Although Terminator Salvation seemed to have everything going for it, the ambitious reboot’s failure was what doomed the whole franchise.
SUMMARY
Terminator Salvation‘s failure had long-lasting consequences for the Terminator franchise, as it led to a major break and a need to re-think the series’ strategy.
Christian Bale’s role as John Connor in Terminator Salvation ended up hindering the film’s success, as his star power caused the producers to shift focus and retool the original script.
Terminator Salvation missed the opportunity to set up a new future for the franchise, including a planned trilogy and a London-set sequel, due to its underperformance at the box office and subsequent negative impact on the franchise’s perception
While Terminator Salvation always seemed like a missed opportunity for the Terminator franchise, the true cost of the reboot’s failure didn’t become clear until years after its release.
The Terminator movies have a messy history. The franchise began in 1984 with director James Cameron’s gripping sci-fi/horror/action hybrid The Terminator, wherein Arnold Schwarzenegger played the titular robot assassin.
Cameron flipped the script in 1990’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which turned Schwarzenegger’s T-800 into the hero of the series.
While this sequel outdid its predecessor, 2003’s uneven Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines proved that the franchise was on rocky ground.
In 2009, Terminator Salvation took the franchise far into the future. Starring Christian Bale as a grown-up version of the John Connor character, the third Terminator sequel is set after the war between humans and Skynet ravaged the planet.
This post-apocalyptic setting and war movie plot could have given the series the revitalizing tonal shift it needed, but Terminator Salvation’s troubled production proved that this was not meant to be.
A ballooning budget was already a concern, and reports that director McG had a darker, gorier vision than the sequel’s PG-13 rating could accommodate both spelled disaster for the reboot.
Terminator Salvation Should Have Been A Big Hit – Especially With Christian Bale
Bale’s Dark Knight Success Should Have Helped Terminator Salvation
Terminator Salvation should have been a huge hit. It had the Terminator franchise name and came off the back of a sequel that performed relatively well.
Meanwhile, Terminator Salvation promised something totally new from the series.
Most importantly, the movie had Christian Bale in its lead role just a year after The Dark Knight.
This should have made the movie a clear success although, ironically, it was Bale’s John Connor that doomed Terminator Salvation early in the movie’s production.
The original script for Terminator Salvation was more offbeat and unpredictable than the finished movie, but Bale signing on to play Connor led the creators to retool its premise and focus.
Bale’s impressive star power caused the producers to beef up John Connor’s role, even though one of the most intriguing elements of the original script was its reinvention of the character.
In Terminator Salvation’s original script, John Connor was akin to Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. A largely unseen figure, he was viewed as more of a myth than a real person.
The sequel’s hero was Marcus, a character who still plays a role in the sequel but ends up vying for screen time with Bale’s John Connor.
Despite all the publicity that Bale’s addition to the cast provided for the sequel, Terminator Salvation’s failure was partially caused by his presence.
Terminator Salvation Could Have Set Up An Entire New Future For The Franchise
Director McG Planned A New Trilogy & London-set Sequel
There were plans for Terminator Salvation to lead to a new Terminator trilogy that could have reinvigorated the franchise without creating an entirely new continuity.
Both Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate later attempted to bring back the series but, to facilitate Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comebacks, these installments both needed to establish diverging timelines of their own.
This made the timeline of the already confusing series utterly impenetrable for casual viewers, but if Terminator Salvation hadn’t failed in the first place, the series would never have needed to reset its canon repeatedly in the years that followed.
According to an interview with McG at the time, Terminator Salvation 2 could have seen Skynet invading London while John Connor tried to amass an army to fight the machines.
This would have been an interesting choice for the franchise since the second movie in the trilogy would have gone back in time to 2010 instead of continuing from Terminator Salvation’s ending.
However, viewers never got to see Terminator Salvation 2’s ambitious London attack as the original reboot underperformed upon release, earning $371 million on a budget of $200 million.
In comparison, the same summer’s Transformers: Rise of the Fallen cost $200 million and grossed over $830 million.
Why Terminator Salvation Didn’t Work
Cutting Helena Bonham Carter’s Villain Cost Terminator Salvation Dearly
While a bigger role for John Connors ensured that Terminator: Salvation couldn’t use its original, Apocalypse Now-inspired premise, that was far from the only issue with the reboot.
For one thing, the movie’s most compelling villain was reduced to little more than a bit part by unnecessary cuts.
Helena Bonham Carter’s role as Serena Kogan in Terminator Salvation had the potential to be the best Terminator franchise villain so far because her story offered a realistic justification for her reliance on Skynet’s technology.
Where most of the franchise’s human villains simply didn’t realize how dangerous the machines are or didn’t care, Serena needed her cybernetic enhancements to survive terminal cancer.
This plot line allowed the Terminator franchise to complicate its simplistic depiction of machines overpowering humanity by acknowledging that some technological advancements are ultimately positive.
Serena was a more sympathetic figure than most of the earlier villains in the Terminator series, but this was never communicated to audiences since her role was cut down severely in Terminator Salvation’s final cut.
Like all the gory action scenes and horror elements that McG originally wanted in the sequel’s story, this subplot was jettisoned to make Terminator Salvation a more family-friendly blockbuster.
Instead, this just made Terminator Salvation feel less original and less morally complex.
Terminator Salvation Is The Movie That Really Killed The Franchise
Why Terminator Salvation’s Failure Was Worse Than Dark Fate & Genisys
Terminator Salvation’s failure forced the Terminator franchise to take a major break and re-think its strategy.
While $370 million may not sound like an unequivocal disaster, Terminator Salvation was undeniably a box office failure when compared to the rest of the series.
The 1984 original technically made less money, but it had a far smaller budget and earned great reviews.
In contrast, only Terminator: Dark Fate did worse commercially than Terminator Salvation, and only 2015’s misguided reboot, Terminator Genisys, has a lower Rotten Tomatoes score than the reboot.
Terminator: Salvation was a critical disaster with its dour storyline that proved too glum to be fun, but not thoughtful enough to be taken seriously as a gritty, darker brand of blockbuster.
Terminator Salvation’s failure hurt the perception of the series so badly that, while later movies in the franchise fared worse critically and commercially, these other sequels were just nails in the coffin.
It was Terminator Salvation that held all the franchise’s cards at a pivotal point, with an impressive new star and a whole new premise for the series.
Thus, it is Terminator Salvation that is to blame for the Terminator franchise’s gradual failure.
