Terminator 7 could revive the Terminator franchise by looking to a key element of Terminator: Genysis and Terminator: Dark Fate. The Terminator movies were once some of the hottest action and sci-fi movies around with the franchise’s first two installments, with 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day standing as the franchise’s peak. However, subsequent Terminator movies have failed to recapture the success of the original, with Terminator: Dark Fate unfortunately bombing in 2019.
Since then, the Terminator franchise’s creator James Cameron has begun working on Terminator 7, which will focus more on the A.I. of Skynet than the machines themselves. Oddly, despite Terminator: Genysis and Terminator: Dark Fate each underperforming, both would introduce a key idea that could be exactly what the Terminator franchise needs to reinvigorate itself. In short, Terminator 7 could truly look at the world through the eyes of the Terminators themselves, which has not really been done in any of the Terminator movies.
The Terminator Franchise Has Never Truly Shown The Perspective Of The Terminators
To make Skynet and the machines it controls as terrifying an enemy as possible, the Terminator franchise has usually portrayed them in the most machine-like way possible. In true machine fashion, Skynet interprets all humans as a threat and coldly decides to wipe them out without a second thought. This approach has enabled the Terminator franchise to place a very black-and-white emphasis on its man-versus-machines war. However, for as central as the Terminators themselves are to the Terminator universe, their point of view has consistently taken a backseat to those of Skynet and the human resistance.
As machines literally manufactured on Skynet assembly lines, the Terminators are specifically designed to not think for themselves, and have always been portrayed as either programmed killers or occasionally as human protectors, and in either case, they’re simply following orders. While Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles would begin to show the Terminator’s potential for growth with the Terminator dubbed Cameron (Summer Glau), Terminator: Genysis and Terminator: Dark Fate would take it even further.
Genysis & Dark Fate Began To Tap Into The Terminator’s Minds
As a semi-reboot of the Terminator franchise, Terminator: Genysis would present a T-800 model played by Schwarzenegger in a completely new light as a reprogrammed Terminator sent back to the early ’70s to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke). This Terminator would take on the unique role of not just protecting but raising the orphaned Sarah as his daughter, Sarah even coming to call him “Pops” and the T-800 coming to see himself the same way. Terminator: Dark Fate would show another re-invention of the cyborgs from the future. The movie opens with the unthinkable of Schwarzenegger’s T-800 killing a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) in 1998.
With no orders left to follow and no way to return to the future, the T-800 would gradually come to learn how much John’s death had destroyed Sarah (Linda Hamilton). He would then seek to atone for this act by helping Sarah stop the re-set apocalyptic future, with the T-800 sacrificing itself “for John” in Terminator: Dark Fate‘s ending. In both cases, Genysis and Dark Fate would do something no other Terminator movies had done by getting inside the heads of the Terminators themselves and guiding them towards becoming, in a sense, human. That very symbolic evolution of machine to man is the untapped Terminator story that Terminator 7 can and should explore.
Cameron’s Terminator Reboot Can Explore The Terminator’s Point Of View
Cameron has been relatively vague on how Terminator 7 will continue the Terminator franchise, other than its A.I. focus, but this is also a perfect setup for Terminator 7 to fully humanize the Terminators. With Skynet dictating the operations of every machine under its command, Skynet deliberately blocks the Terminators from the very sentience that it has developed. Terminator 7 could run with this by centering, for the first time, upon one or more Terminators as its main characters, with the Terminators gradually coming to realize the nature of their creation.
In turn, the Terminators could then come to see the humans they are tasked with eliminating as aspirational beings, sentient life forms who think for themselves and have something to live for beyond simply existing. The Terminator franchise is all about how delicate and valuable life really is, but by following the early examples set by Terminator: Genysis and Terminator: Dark Fate, Terminator 7 could be the first chapter of the franchise to show that can even extend that to programmed cyborgs, who realize they can be so much more than killing machines.
