James Cameron is hard at work with the seventh installment of the Terminator franchise, and he's shared small details in the past about what he's aiming to accomplish with this next movie. It's been nearly 40 years since the first Terminator hit theaters, and every following movie in the series has been ultimately the same. If the next movie is going to be successful, it's going to need more than James Cameron at the helm. It needs to take an entirely new direction, but it can look at previous installments to find the right path forward.
Considering creators have overplayed the "robots turn against humanity" trope in every medium from cinema to comics, Cameron's next Terminator movie needs to feel fresh. Terminator: Dark Fate felt like a proper return to form with its superior story, acting, and production quality compared to its immediate predecessor, but it wasn't enough. Unfortunately, it was the lowest-grossing movie in the franchise, losing the studio money and ultimately throwing future sequels into question. If Cameron gets to finish his script for the seventh movie, there are a few things he should consider.
Terminator 3: What Makes It Such A Good Sequel?
Terminator 3 is one of the films in the franchise that's been ridiculed for being similar to Cameron's films, but why is it actually a worthy sequel?
Terminator Salvation Had the Right Idea
The first two Terminator films set a formula: Assassin goes back in time to kill a member of the Connor family, and a guardian follows to protect John or Sarah Connor. It worked. In fact, it worked very well, but it didn't need to be the premise of every installment in the franchise. By the time Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines came around, the formula lost its appeal. After creating three movies with the same shtick, eventually studios need to realize they're pumping out the same movie.
Terminator: Salvation, on the other hand, took a different route. It missed the mark in some areas, such as the weird human/cyborg hybrid that doesn't know it's a terminator and "moto-terminators," but setting the movie in the future during the war was the path forward for this franchise. It gave fans something new to watch in a new setting. They got to see John Connor lead the charge, despite not happening the way Kyle Reese told audiences in the first film.
The movie fans want to see is the future that Kyle Reese talked about when he said:
"But there was one man who taught us to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to smash those metal motherf------s into junk. He turned it around. He brought us back from the brink."
Honestly, the following two Terminator movies were significant steps backward. Dark Fate was good, but it followed the same played-out formula. Fans want to see the war end, and that only happens in the future.
Take a Page from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
A television series based on Terminator was a novel idea. Unfortunately, The Sarah Connor Chronicles aired on FOX, where many shows got the axe despite ratings holding true. Now, with Netflix and other streaming services, Terminator can become a quality TV series that follows Sarah and/or John following the events of Terminator 2. Better yet, it could take place after the first film and show Sarah attacking different computer factories. The Sarah Connor Chronicles did a decent job of showing a young man dealing with the fact that he's meant to save humanity. A show following Sarah could show the struggles of raising humanity's hope as a single parent.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles ended on a pretty hefty cliffhanger, with John going to the future. Matters are worse when he ends up in a future where nobody knows his name. The future is an underutilized setting in the Terminator franchise, despite it being the very thing that John and the humans are fighting for. The time machine is barely discussed, and never seen except for a brief moment in Terminator Genisys. A timeline where nobody knows John, or John from the past going into the future, is a great premise for a series or movie in the franchise. It proves that there's still a ton of material to explore.
Leave Arnold Out Of Terminator
Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't get his start in 1984's Terminator, but it's easily one of his most iconic roles. That said, he doesn't need to continue being the face of the franchise. He's getting up there in years, and despite his impressive physique, he can't continue playing an advanced killing machine from the future. His role in Terminator: Dark Fate was a good send-off for him. At this point, if the franchise continues, the next movie should introduce a new T-800 model that can appear in several sequential films.
It started as a nice nod to the original movies that was further supported by the in-canon explanation that Skynet based all T-800s on the same human. Unless they're going to bring him back as a military general or CEO of Cyberdyne, a human, Arnold's time in Terminator should be done. The Sarah Connor Chronicles got along fine without his cameo, and any future installments will as well.