9 Movie Franchises That Completely Spiraled Out Of Control

8. The Terminator

The original Terminator was structured kind of like a slasher film, with a cyborg being sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to her son John. The sequel takes everything a step further and raises a lot of interesting questions about whether fate is set in stone or if it€™s possible to alter it. Can Sarah and John prevent Judgment Day, a catastrophic nuclear event? The film ends with the implication that Sarah and John€™s actions were successful, and €œthere is no fate but what we make for ourselves.€ But just kidding! In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Judgment Day does actually happen at the end, so now, the heroic ending of T2 is completely pointless. The movie leaves on a super depressing thought that fate cannot be prevented, literally the exact opposite of what James Cameron concluded with T2. The fourth movie, Terminator Salvation, takes place during the war against Skynet, turning this interesting little sci-fi movie that alluded to bigger events into a generic, Transformers style action film that is just aggressively unmemorable. Part of what was so cool about the original movie is that we hear about the future and about this war against Skynet, but it's never actually seen. It's all left to the imagination. Even in T2, there are some brief glimpses into the future, but for the most part the movie is kept in the present. But with Salvation, all the gaps are filled in, and as it turns out, actually seeing these future events is not nearly as interesting. After an amazing first sequel, the series quickly reversed the really poignant thesis of the previous film, and then further descended into a generic mess that was just no longer nearly as interesting.