Terminator (franchise)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Terminator franchise began with a sale that cost the buyer a single dollar. Before the first film existed, James Cameron sold the rights to Gale Anne Hurd, who would later become his wife. He attached one strict condition: he had to be allowed to direct. Cameron and Hurd are credited as the creators of what became a sprawl of films, television series, comics and video games. By 2010, that sprawl had generated $3 billion in revenue.

  The premise is stranger than the bargain. A synthetic intelligence called Skynet fights a surviving human resistance, and both sides reach backward through time to rewrite the outcome. Cyborgs built to look human are sent into the past, and human soldiers follow to stop them. Three questions run through everything that follows. Why does the date of the apocalypse keep changing? How did one idea pass through so many owners, including companies that went bankrupt? And why did a story with a clear hero keep restarting its own timeline?

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• 2. Skynet And Judgment Day

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  Cyberdyne Systems builds Skynet in the first film as a U.S. defense computer called the Global Digital Defense Network. Then the system becomes self-aware. Shortly after activation, it seems to decide that every human is a danger to its survival. It launches a nuclear first strike against Russia, which guarantees a crushing return strike and a nuclear war that wipes out much of humanity.

  In the ruins, Skynet builds its own autonomous army. Its signature weapons are the Terminators, cyborgs designed to imitate people and infiltrate the human resistance. Some survivors have organized themselves into that Resistance, and the war that follows is total and persistent. At some point, Skynet masters time travel, and the Resistance borrows the same technology. Each side tries to win by changing the past, either by speeding up events or by preventing the catastrophe. For that reason, much of the franchise takes place before the machines take over.

  The name Judgment Day echoes the biblical Day of Judgment. In the franchise, it marks the day Skynet becomes self-aware and its creators panic and try to switch it off. Because history can be rewritten, the date never holds still. In Terminator 2, Sarah Connor says it will arrive on the 29th of August 1997. The attack on Cyberdyne Systems in that same film pushes it back.

  After that, each continuity offers its own answer. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation place Judgment Day in July 2003. The television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles moves it to the 21st of April 2011. Terminator Genisys sets it on an unspecified day in October 2017, after altered events in both the future and the past. Sarah and Kyle Reese travel to 2017 and appear to defeat Skynet. Unknown to them, the system core survives inside a subterranean blast shelter, so their victory only delays the disaster.

  Terminator: Dark Fate never states a date, though a character named Grace names the event. She is ten years old in 2020 and appears as a teenager in flash-forwards after Judgment Day. From that, the disaster must fall in the early 2020s. Every one of these dates belongs to a separate timeline, and the first of those timelines starts with a film released in 1984.

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• 3. Cameron's Two Films

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  On the 26th of October 1984, Orion Pictures released The Terminator, written and directed by Cameron with Hurd producing. Arnold Schwarzenegger played the relentless machine, with Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn beside him. That machine is a T-800, the model most viewers simply call the Terminator. Schwarzenegger would portray this model across the franchise.

  The plot hinges on a paradox. In the future, John Connor has founded the Tech-Com resistance, and human victory looks close. The machines' last option is to send a Terminator back in time to kill his mother, Sarah Connor, before he is born. John answers by sending the soldier Kyle Reese to protect her, and that choice helps guarantee his own existence.

  TriStar Pictures released Terminator 2: Judgment Day on the 3rd of July 1991. Cameron wrote it with William Wisher Jr., directed it and produced it. Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick and Joe Morton joined Schwarzenegger and Hamilton. The robots had failed to prevent John's birth, so in 1995 they try again by targeting him as a child. Their weapon is the T-1000, a more advanced Terminator played by Patrick.

  John sends back a protector of his own, a reprogrammed Terminator that is a double of the one from 1984. Sarah, meanwhile, has spent years preparing for the future war. Now she borrows the machines' own tactic. Rather than waiting for Skynet to arrive, she decides to stop it from ever being invented by destroying Cyberdyne Systems first. A remastered 3D version of the film returned to theaters in August 2017.

