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Linda Hamilton Is Right About The Terminator Franchise's Future
Although series star Linda Hamilton offered two different options for the future of the Terminator franchise, both of her suggestions were better than the current direction of the movies. No one knows where the Terminator franchise should go better than Linda Hamilton. The star of director James Cameron’s dark original 1984 Terminator, Hamilton returned for 1990’s sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day and turned the already-memorable heroine Sarah Connor into an iconic sci-fi legend.
However, Hamilton’s next return to the franchise was less triumphant, to say the least. Hamilton reprised the role of Sarah Connor in 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, a belated reboot that received largely poor reviews and underperformed at the box office. As such, it should come as no surprise that the actor doesn’t have high hopes for the franchise’s future.
Linda Hamilton was asked about the Terminator franchise’s future in January 2020, and both of her suggestions were compelling options for the series. The actor said she would be happy to see a smaller, less ambitious (and lower budget) outing that wasn’t as intensely hyped as the misguided Terminator: Dark Fate, or to leave the franchise behind entirely. Not only were these two solid ideas as far as Hamilton’s involvement in the Terminator franchise goes, but they are also about the only good ideas for the series in general. A lower-budget, smaller-scale chase thriller akin to the original Terminator would allow the movies to recapture their earlier appeal, while simply ending the franchise and avoiding further reboots (and further new timelines) would at least preserve the memory of the series so far.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Linda Hamilton first said that she would “really appreciate maybe a smaller version, where so many millions are not at stake” before adding an addendum by saying she would also “be quite happy to never return… I would really love to be done.” The then-recent failure of Terminator: Dark Fate makes these comments unsurprising, but the options are far from merely sour grapes and deserve serious consideration. Hamilton noted that the huge budget of Terminator: Dark Fate forced the franchise to make the movie a massive blockbuster spectacle, something that jarred with the sequel's attempts to be a darker, grittier, and more grounded take on the material.
Similarly, the option of simply ending the franchise with Terminator: Dark Fate should not be instantly written off as a reaction to the sequel’s failure. Terminator: Dark Fate wasn’t the first case of the Terminator franchise underperforming financially, with the last three movies in the series failing to reach their box-office projections. Similarly, every Terminator movie since 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was met with middling to outright bad reviews, meaning the franchise’s poorly-received sequels outweigh its hits two-to-one. With this sort of batting average, it is no surprise that Terminator franchise star Linda Hamilton felt the series needed to radically change or die out — and the actor’s words remain a fair summation of the options left for the series.
