10 Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending
6. Terminator
The first two Terminators are fundamentally magnificent movies from start to finish - the first an efficient, gritty chase picture and the second a technically sublime, emotionally gratifying stakes-raising sequel.
And when Terminator 2 ends, as Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) finally looks to the future with a sense of hope for humanity's future, Skynet defeated seemingly once and for all, the story feels totally and utterly sewn up.
But nothing as successful as those two movies can simply end, and so Terminator 3 was finally released in 2003. Though certainly not a bad film, it fell far short of its predecessors' power without James Cameron's involvement, while categorically unpicking T2's tidy-yet-ambiguous ending.
From there, the fourth, fifth, and sixth films have ranged from mediocre to scarcely coherent, constantly rebooting and retconning aspects of the franchise in the hope of rejuvenating the flagging IP.
But with Terminator: Dark Fate bombing catastrophically at the box office back in 2019, even hardcore fans have given their firm vote of no-confidence.
People are just over Terminator at this point, even if it's a shame they had to see it run into the ground so industriously over the last 20 years.