10 Essential Parts Of Movie Franchises (That Weren’t Introduced Until The Sequel)

6. The Messed Up Time Travel - Terminator

The Iconic Element: The logic of time travel has always been a big issue among moviegoers (thanks in no small part to Back To The Future, which is incredibly inconsistent, even with its own lax rules) and no franchise embodies that more than Terminator. The future is set, the future can be changed, the future is inevitable, the future is up John Connor's arse - not even the characters know what's going on. That's part of the charm, but for people trying to summarise it all it makes for an unexpected challenge. In fact, things have got so flat-out bonkers that this year's Terminator Genisys is going to Days Of Future Past and rewrite the whole chronology and it won't feel one bit contrived. When It Was Actually Introduced: The time travel presented in the first movie is pretty simple - it's a timeloop. Skynet sends a Terminator back to kill Sarah Connor and stop John being born, but this leads to Kyle Reese going back and actually fathering the revolutionary leader. It's a Grandfather paradox, sure, but it works - The Terminator was less about the logistics of time travel and more the danger of machines. It was only when James Cameron returned to the series with T2: Judgement Day that everything was suddenly variable and things got messed up. Since then, each new movie has introduced a new, even more contrived element. Just 'cause.