The 10/10 Terminator Series No One Talks About Is Secretly Key To The Franchise's Future

Action movies have been moneymakers for decades. Among the most popular is the Terminator franchise. Audiences lovedTerminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Michael Biehn, butTerminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the greatest movies of all time. So much so that the franchise is still trying to catch the lightning in a bottle 30 years later. Sadly, that's not possible.Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an iconic movie. Writer and director James Cameron combined brilliant writing with action scenes that were equally solid. It was so amazing that people understood how two humans in the movie (and the viewers) could fall in love with a cyborg. All of these are things that are rarely accomplished.

Unfortunately, the Terminator franchise has hit more than a few rough patches after the dizzying heights of Judgment Day. That’s not to say that everything the franchise has touched since has been bad. The problem, however, is that the expectations for post-Judgment Day projects are so high that it may be impossible for them to be as beloved as they once were. Luckily, thanks to Dynamite Entertainment and writers Declan Shalvey and Rory McConville, a solution may have popped up without anyone noticing.

Dynamite Entertainment's Terminator Is The Answer

With comic books being more popular than ever, it was smart for Dynamite Entertainment to release a new Terminator series. However, the story seemed to have been told already. The robots come from the future to kill someone in the past, and they fail. The cycle repeats. What Terminator comic creators Declan Shalvey and Rory McConville did was smart because they asked, “What if the robots decided to keep going backwards?”

It seemed weird that the robots in the movies were beholden to coming to the audience’s present. Even with time travel being a delicate thing, there had to be other people they could terminate throughout time to ensure that the robot apocalypse would come to fruition. That’s why the first 10 issues of Dynamite's Terminator visited various parts of the past in a clever and well-thought-out way.

In the first ten issues, the T-model robots went to Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam War, Cape Canaveral when the Gemini program was winding down, and boarded a Soviet Union submarine in 1961 during the Cold War. Each of which had some significance to their future. Each time, they were defeated thanks to the sacrifice of some brave (and sometimes foolish) human.

Each story wasn’t just an intense issue that showed the determination of the machines. It was a bit of a history lesson of the gift and the curse of humanity throughout time. In some cases, it was easy to see how humanity was already on a path of destruction. It just so happened that the apocalypse was shiny and shot lasers.

The series eventually winds down with Terminator: Metal, where things get more interesting than ever. There are still jumps to the past, but a good portion of the five issues were in the future. At which point you’ll see that humanity does its best to survive, but humanity will always find a way to be ruthless and selfish and cause its own downfall to continue.

Why this works

Dynamite Entertainment showed that there are plenty of stories to tell within the Terminators’ lore. The franchise could go back to the Roman Empire, the Harlem Renaissance, or as far back as the prehistoric days. Who wouldn’t want to see a T. rex fight a T-800? And since the franchise has moved on to animated projects, this seems more possible and makes a lot of sense.The Terminator franchise isn’t going anywhere. At the very least, another company will purchase the rights and the series will either be rebooted or continued. If that happens, Declan Shalvey and Rory McConville’s comics still work. As can be seen by the success of Lanterns, thanks in major part to writer Tom King, having a comic book creator at the helm of your project is the right way to move.