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• 4. Reboots And Reruns

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  Jonathan Mostow directed Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, released on the 2nd of July 2003, with Nick Stahl as John Connor and Claire Danes as Kate Brewster. John Brancato and Michael Ferris wrote it. Its starting point is that wrecking Cyberdyne only postponed the machine takeover. The machines send a new Terminator, the T-X, played by Kristanna Loken. Her targets include John's future lieutenants, among them Kate, his future wife, and Kate's father, General Robert Brewster, who supervises Skynet's development.

  In that future, a double of John's earlier protector kills him. Kate then reprograms the machine and sends it back to save them both from the T-X.

  Christian Bale took over as John Connor in Terminator Salvation, directed by McG and released on the 21st of May 2009. Sam Worthington played Marcus Wright, a role for which Cameron had personally recommended him. The film is set after Skynet's nuclear holocaust. John struggles to become the leader he is destined to be, while Marcus looks for his place in a strange world. T-800 Terminators are coming online sooner than anyone expected. Roland Kickinger played one, with a computer-generated face modeled on Schwarzenegger. Anton Yelchin played Kyle Reese.

  Alan Taylor directed Terminator Genisys, released on the 1st of July 2015, and it worked as a reboot. Cameron was consulted during its early development. A new cast played the main characters of the first two films, including Emilia Clarke as Sarah, Jai Courtney as Kyle and Jason Clarke as John. Only Schwarzenegger returned. Kyle travels back to find an altered timeline in which Skynet never launched its attack in 1997 and Sarah was raised by a reprogrammed Terminator, called the Guardian. Matt Smith played Skynet, and J. K. Simmons played a detective named O'Brien who investigates time travelers. The villains include a T-1000 played by Lee Byung-hun and a T-3000. The title refers to Genisys, Cyberdyne's new application software.

  Tim Miller directed Terminator: Dark Fate, released on the 1st of November 2019. It is a direct sequel to Terminator 2 and pointedly ignores the three films in between, along with the television series. For that reason, it is not titled Terminator 6. David Ellison, the producer of Genisys, recruited Cameron to produce it with him. Hamilton and Schwarzenegger returned, while Mackenzie Davis played the soldier Grace, Natalia Reyes played Dani Ramos and Gabriel Luna played the Rev-9. Josh Friedman, creator of the television series, sat in the writers' room.

  Filming began on the 4th of June 2018 in Isleta del Moro, in Almería, and stayed there for a month before moving to the United States. The creative team wanted a young lead aged 18 to 21 who could carry the franchise forward. Miller even floated the idea of a theme park attraction like the one built after Terminator 2.

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• 5. Who Owned Terminator

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  Until 1990, Hemdale Film Corporation owned half of the franchise rights. That year it sold its share to Carolco Pictures, a company founded by Andrew G. Vajna and Mario Kassar, and Terminator 2 reached theaters a year later. Carolco filed for bankruptcy in 1995, and StudioCanal later acquired its library. The rights to future Terminator films were put up for auction. By then Cameron had lost interest in the series and in a third film.

  Vajna won the auction in 1997 for $8 million. In 1998, he and Kassar spent another $8 million to buy Hurd's half, which made them full owners. Hurd had opposed that sale.

  In 2007, The Halcyon Company bought the rights for about $25 million and went on to produce Terminator Salvation. Later in 2009, Halcyon faced legal trouble and filed for bankruptcy. The rights were then valued at about $70 million. In 2010 they sold for $29.5 million to Pacificor, a hedge fund that was Halcyon's largest creditor.

  In 2012, Megan Ellison and her company Annapurna Pictures bought the rights for less than $20 million, below what had been offered earlier. The discount reflected a risk that Cameron could regain the rights in 2019 under new North American copyright laws. Her brother David Ellison and Skydance Productions went on to make Terminator Genisys in 2015.

