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Why Terminator 7 Can’t Bring Back Judgment Day’s T-1000
Robert Patrick’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day villain the T-1000 is one of sci-fi cinema’s most formidable foes—so why is it impossible for the franchise to bring him back in Terminator 7? The Terminator series started strong with 1984’s original entry which was a horror-inflected action thriller that saw Sarah Connor and time-traveler Kyle Reese pursued through LA by the eponymous assassin. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s imposing android was hellbent on killing the pair and offed a slew of supporting characters in pursuit of them, turning the original into an R-rated sci-fi horror hit in the process.
Fast forward seven years and the more expensive Terminator 2: Judgment Day flipped this dynamic completely. Not only did this blockbuster sequel make Arnie a lovable (if awkward) heroic figure, but it also turned Sarah's comparatively hapless Terminator heroine into a battle-hardened warrior. As such, the follow-up needed a far more effective villain than the original’s hulking hitman to threaten its formidable pair of heroes.
Judgment Day found such an antagonist in Robert Patrick’s legendary T-1000, a deeply creepy Terminator model who proved that bigger doesn’t always equal better in terms of sci-fi scares. After director James Cameron supersized Alien’s original Xenomorph to create the Alien Queen in 1986’s Aliens, he took the opposite approach when casting the T-1000. The diminutive Patrick was unthreatening, particularly alongside the far more hulking Schwarzenegger, and spent most of the movie disguised as a well-meaning cop—making the T-1000’s villainy all the more unexpected and startling when his true nature surfaced at the end of the first act. However, even though he remains a fan favorite and is arguably as iconic an antagonist as Arnie’s T-800, Patrick’s classic Terminator 2 villain can’t crop up again in a future sequel. Here’s why.
Robert Patrick Has Aged Out Of The Role (Like Arnie)
Unable to let a good thing go, the Terminator franchise has brought back Arnie’s T-800 as not one, but two “old and worn out, but still good” iterations in the most recent sequels. However, neither of these T-800s were well-received despite viewers loving the softer side of the stoic cyborg seen in Judgment Day, meaning any attempt to age up the T-1000 would be doomed. Both Dark Fate’s Carl and Genisys’ Pops were disappointments for fans of the once-intimidating villain, with the joke that Arnie had aged out of being a tough guy being overstretched well before the 2015 and 2019 release dates of the belated sequels.
Thanks to his status as a one-movie wonder, a disappointment is something that the T-1000 has never been for viewers. However, bringing back Patrick (currently aged 62) in the part that made him famous would mean aging up the T-1000 too, and since this villain was never given a human side (compared to Arnie’s T-800), defanging him would likely prove even less successful than Pops and Carl. While by and large fans didn’t care for Arnie’s Dark Fate or Genisys guises, there was at least a precedent for showing the T-800’s human side ever since Terminator 2. In contrast, Patrick’s reasoning for not appearing in later sequels was that he would no longer be able to perform his own stunts and didn’t want to sully the memory of his Judgment Day performance, meaning it is unlikely the actor would be interested in playing a more sympathetic, softer and aged-up iteration of the character.
Recasting The T-1000 Didn’t Work In Genisys
Thanks to his shapeshifting capabilities, there is an argument to be made that any actor could just take over the role of the T-1000—but the disastrous Terminator: Genisys proved that’s not quite the case. While far from the worst thing about director Alan Taylor’s muddled Terminator misfire, Lee Byung-hun was, unfortunately, failed to recapture the lithe menace of Patrick’s performance and joined Matt Smith, Kristanna Loken, and many others in the pantheon of talented thespians whose Terminator villains couldn’t hold a candle to the original T-800 or T-1000. Without Patrick’s recognizable appearance, the T-1000 of Genisys may as well have been another forgettable new Terminator model, and the fact the villain shared the abilities of Patrick’s beloved antagonist did nothing to make him stand out in an overstuffed effort that included a killer John Connor, the barely utilized T-5000 (Smith) or the redundant T-3000 model. The return of Patrick in the role would also come with high expectations that would be near impossible to meet.
The T-1000 Was Of Its Time
Of course, the biggest issue with bringing back the T-1000 has nothing to do with the casting. Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s liquid metal monstrosity was terrifying in the early ‘90s because, with what was at the time one of the biggest movie budgets ever, Cameron’s sequel utilized the best effects available to realize its shape-shifting form. Now, CGI monsters are a dime a dozen, and a liquid metal Terminator model (and arguably few computer-generated effects at all) will simply never have the same impact on audiences. Contemporary directors can't recreate the impact of Cameron’s ambitious spectacle because effects technology has marched on and few filmmakers share the helmer’s unique vision for the genre. Put simply, the impact the T-1000 had on viewers in 1991 can't be recaptured.
Much of what made the T-1000 terrifying was the character’s marriage of effects and performance, with Robert Patrick’s stilted and vaguely robotic acting making the transition into computer animation more fluid. Since the release of Judgment Day, CGI has become commonplace but paradoxically less integrated. Viewers are used to watching blockbusters where the boundary between a CG creation like Thanos or Hulk and a human character like Thor or Black Widow are easily discernible, whereas Terminator 2 strived to make the join between Patrick’s human performance and the T-1000’s animation seamless. Cameron’s approach to CGI, in everything from Avatar to T2, typically involves hiding the joint between practical and computer-generated effects, something that has been long abandoned since the advent of cheaper, more expansive CGI. As a result, no contemporary blockbuster—even Terminator 7—is likely to revisit Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s approach to the T-1000.
