Terminator movies: some are good, some are bad, and some are harder to watch
than a nuclear apocalypse. Here's what we love — and hate — about this iconic film franchise.
As maligned as its reputation may be among fans and critics, Terminator Salvation is
a criminally under-appreciated entry in the wider Terminator franchise. One of the things
that makes the 2009 film stand apart from the rest is that it makes an effort to break from
the usual narrative formula of the series, trying to change what a Terminator movie can be. Though
the film itself leaves room for improvement, Salvation offers a surprisingly refreshing
installment in the franchise, especially compared to its more contrived follow-ups.
"Come with me if you wanna live."
After several movies teasing an epic war for survival between humanity and sentient machines,
Terminator: Salvation is actually set during the post-apocalyptic conflict,
after Skynet has unleashed a devastating nuclear attack. Rather than relying on the
standard Terminator plotline of protagonists on the run from a relentless killing machine,
Salvation is a war story, one that finds humanity on the back foot. Instead of
a prophesized hero embracing their wartime destiny, Salvation follows a rugged survivor
as he attempts to navigate the war-torn world — and it's all the better for it.
The most obvious shortcoming of the Terminator franchise is that there are
way too many sequels and reboots to the first two movies. These follow-ups tend to get lost
in their own failed attempts to continue the original story, often playing with continuity
in radically different ways while noticeably suffering from diminishing returns in quality.
Since 1991's Judgment Day, there have been four additional Terminator movies,
none of which reached the critical acclaim of the first two films. The
franchise reached its low point in 2015 with Terminator Genisys,
which holds a paltry 26% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Though 2019's Terminator:
Dark Fate enjoyed the highest acclaim since Judgment Day, with a 70% Rotten Tomatoes score,
it was still a financial disappointment, earning just $261 million at the worldwide box office.
Composer Brad Fiedel's theme and score for the first two Terminator movies are relatively simple
but instantly recognizable. The 1984 original film features a stripped-down industrial sound,
driven largely by synthesizers, oscillators, and ambient noise to set the mood. These minimalist
sensibilities balance the grounded '80s setting with the futuristic stakes at play.
Fiedel returned to score Judgment Day. For the sequel, he maintained the iconic themes
from his previous work while upping the ante in terms of instrumentation. Specifically,
he introduced full orchestration to the score, allowing for a fuller and warmer sound in order
to take advantage of the heightened scope and elevate the story's quieter moments.
Fiedel's work on the score for the first two movies subtly laid the musical foundations
for the entire franchise, and his influence has been felt across every subsequent film.
"What day is it? The date!"
"12th... May... Thursday."
"What year?!"
The first few Terminator movies take a relatively simple approach to time travel
mechanics –- soldiers from the future travel back in time to alter the course of history by killing
those who would shape humanity's destiny. Salvation largely shirks the time travel
component of the franchise altogether, telling a complete story set within one relative period
without anyone traveling through the time stream. This tight approach to time travel
descends into progressively more complicated timeline mechanics after Salvation, however,
making the science fiction elements more confusing and intrusive to each film's story.
Genisys introduces the concepts of temporal paradoxes and divergent timelines caused by
tampering with the space-time continuum, with the characters' lives affected by these drastic
changes. Dark Fate goes one step further by completely changing the future conflict,
as a different sentient A.I. replaces Skynet and successfully assassinates
John Connor before he can save humanity, disrupting the original timeline. Both of
these films take a relatively clean take on the concept of time travel and muddle it,
leading to a confusing and entirely unnecessary mish-mash of continuities.
The first couple of Terminator movies use pacing in a similar way. With the Terminators scouring
the greater Los Angeles area for their intended targets, the lead characters are forced on the
run before regrouping to take on the antagonist. This premise provides a perfect opportunity for
filmmakers to ratchet up the tension as the heroes lie low, only barely evading their
cybernetic pursuers before the big action set pieces kick off. When the movies do cut loose
for these action sequences, they deliver on this sudden, cathartic release of tension
and suspense to great effect. All in all, the Terminator movies are a masterclass in action
movie pacing, knowing just when to come up for air — before diving right back in.
The Terminator franchise has always enjoyed the occasional moment of humor,
employed throughout the movies to break up the tension for the audience. What the films
following Judgment Day tend to forget, however, is that the funnier moments in
the first two movies were subtly employed so as to not detract from the narrative stakes
and overarching tone. The questionable use of humor is apparent as early as Terminator 3:
Rise of the Machines, and does not noticeably improve in its follow-ups.
"Talk to the hand."
Genisys and Dark Fate continue to poke fun at the characters in increasingly awkward ways,
with the latter portraying a retired T-800 who became an interior decorator. Though the
early movies were not without levity, the later Terminator entries' sense of humor
ventures into camp and self-parody in ways that threaten to derail each story's atmosphere.
While the franchise as a whole is known for its bombastic action,
the original Terminator opts for a more grounded, intimate approach to its thrills.
The first movie is almost paced like a slasher movie, as the T-800 brutally eliminates anyone
who gets in its way. The only major things differentiating the Terminator from typical
slashers is a preference for guns over knives — and a metallic endoskeleton, of course.
These horrific sensibilities are on full display when the T-800 breaks into Sarah's
apartment and kills her roommate, Ginger, along with Ginger's boyfriend. Sarah desperately calls
her apartment to warn her friends of the threat… but they're already preoccupied.
