15 Years Ago Today, The Terminator Franchise Died In A Way It Could Never Come Back From

Summary Despite efforts to revitalize the Terminator franchise, the failure of Terminator Salvation remains a key obstacle to its success.

Terminator Salvation, intended as a soft reboot, failed critically and commercially due to behind-the-scenes issues and poor reception.

The failure of Terminator Salvation led to a series of missteps in subsequent films, highlighting the franchise's struggle to find its footing.

Like its original antagonist, the Terminator franchise has proved stubbornly difficult to kill in recent years – yet, for all the attempts to reboot the sci-fi saga, the movie series has never been able to recover from one 15-year-old failure. Despite collectively making over $2 billion at the global box office, many fans feel that Terminator has never lived up to its potential. Since the polarizing reception to 2003's Rise of the Machines, each entry has tried and failed to recapture the story's original magic. Yet while Machines marked a turning point, it was not the ultimate death knell for the franchise.

There's no denying that, even after the Rise of the Machines-induced malaise, Terminator has continued to be a major influence on pop-culture. The core concept of time-traveling killer robots is so strong that filmmakers can't help revisiting the story. Unfortunately, this desire to try and fix what many feel are the missed opportunities post-Terminator 2 has created a muddled franchise with no cohesive story and no clear future. Some observers justifiably blame lackluster releases like Terminator Genisys. However, while many modern Terminator projects have their problems, one film is more responsible for the series' predicament than any other.

Related Every Terminator Movie, Ranked Worst To Best (Including Dark Fate) The Terminator franchise is 35 years old and shows no signs of stopping. Here's every movie ranked from the 1984 original to Dark Fate.

Terminator Salvation Should've Been The Perfect Soft Reboot For The Franchise

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Released in 2009 with a fresh storyline, impressive cast, and massive budget, Terminator Salvation had the potential to perfectly relaunch Terminator for a 21st-century audience. Starring Christian Bale (fresh off the back of his iconic starring role in The Dark Knight), the movie transported audiences to a new point in the Terminator timeline, offered subtle yet significant updates to franchise lore, and moved the story forward from Rise of the Machines. And yet, despite this setup, the movie failed critically and commercially – kickstarting the trend of continual Terminator reboots that has dogged the franchise ever since.

What made Terminator Salvation such a letdown was how it wasted what should have been an exciting origin story for a new series. Instead of using a contemporary setting and letting the audience imagine the consequences of failure, Salvation was, for the first time, set entirely during the human/machine conflict. This not only avoided many of the time-traveling/different future pitfalls that complicated so much of previous Terminator lore, but potentially paved the way for new stories to follow this template. With a new narrative, characters, and approach to the source material, Salvation should have been the perfect reset.

What Went Wrong With Terminator Salvation

Unfortunately, despite this potential, Terminator Salvation will be forever remembered as a historical failure for the series. Although the movie made $371.1 million at the global box office, its reported $200 million budget made it a commercial failure – based on the norm that a movie needs to make around two-and-a-half times its budget. The story was even worse critically, with just 33% of critics giving Terminator Salvation a positive review (via Rotten Tomatoes). The mediocrity of its financial performance, combined with generally poor audience reception, has greatly tarnished the film's legacy, securing its status as a disappointment.

There are many reasons why Terminator Salvation failed to deliver what could have been an exciting reset for the series. Behind the scenes, the movie experienced problems from the outset. A bidding war for the rights to the Terminator franchise left the project in development hell for years, before the movie as it was released began to take shape. Over the course of production, multiple writers joined and left the project – including Jonathan Nolan – with the problems exacerbated by a series of writers strikes in Hollywood. This resulted in multiple script and story changes – including a complete rewriting of the film's third act.

Aside from star Christian Bale's well-publicized meltdown, the production posed several problems – even putting some actors in danger.

Perhaps the biggest problems with Terminator Salvation, however, were on set. Aside from star Christian Bale's well-publicized rant, the production posed several problems – even putting some actors in danger. Director McG insisted on mainly practical effects, likening the film's production to the notoriously difficult Apocalypse Now in an interview with Sci-Fi Wire. Not only did Bale subsequently break his hand, but a special effects specialist on the film nearly lost his leg. These problems, combined with the wider storytelling and legal issues, created a perfect storm from which it was difficult to recover.

Why Terminator Salvation Sequels Didn't Happen

Another reason why Terminator Salvation feels like such a missed opportunity is that it was meant to be the genesis for an entirely new trilogy. Even while production was ongoing, the intention was always to revisit the film's future setting in later installments, changing the Terminator franchise's focus from time travel to post-apocalyptic dystopia. However, this plan quickly came unstuck, both as a result of Salvation's performance and further behind-the-scenes drama.

Not only did Salvation's $371 million box office underwhelm (infamously, the movie became the first Terminator film to open at number 2 on the US box office), but future story plans were immediately jeopardized by the financial problems faced by production studio The Halcyon Company. After the film's release, The Halcyon Company filed for bankruptcy, resulting in Terminator's rights once again coming up for sale. The eventual consequence was that all original Salvation sequel plans were abandoned in favor of a hard reset with the equally divisive Terminator Genisys.

Related Every Terminator Viewing Order: Chronological, Release, & More The Terminator timeline is tricky so here are some of the potential viewing orders for movies in the Terminator franchise.

The Terminator Franchise Has Never Truly Recovered From Salvation

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On one level, Salvation looks like an aberration in the overall series. Not only is it the only movie in the series not to feature original star Arnold Schwarzenegger (although his likeness does briefly appear), but no other Terminator movie uses the movie's setting, story, or cast. This highlights how each subsequent Terminator entry has tried to distance itself from Salvation, finding a new way to reboot the story. And yet, because each later attempt has been a further failure, it's become increasingly clear that Salvation was the beginning of the end for the series.

Because Salvation is seen as such a nadir, other Terminator movies have doubled down on Schwarzenegger-led stories with diminishing returns...

The failure of Salvation's potentially intriguing future setting, for example, forced the series to continually revisit the series roots, trying desperately to recapture the original successful formula. Because Salvation is seen as such a nadir, other Terminator movies have doubled down on Schwarzenegger-led stories with diminishing returns – over-complicating Terminator's notoriously messy timeline rather than trying something genuinely original. Had Salvation succeeded, Terminator would have proved its best future lay with bold new stories. As a result of its failure, the franchise has become stuck down a Schwarzenegger-shaped rabbit hole.

What Does The Future Of The Terminator Franchise Look Like Now?

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Following Salvation, the failure of movies like Genisys and Dark Fate has left the cinematic future of the Terminator franchise uncertain. James Cameron has variously teased that plans for a new film are "in discussion" (via GQ), although there is no concrete news about what form another Terminator movie might take. The fact that Dark Fate, in particular, bombed at the box office – despite a generally positive critical reception left Terminator in a particularly precarious position, since its performance suggested viewers were fundamentally tired of Terminator resets after years of disappointment.

However, even though movie plans are unclear, Terminator itself is far from dead. An animated series dubbed Terminator Zero is set to debut on Netflix in August 2024, suggesting that the franchise's future may lie on the small screen. Even if Terminator Salvation presented subsequent Terminator movies with an impossible obstacle, it's clear that there's enough interest in the idea for it to continue.

Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, GQ