15 Things That Almost Ruined The Terminator Franchise

5. The War Was Inevitable

The weight of the first movie hinged upon Sarah Connor€™s survival. Then in the second it was guarding her son John from certain death, while preventing Skynet€™s from being created. With Sarah determined to kill Miles Dyson, the man responsible for the eventual creation of Skynet, the T-800 (Schwarzenegger) tells John it€™s actually a good idea. If Cyberdyne Systems is destroyed, Skynet is never built - the Terminator tells John Connor that yes, it will stop judgment day.

So, then it€™s a mighty headscratcher when that entire conceit is swept under the rug by Arnie€™s T-850 in Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. When discussing with an older John about the fact that they blew up Cyberdyne, they avoided Judgment Day, he simply states: judgment day was inevitable. WHAT?! Everything the Terminator in T2 said in retrospect was total bunkum.

On the small screen, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, while far superior to T3, also racked up two seasons of material based on the same argument. It was gonna happen regardless. While it€™s a niggling annoyance for franchise fans, it raises a string of questions.

If €œit was always going to happen€, why do Sarah and John keep fighting? Why does anyone bother trying to stop judgment day? What€™s the purpose of continuing to prevent Skynet, if the measures taken at the end of T2 - which had an explosive finality to them - did effectively, zilch?

It reeks of cash-in logic which won€™t hold up forever.

Contributor
Contributor

Gem is a freelance writer, musician and librarian. Her hobbies include: recreating movie death scenes from LEGO, concocting new types of bird suet cakes, walking on fresh snow and playing the glockenspiel - all at the same time.