10 Greatest Cliffhangers In Movie Franchise History

3. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines

"By the time SkyNet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers all across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms, everywhere. It was software, in cyberspace. There was no system core. It could not be shut down. The attack began at 6:18 P.M. just as he said it would. Judgment Day. The day the human race was nearly destroyed by the weapons they built to protect themselves. I should have realized our destiny was never to stop Judgment Day; it was merely to survive it. Together. The Terminator knew. He tried to tell us, but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know. All I know is what the Terminator taught me. Never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun."

The third Terminator film was an enjoyable movie, but little more than a rehash of Terminator 2: Judgement Day in may ways. At its worst, it ruined the perfect ending by killing off Sarah Connor and undoing the efforts to save humanity from the coming apocalypse. But at the other end of the scale it delivered something totally unexpected; Judgement Day itself in a cinematic cliffhanger that took your breath away. It turned an okay attempt to revisit the Terminator franchise into a tragic tale of John Connor's failure to stop the rise of the machines. Up to the very end audiences assumed he would find a way to stop Skynet from going live; instead they learned that the T-850's mission was solely to keep John and Kate Brewster alive, locking them in the old bunker while the machines obliterated the Earth outside. Unfortunately the next instalment in the franchise - Terminator Salvation - never really delivered on the promise of this cliffhanger, despite its attempt to do something new, and now the series into reboot territory with Terminator Genisys. Despite this ending of the third Terminator film, the franchise should really have ended with Terminator 2: Judgement Day.