There was one man who taught us to fight.
His name is John Connor, your unborn son.
This is John Connor.
He's the savior of humanity, the ultimate signifier
of a primal resistance against the machine aggression.
And yet, in all the subsequent films,
he's failed to live up to the potential of these ideals,
which begs the question, is John Connor's time
as the savior of humanity over?
Some legend.
You must be pretty disappointed.
John Connor was first mentioned in the seminal 1984 film,
The Terminator.
He's the future savior of mankind,
who sends Kyle Reese back in time in order
to save his mother from being assassinated by killer cyborgs.
In his first outing, John Connor is less a man, and more
a mythical archetype.
It's apparent from how Kyle Reese talks about him,
that he's essentially a living Superman.
I'd die for John Connor.
However, the character never appears onscreen,
making him feel even more legendary.
And it was this super heroic backdrop
that writer and director, James Cameron,
subverted with Connor's next appearance, 1991's Judgment
Day.
The beloved leader of the resistance
makes a cameo appearance in the opening scene of the film.
And frankly, it's the closest the character has
come to achieving the potential the original film
set up, which makes the subversion of that icon
all the more interesting by casting
Edward Furlong as the petulant computer hacker child.
If I'm ever supposed to be this great military leader,
maybe you should start listening to my leadership ideas
once in a while!
John Connor symbolizes a quintessential American ideal,
that even in the face of unknowable fear,
it just takes one good man to stand up and say, no.
Just one person with courage can turn the tide
of an insurmountable situation.
There's only one problem.
Literally every single other appearance of the character
just falls flat on its face.
After the global success of T2, James Cameron
had walked away from the series.
He thought there was no more story to tell.
And you can feel it in what ended up getting made.
You're a mess.
Yeah, you're not exactly my type either.
John Connor in Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines
is one of the most frustratingly inept versions
of the character.
For some reason, John is depicted
as being scared and worried that the apocalypse they averted
is still going to happen.
But instead of being the John Connor that we want
and preparing for the invasion of robots, he kind of just
mopes around on his motorcycle and works dead end jobs.
This version of John completely misses the point.
Despite young John in T2 not being a super hero yet,
his arc over the course of the film
showcases that he's learning and growing.
And the loss of the T-800 shows him the importance
of a destiny ahead of him.
I have to go away.
No, don't do it, please, don't go!
Needless to say, Rise of the Machines
wasn't received that well, which basically stopped the franchise
dead in its tracks.
Where do we go from here?
Well, finally, the idea was put forward
to jump to the future timeline and showcase
the war with the terminators.
It was originally pitched as, what
if we made the Terminator version of Aliens, which
sounds like the greatest idea for a Terminator sequel
that's ever been put forth, only problem being, that's
not the movie they made.
That makes me feel like I know nothing.
The producers initially wanted Christian Bale
to play the lead Terminator, a half human, half machine
ex-con named Marcus.
He would act as the POV character.
And through him, you'd meet John and the rest
of the urban futuristic military types.
But Mr. Bale, riding high off the success of Batman,
didn't like the role.
He wanted to play, wait for it, John Connor, which
is kind of a brilliant idea.
Good casting, a cool idea for the movie.
It feels more or less like the franchise is writing itself,
right?
Unfortunately, McG was brought on as director,
and his flashy, vapid, and frankly,
hyper commercialized style did not
mesh with the film's desired aesthetics.
We have all lost so very much.
Terminator Salvation feels like three different movies in one,
and none of them portray a good John Connor.
The film was the first part of a supposed trilogy.
Over the course of these three films,
you would witness John evolve into his ultimate self,
the Captain America of the future.
However, you just kind of watch Christian Bale
do generic military stuff.
Fight a CGI young Arnold, and then
get the iconic facial scar from T2.
Ultimately, it left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
Simultaneously, on the small screen,
we got probably the best and most complicated
version of John Connor we'll ever
get in Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
What would future John do now?
Future John doesn't live here, you do.
The show lasted two seasons, then followed Sarah, John,
and Cameron, a female Terminator played by Summer Glau,
on the run from Terminators after the events of T2.
It did what all these other false starts
tried to do with John.
They leaned into him becoming the mythical icon
that he eventually will be, but really explored the pressure
and difficulties that it takes to mold yourself
into a superhuman.
Thomas Dekker brings a real emotional complexity
to the role, while still playing the broody teen well.
The best thing that the show adds
is the undeniable chemistry between Cameron and John.
This is the perfect evolution of The Terminator
as surrogate father archetype from T2.
He's a man who's tasked with defending humanity
from these unkillable robots, and yet,
the only real connections he's ever experienced outside
of his mother are with these robots.
That's an amazing idea.
Listen to me, I don't want to go!
Please, John, I love you!
I love you, John, and you love me.
Tragically, despite ending on a cliffhanger,
the show was canceled after its second season.
And as is the way with Terminator,
the rights for the property went into limbo for a while,
and then were snatched up by yet another company.
And want to guess how it went?
Real bad.
This time, the big idea with John Connor
was that he's The Terminator, a twist that
was given away both in the trailer and the poster
for the movie.
The less said about Terminator Genesis, the better.
Repositioning John, played by Jason Clark, as the villain,
just goes to show how far out to sea we are.
These people are just grasping at straws at this point.
Is that pain real or was that a trick of memory
from when I was less?
And so far, that's the last film to feature John.
Yes, he's in a minor cameo in the opening of Dark Fate,
but he literally is just there to die and wipe
the slate clean for a new timeline.
For much of John Connor's existence,
he's been positioned as purely a MacGuffin,
something for other characters to chase or try and control.
So it's understandable that he's had a hard time
transferring to the big screen as an actual character.
The thing most of these iterations missed,
is that John Connor is James Bond.
We want to watch him, fully formed,
go up against insurmountable odds and triumph.
We don't need to see how he became John Connor.
We already know this.
For The Terminator franchise to return
to the heights of its past glory,
the filmmakers involved either need to get John Connor right,
or move on from him completely.
We just don't ever need to see Terminators coming back
in time to kill another savior of humanity.
We need a new mechanic to drive the action of these movies, one
that steers away from John Connor or derivative archetypes
entirely.
The future is not set.
There is no fate, but what we make for ourselves.
With any luck, we won't have to deal with any new Terminator
movies any time soon.
However, if there's one thing we all know about Terminators,
they're virtually impossible to kill.
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What do you think?
Will there be yet another stab at John Connor?
If so, comment who you'd like to see as John down below.
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