James Cameron’s The Terminator established him as one of the biggest voices in sci-fi cinema when it hit theaters back in 1984. He could craft lofty narratives about future wars (and, two years later, space marine battles against Xenomorphs) while keeping things surprisingly intimate and devotedly focused on character development. The Terminator may have a seemingly unkillable cyborg tearing across Los Angeles, but what it really is about is a waitress finding love and the tremendous courage and resilience within her she never quite knew was there. But because the T-800 and Sarah Connor became so immediately iconic, the franchise has had an extremely difficult time moving on from them.

But even more than them, the franchise has had a hard time moving on from James Cameron’s sensibilities. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines may have been somewhat profitable (at least once DVD sales were included), but it was still the beginning of the protracted end because the key elements that made The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day so sublime were only being replicated, they weren’t just naturally there.

The Precipitous Drop to an Underrated Conclusion

image courtesy of paramount pictures

The Terminator was actually a fairly low budget film. If its $6.4 million 1984 price tag were adjusted to 2025 dollars it would be just $20 million. It then made about 12 times that figure, earning $78.3 million. Seven years later, Cameron’s Judgment Day cost considerably more. Specifically, upwards of $102 million. And, while its gross to budget multiple wasn’t as high as The Terminator‘s, the sequel still pulled in over half a billion dollars, which is substantial now but was jaw-dropping in the early ’90s, especially for an R-rated film.

Judgment Day is widely regarded to be the apex of the franchise. It took the wonderful things established in the first film and dialed them all up in the right way and to the right extent, all the while retaining its character-focused approach. Turning the top-tier villain of the first film and making him a friendly cyborg who bonds with a teen shouldn’t have worked, but it absolutely did. And, when the T-800 sends himself down to immolation while holding up his thumb, that should have been the end. It was the perfect finale, and because of that audiences have found it hard to continue paying for a story that already ended on a fully satisfying note.

After that note-perfect T-800 send-off, four attempts were made to breathe new life into the IP (and make the studio money). The first was the aforementioned Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which is basically a copy-pasted version of Judgment Day, though with infinitely worse writing (that “Talk to the hand” line…yeesh). Even still, it had been 12 years since Judgment Day and there was still novelty in seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger in his most famous role. The end result was a movie that grossed over $430 million, which on the surface isn’t bad, but it looks less rosy when one considers the $187 million budget and the fact it didn’t gross as much as a movie released over a decade prior.

The lesson that seemed to be learned from Rise of the Machine‘s underperformance was that the IP could go on without Schwarzenegger. Enter the focus on the man vs. machine conflict that was the ambitious but fatally bland Terminator Salvation. Released during the crowded 2009 summer movie season, it drowned under the weight of its competition and didn’t even double its huge $200 million budget. The planned trilogy ended on a cliffhanger, never to be expanded upon.

Six years later, the execrable Terminator Genisys took only one thing out of Salvation‘s playbook, and it wasn’t exactly a good thing. Specifically, its PG-13 rating, which isn’t the banner under which this violent IP operates at its peak. It just came across as an even more watered-down and overcomplicated version of Cameron’s two classics, and that’s exactly how it plays.

So, by this point, the audience felt Rise of the Machines was average and felt outright burned by Salvation and Genisys. Because of this, Terminator: Dark Fate could have been a masterpiece (and, frankly, when compared to those other three, it pretty much is) and it still wouldn’t have been able to re-grab many of the fans and general audience members alike who had walked away for good. Even the return of Linda Hamilton, who hadn’t been seen since Judgment Day, wasn’t enough to bolster the interest of prospective ticket buyers.

It’s a shame, too, because Dark Fate was the only sequel to come close to capturing the spirit and sense of danger present in Cameron’s two movies. The big swing with the new T-800 character actually works fairly well, Gabriel Luna does a great job as Rev-9, a Terminator that is basically a hybrid of the T-800 and T-1000, and Natalia Reyes’ Dani Ramos was the new protagonist the franchise deserved.

Yet, because the audience had been burned a few times and because Dark Fate‘s marketing didn’t really sell it as something new, it became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. Again, the irony is that what the audience initially wanted was more of that Cameron-Hamilton-Schwarzenegger magic, and Tim Miller’s film delivers that as much as a film released 28 years after Judgment Day could. But, in time, people just grew tired of this particular IP and felt they didn’t need to shell out $15 for something they already have two perfect versions of at home on their DVD shelf. Cameron is rumored to be working on a script for another installment, and that will likely result in something even better than Dark Fate, but even his presence may not be enough to get the project the green light.

Stream The Terminator on AMC+ and Terminator: Dark Fate on Paramount+.

What are your thoughts on Terminator: Dark Fate? Was it really the movie that should have derailed the franchise? Let us know in the comments.