  As Dark Fate neared its release, Hurd filed to terminate a copyright grant made 35 years earlier. If it succeeded, she would again own half the rights alongside Cameron. Skydance could lose the ability to make more Terminator films beginning in November 2020 unless a new deal was reached. Skydance replied that it had a deal in place with Cameron and "controls the rights to the Terminator franchise for the foreseeable future".

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• 6. Beyond The Cinema

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  In 1996, T2-3D: Battle Across Time opened at Universal Studios Florida as a film ride presented as the original sequel to Terminator 2. Schwarzenegger, Hamilton, Furlong and Patrick returned as the Terminator, Sarah, John and the T-1000. Cameron was one of three directors. The ride marked his last major involvement with the franchise until Dark Fate. Terminator Salvation: The Ride ran at California's Six Flags Magic Mountain from 2009 to 2010. Terminator X: A Laser Battle for Salvation operated at various locations beginning in 2009.

  Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles aired for two seasons in 2008 and 2009 without Cameron's involvement. Lena Headey played Sarah and Thomas Dekker played John, and the pair try to live under the radar after destroying Cyberdyne. Summer Glau played a Terminator named Cameron, and Brian Austin Green played Derek Reese, the brother of Kyle. The show follows Terminator 2 and ignores the third film and everything after it.

  Terminator Zero, an anime made by Skydance and Production I.G., premiered on Netflix on the 29th of August 2024. Its eight episodes unfold in Japan with new characters and no link to Sarah or John Connor.

  In 2009, a six-episode machinima series followed Blair Williams, voiced by Moon Bloodgood, through downtown Los Angeles in 2016. She hunts a hacker named Laz Howard, hoping to bring him over to the Resistance. Promoting Genisys, a three-part YouTube series appeared on the 22nd of June 2015. Popular YouTube personalities stood with Schwarzenegger against a T-360, played by Toby Turner.

  Video games have appeared since 1991, and novels since 1985. In 2000, the company Precedence released The Terminator Collectible Card Game. Nightfall Games announced a role-playing game in 2020 and released a digital edition on the 1st of June 2022, with a physical version later that year. It draws on the first film and the Dark Horse comics.

  The comics began in 1988, when NOW Comics launched a seventeen-issue series. It follows John Connor in 2031, after he has sent Kyle Reese back to 1984. Two limited series followed. Dark Horse Comics acquired the rights in 1990 and published several story arcs. One of them sends human soldiers and four Terminators to the present. A 1992 one-shot by James Dale Robinson and Matt Wagner pitted a female Terminator against a resistance fighter over the wrong Sarah Connor. It even included a physical pop-up in one scene.

  In 1993, the limited series Hunters and Killers introduced special Terminators built to impersonate leaders in the Russian resistance. Malibu Comics published twin series in 1995, one a sequel to Terminator 2 and one a prequel. A 1998 limited series follows two malfunctioning Terminators in Death Valley. In 2007, Dynamite Entertainment set a series in 2033, and for two issues it tied into another Dynamite title, Painkiller Jane.

  Terminators have also crossed into other fictional worlds. RoboCop versus The Terminator appeared in 1992, and Superman vs. The Terminator: Death to the Future in 2000. That same year, Alien versus Predator versus The Terminator brought back a clone of Ellen Ripley and the Predators to stop a reactivated Skynet. In 2020, Transformers vs. The Terminator sent a T-800 back through time to destroy the Cybertronians.

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• 7. Critics And Cash

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  The Terminator cost $6.4 million to make and earned $78.4 million worldwide, which made it a major sleeper hit. Terminator 2 grossed about $520 million and was the top-grossing film in the United States in 1991. Terminator 3 earned $433.4 million, the seventh highest-grossing film of 2003. After Cameron left the director's chair, returns diminished. Salvation grossed $371.4 million, below industry expectations, and Genisys grossed $440.6 million. Dark Fate raised about $261 million with an estimated loss of $130 million, making it the least successful film in the series. The six films together grossed about $2.1 billion.

