8 Movie Franchises That Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead

When It Should Have Quit: Terminator 2: Judgement Day

You can see why Hollywood won't let Terminator die: the original is full of instantaneous iconography and the sequel was for a time one of the highest grossing films of all time. But since that 1991 hit (for reference, a twenty-four year old wouldn't have been born when Judgement Day came out) nobody can seem to get the franchise to work.

Rise Of The Machines just repeated Judgement Day with a minor twist (which was itself the original with a twist), Salvation made a full movie set in the post-apocalyptic future but forgot everything good in the original purple-hazed take and Genisys managed do both of those things while also mucking up the whole point of the series, taking time travel from plot device to major story point and tying itself up in circles in the process.

There's a clear misunderstanding of what made the first two so alluring (clue: it's the non-sci-fi inflections) and now Terminator has more bad entries than good, with a future that appears to be dictated by the Chinese box office and further alienate those who originally loved Arnie hunting down Sarah Connor. The only hope for humanity is that the rights will revert back to James Cameron in 2019, although things have probably been so f*cked up in the previous two decades he won't want it back.