James Cameron Is Returning To The TERMINATOR Franchise For A "Totally Classified" Project

@Shivermetimbers - Kyle Reese. Not sure why I couldn't remember his name.

@Godzilla2000Zer - I think it has always been a $$$ problem. That is a really expensive movie to make. But hopefully we see it someday.

@dracula - Still one of the WORST cliffhangers to cancel a show on. God I wish they finished it with a movie. TSCC has been the only good thing to come from the franchise since T2.

@clintthahamster - Yes!! That would be a great idea to make a movie or miniseries on.

There is for sure a lot they can do to make the Terminator movies feel unique and different. Stop with the whole “come back through time to protect you” approach. It doesn’t have to be that.

Hell I’d be down if it went more a horror route too.

@Spoken - I know people disliked The Matrix Resurrections, but the one thing I liked the most about it was the scenes with Neo and his therapist. I think a Terminator reboot could use that as a jumping off point.

My idea would be to do a full reboot trilogy with a 30 year old John Connor as the protagonist. He's a computer developer at Cyberdyne in the present day. In the future, a 25 year old Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese are the leaders of the Resistance. Skynet has won the war at this point, humanity is on its last legs. Sarah is pregnant with John, so her and Kyle travel 45 years into the past. Sarah gives birth to John, they spend a few years raising him until they're arrested by the government for terrorism. John is taken in by Miles Dyson, the head of Cyberdyne, and grows up with his son Danny Dyson. A now 30 year old John who is plagued with nightmares of the apocalypse sees a therapist who is eventually revealed to be Skynet inside an advanced Terminator model.

After a rogue Resistance officer sends a reprogrammed Terminator to assassinate him, John is forced to go on the run with Skynet which manipulates him into activating the program that would lead to its own creation. Whilst this is happening, another Resistance member (revealed to be John's son) breaks an older Kyle out of a government black site and the pair of them must race against time to find John and help him stop Judgement Day. They fail and hundreds of time travel portals open up with an army of Terminators and Hunter-Killers emerging from them. An older Sarah appears at the end to help them escape.

The sequel would be about John, Sarah and Kyle forming the Resistance in the present day. No nuclear bombs have gone off yet, it's just an all out war between humanity and Skynet. Sarah and Kyle sacrifice themselves to save their son. The film ends with Skynet launching the nukes and destroying everything.

The third film would be set 15 years after Judgement Day and focuses on John leading the Resistance in the final battle against Skynet, with a younger Sarah and Kyle as his officers. In the end John and Skynet agree to a truce because both of them realise that neither of them will win if they continue fighting. The film would end with the reveal that Danny who is John's second-in-command sent the reprogrammed Terminator back to kill John in the first film because he learned that Sarah was responsible for his father's murder, potentially setting up a second trilogy.

It'd be a reboot that deals with the same ideas and themes, but it would do it a bit differently. Yeah, it's another time travel story, but it's not a 1:1 remake of the first two films. I've always liked the idea of an army of Terminators coming through time into the present day and having a big war before the bombs fell, I feel like it would be an interesting idea where both sides are on even footing until Skynet decides to cheat.

@WruceBayne - only as a producer and some story credit and consultant. He didn’t write it or direct it, but he gave them his blessing, especially to Miller.

@BraxtonHicks - in a way, Terminator has already set itself up as a multiverse.

The way I choose to view the Terminator movie continuity.

For the sake of sanity while watching the Terminator movies, I choose to view all 6 movies as being in the same continuity, with the timeline gradually changing due to the machines messing with the past as the movies go along.

The way I choose to look at it, 1 to Salvation take place in the same timeline, and some point after Salvation, the Skynet of that timeline messed with the past again, changing the timeline to the one in which Genisys takes place. Then following Genisys, whatever AI rose up in the wake of that movie messed with the past once again, resulting in the Dark Fate timeline in which Sarah never died of leukaemia and John was killed in 1998.

Ideally, the story would have just ended with T2, because I don't think there was any need for anything beyond that. But the fact remains that there are 4 more films and because I hate the idea of reboots and/or ignoring the events of previous movies, this is how I make all 6 Terminator movies fit together in my mind.

And if you want to fit The Sarah Connor Chronicles in, then I guess 1, 2, TSC. Skynet messes with the past post TSC resulting in the T3-Salvation continuity. Then as above from then.

@BraxtonHicks - That's one thing I wish the original Terminator 3 script kept in. In that version John was a computer programmer who was manipulated by a female Terminator into installing a virus into Skynet's program before it could be activated, only to inadvertently activate it anyway. I like the idea of John becoming the leader of the Resistance because he's directly responsible for Skynet's creation anyway. He knows its his fault, so he shoulders the burden because he has to make amends for what he's done.

@Himura - he would be in a wheelchair if that were the case. He won’t be done for another 9 years.