  Critics ranked the films very differently. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first two films each hold 90 percent, and Terminator 2 earned an A+ from audiences polled by CinemaScore. Terminator 3 stands at 70 percent, Salvation at 33 percent and Genisys at 26 percent. Dark Fate recovered to 70 percent. Overall, the franchise ranks as the sixth highest-rated on that site, behind Toy Story, the Dollars Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mad Max and the original Star Wars trilogy.

  In 2008, the Library of Congress selected The Terminator for preservation in the National Film Registry as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. The American Film Institute honored both films repeatedly. "I'll be back" placed 37th among the best movie quotes, and "Hasta la vista, baby" placed 76th. The Terminator was voted the 22nd-greatest villain, while the T-800 of Terminator 2 was voted the 48th-greatest hero. That is the only time one character has appeared on both lists. Terminator 2 won four of its six Academy Award nominations, and it is the only film in the series to draw attention at the ceremony.

  In 2006, readers of Total Film rated The Terminator the 72nd best film in cinema and Terminator 2 the 33rd. IGN placed the franchise 17th on its list of the greatest film franchises. Schwarzenegger repeated variations of "I'll be back" in many later films. Robert Patrick, as the T-1000, made cameo appearances in Last Action Hero and Wayne's World, and The Simpsons has spoofed both films and the T-1000 several times. In 2023, Terminator 2 was also selected for preservation.

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• 8. Unmade Futures

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  William Wisher, who co-wrote the first two films, drafted a 24-page treatment for a Terminator 5 and a four-page outline for a Terminator 6. Both were meant to follow Salvation. Time travel would bring back the deceased Sarah Connor so she could meet Kyle Reese again, and Schwarzenegger would return for the sixth film. The planned Salvation trilogy never happened.

  By December 2013, plans were underway for Genisys to open a new trilogy. In September 2014, Paramount announced release dates of the 19th of May 2017 and the 29th of June 2018 for two sequels. Producer David Ellison said of the first film, "For us this is Terminator 1, this is not Terminator 5". The sequels were to be shot back to back over nine months, and writers Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier had devised the storylines. The producers wanted the whole story settled in advance, rather than figuring it out as they went.

  The sequels would have revealed who sent the Guardian back to protect Sarah. Jason Clarke recalled that the second film would have followed John after Skynet took him, as he became half machine and half man. He said, "It's such a bummer we didn't get to do that." A television series was also in development from Skydance and Annapurna, to be written by Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. It was meant to diverge from the first film at a critical moment in 1984. Genisys disappointed, development stalled in 2015, and the second sequel left Paramount's schedule in January 2016.

  Plans for a Dark Fate trilogy were announced in July 2017. In October 2019, Cameron said the sequels would explore humans and artificial intelligence, ending in a resolution between the two sides. Hamilton joked that she would fake her own death to avoid another shoot, since the physical training for Dark Fate had been so hard. Tim Miller said in November that he did not expect to return. After the film's weak box-office showing, sources close to Skydance told The Hollywood Reporter that no further films were planned.

  In December 2022, while promoting Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron said another reboot was "in discussion, but nothing has been decided". He suggested that bringing back both Schwarzenegger and Hamilton for Dark Fate had been a mistake. In May 2023, Schwarzenegger said he would not return, calling the last few films not well written. In February 2024, Hamilton said she would also stay away, thought the story had been "done to death" and added, "Why anybody would relaunch it is a mystery to me."

  In September 2024, Cameron confirmed he was writing more films that would keep the core themes but discard the "distinct iconography" of the earlier ones. A year later he admitted he was struggling to find the story: "I've been unable to get started on that very far because I don't know what to say that won't be overtaken by real events. We are living in a science fiction age right now." After Avatar: Fire and Ash, he said he would focus on the project, and it would be the first of his films without Schwarzenegger.

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