10 Movie Franchises That Need To Return To Their Roots

As with the Alien franchise, the Terminator franchise peaked with the first two entries and has been on a downward trajectory since, each sequel and alternative timeline rehash regurgitating the elements which made it a once great series and spitting out a mediocre and lackluster facsimile.

The arrival of the trailer for the upcoming installment Terminator: Dark Fate, suggested to many that this trend of deteriorating returns was only going to continue before things got any better, despite the return of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor for the first time since Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The trailer highlights one of the major problems of the franchise as it has moved forward - a gimmicky Terminator villain lacking in screen presence and failing to embody a sense of dread.

What made the original Terminator so thrilling was Schwarzenegger's towering screen presence, while Robert Patrick's shape-shifting T-1000 in the first sequel was portrayed with a convincing degree of menace which was amplified by his neutral look. It is this simplicity which made them both so effective, while the upcoming Rev-9 model played by Gabriel Luna comes across more like a straight to streaming services CGI Swiss Army Knife.

It's too early to judge the quality of Terminator: Dark Fate just from the teaser trailer, and it's only fair to point out that several of the elements of the originals (the return of Hamilton and Schwarzenegger, T2 director James Cameron as producer and an R rating) are finally present and correct. Whether the end result is a return to the high octane, jaw dropping action of the franchise's roots or yet another nostalgia-tinted cash grab remains to be seen.