it's very good and it's quite possibly the start of the summer blockbuster as we would recognise it now.
Then, there was nothing. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines wouldn't arrive for another twelve years and quite frankly, it wasn't worth the wait. It's okay to be sure but it doesn't find it's way out of the shadow of what came before, not just it's prequels but action movies generally. Things had moved on and what we had at the end of that time didn't quite validate the wait. There was still an appetite for the material, you still had your comics, videogames and lunch boxes but there was definitely a note of the underwhelming about the third entry and a malaise that would only grow from this point on.
Since then there have been further efforts to restart a series that peaked on it's first sequel. The most successful of these was probably The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a TV outing that got cancelled with a lot of unfulfilled threads left hanging. Cinematically we're now up to another trilogy of Terminator entries and yes I am suddenly feeling very old. Truth be told I feel this is more the anti-trilogy of trilogies however. In Terminators Salvation, Genesys and Dark Fate, we have three disconnected attempts to Frankenstein a franchise back to life that all failed to stick the landing.
All three had promise I think. Salvation could have made good on the promise of an epic future war film that was only hinted at in what came before. Genesys could have taken Terminator multiversal, whether you think it was a good idea or not, at least it was a new idea that raised the stakes. Dark Fate could have tapped into that special secret something that made the good Terminators great with the involvement of James Cameron and a direct line back to Judgement Day. Instead all three efforts fell by the wayside, unable to get a foothold in the must-watch lists of the imagination. Money was made to be sure but on the whole they came, they underwhelmed, they went.
The reasons are many but I think it does boil down to an essential point. If the first two Terminators were the right films at the right time with the right direction, story and cast then the films since have consistently lacked all three at the same time, some more than others. Less a case of what the films since have done and more a point about what the originals did so well. When John Connor tears up whilst the T-800 lowers itself into molten metal at the end of Judgement Day, it's a reminder that for all it's bombast these films have heart to them. A solid emotional core that gives this tale of killer robots meaning and resonance lacking in all the other killer robot movies from the 1980's.
Hand in hand with this is of course the money. For as long as it has existed, The Terminator rights have not been in any one pair of hands for very long. Notably, before the first film came out Cameron sold them for $1. Fast forward and the last time they changed hands it was for just under $20 million, this after previously changing hands for even more. With such amounts comes the inextricable need to produce something, anything to make that money back. Thus we arrive at where we're at now. Dark Fate got some of that elusive buzz but not much more alas. The plot felt like an exercise in rebranding rather than creating something truly compelling and there hasn't been any further word on a follow up since. This may not be a sentence that ages well but the Terminator franchise may have finally screeched to a halt but only by default. Those in charge presumably asking themselves not what to do but what's left to do?
It's a curious case study in how to exhaust something creatively but like I said it's not limited to this one example. The various horror franchises of the 80's come to mind, the Predator series comes to mind. The Fast and the Furious films come to... no actually they're still making those and they're still making money, somehow. Anyway is there a way of reigniting it still? Probably, a repeated failure to execute on the right idea doesn't mean there are no winning ideas left but it is going to require a deft touch to course correct it now and make something that will be fondly recalled decades from now.
Where to leave it? Okay here's one for free, how about this? What does the world needs today I ask you? Peace? Love? Understanding? No what the world needs today is a crossover! The crossover to end all crossovers in fact and perhaps the only way to save this franchise and indeed the world! Imagine if you will: Skynet in the blue corner and none other than Philadephia's own Rocky Balboa in the red! Oh yes, worlds will collide folks when they duke it out with the future of humanity at stake! Twelve rounds of pure man on machine action! A film that will grosse more money than what the world actually has. I'm telling you it will generate the kind of box office take that will leave banks reeling as they run out of space for all that money. Hollywood call me baby, let's make the magic happen!
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