Original Terminator 5 Writers Terminated

I completely agree! Terminator 1 was a science fiction horror movie. The Terminator was effectively a mechanical serial killer, it could not be stopped. Everything worked in the aspect of what needed to be done, you have a story, a hero, a villain and a conclusion wherein the villain is dispatched and the story moves on. With T2, while a great movie, it established the whole idea of Schwarzenegger not wanting to be the bad guy, which – again – while being a great blockbuster movie, *should* have paved the way for him to come back as a villain in Terminator 3. And instead, we get some lukewarm explanation of him having killed John Connor – after – he’d already defeated Sky-Net in 2032, and was sent back by his wife, Kathryn Brewster?!? Oh and Judgment Day was inevitable, so everything that happened in Terminator 2 was essentially pointless at best. I will not divulge on the various things I can count that would have made Terminator 3 a better movie… so moving on.

Then we get on into Terminator 4 (Salvation), where even without Schwarzenegger to provide either a hero or villain, T4 managed to in some fashion, provide some insight as to how John Connor became the leader of the resistance… and while it was only mentioned as a passing reference in the beginning of the film, we discover the T-800 was on its way to being developed. And while it was nice to see Arnold (at least his face computer generated onto Roland Kickinger’s), as a means of cementing the movie as a Terminator film, we really wound up with something diametrically opposed to what we have wanted to see since the opening scenes of Terminator 1 – massive battles being waged in the ruins of what used to be major cities (yes, I loved the whole scene of Marcus looking out over an obliterated Los Angeles) but what we seen in T4 was nothing like the future war we’ve seen, the absolute darkness (literal and metaphorical), the obliterated landscape littered with pulverized buildings, vehicles, human skulls and other remains. Terminator 4 never really showcased the situation seen in the flashback scenes from T1 & T2 like the desperation, the fight for survival, or the constant fight day or night where you had trouble telling what time of day it was because of fact that a massive nuclear exchange took place and kicked up a shit ton of nuclear debris in the atmosphere obscuring the sky, rendering everything in a sort of permanent night. Bring back the *OLD* H-K Aerials constantly roaming the skies, and the H-K Tanks roaming the surface hunting anything that so much as moved! Bring back the ORIGINAL CONCEPT of Sky-Net, the one that was a massive supercomputer/AI located in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, bring back the whole part of the concentration camps, the whole “most of us were rounded up, put in camps for orderly disposal” the whole bit of “Some of us were kept alive, to work, loading bodies. The disposal units ran night and day.” Bring back the entire “John Connor must be killed” or Sky-Net loses the war for its existence, not some half-baked cat-and-mouse game wherein Sky-Net, or its machines always come close but never succeed bit. So far, in order, Sky-Net has targeted Sarah Connor, John Connor as a child, John Connor’s wife and lieutenants, and Kyle Reese. I mean what’s next, going after John Connor’s grandmother or Kyle Reese’s father, or mother before he’s born?! NO MORE TIME TRAVEL! It worked for Terminator. It worked for Terminator 2… and it – kind of – worked for Terminator 3, but in having the presence of two machines arriving in 2004 already set things into motion that invalidated everything done in T2, we understand… We finally get to Terminator 4 and establish that we’re in the post-nuclear holocaust ruins of everything, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET’S FINALLY GET TO THE FUTURE WAR LIKE WE’VE SEEN IN T1 & T2 (fuck the scene shown in Terminator 3), BACK TO BASICS GODDAMNIT!!!