There has been a lot said about the Terminator franchise in recent years. Recently, even James Cameron has piped back up on the subject, suggesting maybe he wants to give it another try. It’s been declared dead several times and some people have claimed it was never really a franchise to begin with and just a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I disagree with both of those positions. I have been a huge fan of the franchise since I saw the original film and I think it’s time to talk about the franchise and look at what went wrong and how it can be fixed.
The Perfect Storm.
As I said, I disagree with people that say it isn’t a franchise. What it definitely is not though is the MCU. It’s not a franchise you can just spam out a movie with a $200m+ budget and expect it to automatically make a profit. The problem as I see it, is that people tend to just focus on the success of Terminator 2 and mark that down as the base level reaction to a franchise entry.
That whole approach is trying to replicate the perfect storm, recapture a specific moment in time and is reducing what is a franchise to something hyper focused on one entry in it. Modern reboots tend to focus on referencing scenes instead of being true to the heart of the franchise and the T2 worship is a version of that problem.
The Cameron Effect.
The thing you have to remember about Terminator 2 is that this was a movie that benefited from the James Cameron effect, or rather ground breaking James Cameron effects! Much like with “Titanic” and “Avatar”. When you are pushing the envelope on visual effects you are going to bring in a much larger audience and Terminator 2 was doing just that with it’s liquid metal T1000.
It would be mad to assume any film about the Titanic will automatically break the $2billion mark, because it’s not the story of the “unsinkable” ship that earned it that box office it was those ground breaking effects. Even with Avatar 2, most people were expecting it to disappoint because it’s just a movie about environmentalist Smurf people… and yet, it’s on it’s way to hitting $2billion again and you can bet that isn’t for the story.
The Unstoppable Force.
Terminator 2 also benefited from the success of the first Terminator film. A movie that as an 18 certificate from a virtually unknown director (Piranha 2 hardly having cemented his name in history) took a while to build popularity to the classic it is now. By the time they announced T2 support for the original was at it’s peak and Cameron was being seen as a Director to pay attention to.
But if Cameron’s star had risen that’s true a thousand times more for Arnold. He had done the Conan movies and was known as a body builder, but wasn’t really a movie star. But by 1991 he was the biggest star on the planet. This of course is part of the reason why some people think of Terminator as just a vehicle for Arnold, but that really wasn’t the case. Last but not least the hottest band of 1991 was Gun’s and Roses and they cross promoted with the movie with their music video for “You could be mine”. There was almost no way the movie could fail.
Earning Potential
All this made for the perfect storm for Terminator 2. But it stands alone in it’s earning potential. Check out the inflation adjusted graph above. You can see each movie earns less than the last, but even that first new entry “Rise of the Machines” is a considerable drop off from T2. The third and fourth movie both actually made money despite having huge production budgets for their day (Inflation adjusted high the highest of the franchise), but they were still considered disappointments.
It’s worth noting Rise of the Machines came out 12 years after T2, giving the franchise a lot of time to cool down. Then you had six years before salvation and another six before Genisys. That’s a very spread out franchise. All four of the movies that followed T2 tried for the big budget, big box office approach and all but “Terminator Salvation” basically tried to replicate Terminator 2 both in story and style. That was never going to work.
The Arnold Factor.
The truth is if you want to look at the franchise potential of The Terminator you need to instead look at the first film and you need to move away from the second and from Arnold. There was actually a moderately successful TV series spin of the show (“The Sarah Connor Chronicles”), that came out around the same time as Salvation. The show gained a second season but was cancelled before the third largely due to backroom dealings over the rights of the franchise and the plans to move forward with a new movie trilogy starting with “Genisys”. It’s a shame because the series was the best thing from the franchise since T2.
On that note, Salvation was the franchise entry post T2 and the show and movie have something important in common, they both attempted to move the franchise away from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Salvation CGI’d his face briefly onto a T800 unit, he wasn’t involved in the movie and he didn’t even have a cameo in “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”. Both these proved the franchise is viable without Arnold and IMHO only able to survive if it actively moves away from the actors involvement. The TV series actually showcased three new Terminators all played very well (At least after the not so good pilot episode).
New Models, New Stories.
Garret Dillahunt played the hunting Terminator “Cromartie”(post pilot) and did a fantastic job of it. This is a T-888, which has a bit more psychological skills than the usual T-800’s (For manipulation and intimidation) but is still a stone cold killer. Later in the story the Terminator’s personality is erased and replaced with an AI that John and Sarah had initially presumed to be the future Skynet, but turned out to be more of a rival AI and one that could perhaps learn the value of humanity.
Throw into the mix the gorgeous Summer Glau as “Cameron” a “female” terminator reprogrammed to protect John, who he seems to have very conflicted emotions for (In other words, he really wants to have sex with her) and in season 2 a rogue T1000 with it’s own agenda and you have a very interesting story without Arnold involved. It’s a shame it was axed when the rights changed hands and it left us on a cliffhanger where John travels into the future and in doing so find a world where he is unknown.
End of Part One
This is turning out longer than I expected, so I’m going to break here and follow up with a part two later. In that entry I will look a bit more at where they went wrong and focus in on the greatness that was the original movie.
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