In true slasher movie fashion, after their romantic interlude, the couple are murdered
by their stalker. This moment showcases just how relentless the Terminator can be,
while demonstrating that the movie is just as terrifying as it is exciting.
"I'll be back."
Arnold Schwarzenegger's career was catapulted to new heights by The Terminator,
and the franchise has always maintained its connection to the legendary action hero.
Though Schwarzenegger is a welcome sight in the first few films, the franchise goes to ridiculous
lengths to bring him back and allow him to reprise his star-making role. By Salvation,
it starts to feel like the narrative needs to move beyond Schwarzenegger, but the film series itself
has always existed in the actor's shadow in a way that prevents it from forging new ground.
Salvation was produced while Schwarzenegger was serving as Governor of California, prompting the
2009 movie to use CGI and a body double instead. The appearance feels forced and distracts from
the movie's climax rather than adding any sense of resonance or relevance to the finale. Dark
Fate also shoe-horns Schwarzenegger's T-800 into the story, with the cyborg living in self-imposed
retirement for decades before emerging to conveniently team up with Sarah late in the
film. It's past time for the Terminator franchise to move past its biggest star.
Judgment Day introduces the fearsome T-1000, a more advanced Terminator from the post-apocalyptic
future. The T-1000's unique composition allows him to transform his body into different
forms as he stalks John and Sarah Connor. A breathtaking technical achievement in 1991,
the special effects to bring the T-1000 to life still hold up today as a visually impressive feat.
James Cameron worked closely with Industrial Light & Magic on Judgment Day, with approximately $5
million from the production budget spent on visual effects. This investment more than paid off,
with the liquid metal arguably standing out as the most memorable visual effect in the franchise.
The Terminator films following Judgment Day each have a tendency to employ twists
late in the story to surprise their audiences and up the stakes. However,
these twists rarely connect with audiences and serve more as distractions than anything else.
For example, Terminator: Genisys posits that an alternate timeline version of John
has been transformed into a time-traveling Terminator himself. Dark Fate, meanwhile,
reveals that the retired T-800 has secretly been feeding Sarah information to track down other
Terminators, a plot point that makes less and less sense the more one thinks about it. Still,
it could always be worse: In the unused original ending for Terminator Salvation,
John Connor is killed off altogether, before his face is grafted onto Marcus' — who then
unceremoniously massacres the rest of the movie's lead characters.
At a time when female action protagonists were a rare sight in major Hollywood productions,
Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor became one of the most recognizable sci-fi action heroes
in history. The Terminator sees Sarah transform from a normal woman in a dead
end job to a hardened fighter who delivers the killing blow against the T-800. This
character evolution continued into Judgment Day and Dark Fate, with Sarah becoming a
seasoned veteran who is quite capable of taking down Terminators by herself.
"I'll be back"
Hamilton's performance is a huge part of Sarah Connor's depiction as not just as a survivor,
but as a warrior, too. Hamilton made Sarah a bonafide action hero, channeling her trauma
into a steely resolve. To balance this, Hamilton displays a tragic vulnerability in Sarah too,
giving the franchise its most nuanced performance by far.
There are a few effective plot twists in the Terminator franchise, but some of them were
infamously spoiled for audiences by the movies' marketing campaigns. In the beginning of Judgment
Day, the T-800 is positioned as another model sent back to assassinate John before it saves
him from the T-1000 in the nick of time. It's a thrilling twist if you don't know it's coming,
but this heroic change in direction for the T-800 was spoiled in the film's trailers.
"This time, there are two. Terminator 2."
Meanwhile, Salvation revolves around Marcus discovering he's a cyborg after
he's inspected by human freedom fighters during the war against the machines. This
twist was similarly spoiled in the trailers and television ads for the film; as a result,
audiences were aware of Marcus' cybernetic secret long before he discovered it for himself.
Armed with a whole arsenal of weaponry and some of the most iconic catchphrases in cinematic history,
Arnold Schwarzenegger became a household name thanks to The Terminator. The
1984 film almost totally revolves around Schwarzenegger's performance as the T-800,
with his stoic demeanor and chiseled physique defining the franchise as a whole. Seven years
after portraying the ultimate sci-fi antagonist, Schwarzenegger's turn as a
very different T-800 in Judgment Day effectively reframed him as the heroic face of the franchise.
There's a reason why the film series keeps bringing back Schwarzenegger to reprise his
fan-favorite role, even when it works to the story's detriment. Decades after his debut
as the T-800, Schwarzenegger never feels like he's phoning it in as the futuristic killer,
even with lesser material to work with in later films.
The Terminator series is prone to the worst kind of sequels — ones that not only dilute the quality
of the franchise, but also actively make plot points from previous installments irrelevant.
This unfortunate trend begins as early as Judgment Day, with the revelation that Terminators have
shifted their priorities towards assassinating John after failing to kill Sarah. However,
the subsequent set of sequels do even further harm to the overarching story and its legacy.
For example, Rise of the Machines reveals that machine-driven Armageddon was inevitable all
along, rendering Sarah and John's efforts in the second movie totally useless. Dark
Fate is the most egregious of all in this regard, with the movie opening
with a T-800 successfully assassinating John before he can fulfill his destiny.
This nullifies the struggles that Sarah endured to survive in the preceding films,
and the sequel scrambles to find new ways to continue the story.