10 Movie Franchises That Never Got Better Than The First Film

3. The Terminator

The Franchise: An epic sci-fi that spans decades, Terminator is the story of mans war with the machines and the latter's attempts to win that war with time travel. The mechanics of said time travel vary from entry to entry; the first movie has it as a time loop, the second allows a bit of rewriting, the third introduced the concept of destiny and the fourth forgot because it was too busy being shouted at by Christian Bale. The upcoming Terminator: Genisys looks set to complicate things even more by bringing multiple timelines together, but fans are in-tuned enough now to keep up. Why The First Was Best: Aside from offering the series' most logical presentation of time travel (an unbreakable loop makes so much more sense than complete rewrites), The Terminator is the film that best conveys the indestructibility of the machines. We'd much rather go up against Arnie's T-800 over the liquid metal T-1000 (although we'd always pick a third option if there was one), but the latter certainly strikes a more imposing figure on film up against civilian Sarah Connor and mortal human Kyle Reese. As technology improved we could experience more of the future than before, but those brief descriptions and snatched blue glimpses were far more enticing that actually spending a movie there.