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How The Terminator Franchise Can Continue, According to Dark Fate Director
Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller has spoken about the future of the Terminator franchise and how the long-running sci-fi property can continue after his film’s failure. First created in 1984 by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd, the Terminator franchise has seen six feature films, a live-action television series, and a slew of interconnected comic books, novels, and additional media enter production over the years. While the franchise would come to receive both critical and commercial acclaim with the much beloved 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day, since then, continued attempts to reinvigorate the property have all largely been met with various degrees of critical apathy, audience skepticism, and box office failure.
In 2015, the franchise’s fifth installment Terminator Genisys was originally intended to serve as a fresh reboot of the property and the start of a new trilogy of films. That film, however, would fail to resonate with critics and, due to its lower than anticipated box office takings, plans for its intended sequels were eventually scrapped altogether. Instead, the studio greenlite Miller’s Dark Fate, a film that would go on to ignore all other sequels after the events depicted in Terminator 2. Not only would Miller lure Cameron back to work on the project as a producer, but he would also bring franchise veteran Linda Hamilton back to reprise her role as Sarah Connor. Unfortunately, however, Dark Fate would also follow in the footsteps of its predecessor and failed to perform at the box office, ultimately losing $122.6 million and becoming one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time.
Most recently, Miller appeared at San Diego Comic-Con as part of Collider’s Directors on Directing panel and reflected on his film and the potential future of the Terminator franchise. Suggesting that while the Terminator universe is an interesting universe to explore, he posited that perhaps it has already been explored enough on screen. He also said that he originally went into Dark Fate believing that if he made a good film it would do well, but instead was proven wrong. Nonetheless, he believes that someone can definitely make a lower-cost Terminator movie with the right director and actors, but also questions whether that would be a good use of anyone’s time.
Most fans would probably agree that ever since Terminator 2, studios have often struggled to recapture the magic of the franchise’s earliest entries. Between a reliance on an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger, and increasingly convoluted attempts to move the story in new directions beyond the ground already trodden by prior sequels, it would seem the property has proven itself a particularly difficult nut for filmmakers to crack. While Miller’s plan to retroactively ignore all previous sequels since T2 did seem like a promising approach, sadly, its legacy has largely been marred by its poor box-office performance.
Of course, Terminator: Dark Fate will certainly not be the last that fans see of the beloved sci-fi property. Not only is Netflix currently working on a Terminator animated series with Ghost in the Shell anime studio Production I.G, but at some point in the future, it almost seems inevitable that studios will begin pondering the possibility of resurrecting the property for another live-action outing. Hopefully, when that day comes, whoever is tasked with the next Terminator film will find a way to make it succeed against all odds.
