This is going to be a little bit experimental for this blog. Instead of examining and critiquing I’m putting forward my own pitch for where the Terminator franchise can go. Now to be clear, the Terminator franchise can go literally anywhere and anytime and do pretty much anything! However, the core of the franchise needs some repair work before we can branch into the more exotic ideas. To do that we need to go back to the beginning (And in some ways, the end).
Much like the previous three Terminator movies, there is an intention here to have a trilogy. However this trilogy is different in that it tells a very specific and important story. It also makes sure the first entry works absolutely as a stand alone. If the film is a success it has a clear path for continuation. However, the audience can just as easily fill in the blanks themself. Scaling the movie budgets up with each installment means that each film operates with a reasonable safety margin. It’s only really the third movie that would require anything close to modern Hollywood budget. Because of the length I’ve split this into three posts.
The set up
If this was a real movie and I was in charge of it’s marketing I wouldn’t be revealing the true premise to the audience. I may even let the press refer to it as a reboot. But it wouldn’t really be. As I covered in the previous instalments, Terminator 2 actually changed the timeline. That means there has to be more than one timeline. These timelines may branch into alternate universes or actually change themselves but they still exist (or did exist).
I am making one key assumption here: That the John Connor that defeated Skynet can only be a John Connor whose parents are Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. I am also going with the idea that John sent Kyle back in time knowing he was his father. This would go without saying if the pure time loop was still in place, but it is not. Instead we have alternative timelines and that means the timeline in which the T800 and Kyle Reese came from in The Terminator was not the first version of the Skynet story.
Skynet 1.0
This is the key to the story. In actual fact, the main timeline we follow in The Terminator is actually the third version of the story playing out. We see glimpses of the second version of the timeline, as the dark future from which Kyle and the T800 came, but we don’t get even a sniff of the original one. Terminator 2 starts in the third timeline, but morphs into a fourth as soon as the Terminators travel back and Sarah goes on her quest to stop Skynet. So what are these first two timelines?
Well, the second timeline is the one in which John Connor leads the resistance and defeats Skynet. However, that John Connor didn’t experience the events of The Terminator since this isn’t a time loop. He did experience something though since his father is still Kyle Reese and to be his father, he had to travel back in time and meet Sarah. However he wouldn’t have travelled back to protect Sarah since he must have travelled from the original timeline and that is a timeline in which there was no John Connor. Logically he would not exist in that timeline, since he was a child of a time traveller.
So this is where we start our story… At the End.
2028: The Darkest Future
Our story opens in the darkest timeline. One where an unprepared world faced Skynet and lost. The resistance wouldn’t have made it far enough for Skynet to even really need the T800 Terminators and this gives us an excuse to bring in new enemies that on the surface appear less advanced but could potentially be more scary. I think the change is important here since we need to break hard from the Arnold model and demonstrate the rest of the elements of the franchise have worth. Humanity have but one option for survival and that is time travel. Enter Miles Dyson.
Dyson obviously is the top scientist associated with the Terminator franchise and it has a certain amount of poetry to the idea that the man responsible for the downfall of mankind in the third timeline is it’s potential saviour in the first. So it makes sense to have him actually be the inventor of the time travel technique and it actually then makes a lot of sense as to why time travel in the franchise requires an organic body. This could be a failsafe put in by Dyson and it could be explained that the future versions of Skynet were actually using Dysons original designs (But that’s something we’ll come to later).
So Dyson builds his time machine. Skynet’s origins though are a mystery to the resistance. So they intend to go into the past with two goals. Their primary first is to find out how Skynet was created and if possible stop it. But if that fails the second option is to prepare a resistance in advance to hopefully give Humanity a real chance. Obviously part of this team is Kyle Reece, but since humanity as lost there is no reason for it to be just one guy. The intention is for everyone to go back except one person (Dyson) who will stay behind and destroy the device so Skynet can’t attempt to use the technology (No one is certain the machines won’t find a way to get around the organic limitation).
Enter The Swarm
But this is where it doesn’t go to plan and we introduce our new form of Terminator I have dubbed “The Swarm”. This is basically a microbot Terminator, somewhat like the nanobot T5000 in Genisys but not anywhere near as advanced (Microbots are about 1mm in size while nanobots are 10,000 times smaller) and doesn’t look at all like Matt Smith. It can however do variations of what the T5000 could. There were some good ideas in Genisys but they were drowned in a sea of terrible ideas. Nanobots are actually insanely over powered, so best avoided in the franchise for as long as possible. However microbots are scary as hell, look like a hellish swarm of insects and can still do a lot of cool stuff.
The Swarm is not a common Terminator in this dark future. It is more like a general, since it’s microbots can assume direct control of other Terminators, can interface with electronics and can even take control of people. It is a highly flexible leader and infiltrator. So one of these turning up would be a complete disaster for the resistance. Obviously Kyle Reece makes it into the past and a couple of his companions with him, but most of them end up falling to the Swarm and it’s minions. Dyson is not able to initiate the self destruct and on investigating the computer terminal the swarm comes up with a solution. He sends his entire swarm into the mouth of Dyson and then uses him like a meat suit to travel to the past in.
1983: The Beginning
The resistances mission is now even more complicated. Not only do they need to try and stop Skynet being created they also have The Swarm to deal with. Fortunately their enemy is without it’s army but is still incredibly formidable and able to control electronic devices. Luckily Kyle is not alone… at least not yet. You probably guessed but the whole reason Kyle is accompanied on this trip is to give the story some Red Shirts. Not necessarily too quickly though. But they do need to split up and this eventually leads to a wounded Kyle crossing paths with… you guessed it, Sarah Connor.
I’m going to get pretty vague at this point and skip the bulk of the film. You can tell what direction this is going and I’m not writing a novel here, just giving you a pitch. Eventually Kyle and Sarah are able to defeat the Swarm (or at least appears to have). However while continuing his investigation into Skynets origin Kyle comes across a shocking revelation: Skynet machine codes are active on Arpnet. It seems the Swarm wasn’t just there to take out the resistance team but also as a backup plan to help facilitate Skynet’s creation. While our heroes may have destroyed the main bulk of the some of the microbots are still active.
Kyle has his work cut out for him, but he is not alone. Sarah has fallen for him and is determined to help him stop this dark future from happening. Oh and the movie ends in 1984 with her telling him she is pregnant…. This is of course quite similar to the original film but with a number of key twists that should keep things fresh and in some ways turns things on their head. In this movie Kyle is himself being hunted and Sarah ends up saving him. They’ve done that idea before, but this isn’t Super-Sarah the butt kicking super solider. This is regular diner waitress Sarah discovering her own inner strength in a far more human fashion. The movie should be doable at a reasonable budget point and will focus on horror and science fiction elements.
I’ll Be Back
That’s it for part one. This first film should be workable on a reasonable budget. Admittedly not as low as the original film, but far less than any of the sequels. A budget of $80m would require a box office of about $200m global to get into profit. Every Terminator movie after the first has drawn over this, even Dark Fate and Genisys. See this isn’t just a creative pitch, but a financial one too. Let’s remember “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” actually drew less at the box office than “Answer the Call” but Afterlife was a success because the budget was FAR lower than the 2016 disaster. Anyway, in the next part we start to move in a more original direction and dig deeper into one of my core concepts, how humanities self loathing and nihilism could be the true catalyst of its own destruction, not the whims of a computer.
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