While Terminator 7 may be able to salvage the Terminator franchise, it is too late for the sequel to save its former central character, John Connor. The Terminator series has been struggling with critics for some time despite starting strong. The original Terminator was a critically acclaimed sci-fi horror hit upon release in 1984 and made a star of its chilling villain, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular android the T-800.
However, while the original Terminator was an unrelenting thrill ride that pitted Sarah Connor against the eponymous robot hitman, its first sequel changed this dynamic entirely. This time around, the T-800 was the hero of Terminator 2: Judgment Day as he was tasked with saving future human resistance leader John Connor’s life. This change resulted in the sequel being even more critically acclaimed than the original, but the good fortunes of the Terminator franchise would soon come to an end.
From the moment that the third Terminator movie revealed Sarah Connor died offscreen between movies, the franchise was in trouble. Sarah was central to the success of the first two Terminator movies and cutting her death from Terminator 3 derailed the plot of Rise of the Machines. While John Connor could theoretically have been used as a replacement protagonist in subsequent Terminator movies, the franchise failed to utilize this approach repeatedly in the coming years. After four failed Terminator outings, the character has been misused too many times now and his very presence has become a misdirect, meaning there is no use for John Connor in Terminator 7 anymore.
John Connor’s Importance To Terminator Explained
In the first Terminator movie, John Connor is something of a MacGuffin since he has not yet been born and the story revolves around his mother. Director James Cameron came up with The Terminator when he envisioned a robotic exoskeleton chasing a helpless hero, and thus John Connor was only invented to give the T-800 a compelling reason to hunt down Sarah Connor. However, his humble origins did not mean John had no potential, as proven by the movie’s sequel. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he is one of the movie’s main characters alongside Sarah, and in the third movie, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the now-recast John was clearly intended to be the new hero of the series. However, this never panned out and now the franchise has no idea how to use John, a fact made abundantly clear by Terminator: Salvation's sequel mistakes.
Terminator: Salvation Should Have Cut John Connor
John Connor does show up in 2009’s post-apocalyptic war movie Terminator: Salvation but, ironically, this is one franchise outing that could have been better off without him. John’s long-awaited appearance drags down the action of Terminator: Salvation as it pulls focus from the movie’s real lead, Marcus. in the superior original Terminator: Salvation script, Marcus was the real star and John was an enigma, a mythic figure who the hero pursued without ever knowing if he was even real, let alone alive. John’s part could have been beefed up into a main role when Christian Bale came on board, but the movie would have been better off keeping John as the almost-unseen Colonel Kurtz figure of the first draft. Regardless, Terminator: Salvation ruined its twist by doing neither of these, giving John too big a role for Marcus’ shocking origins to be meaningful, but too small a role for him to become the movie’s true hero. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of John Connor’s problems.
Terminator: Genisys Wasted John
2015’s Terminator: Genisys endeavored to reboot the franchise by adding in a new timeline, an always-risky proposition that could potentially have worked given how convoluted the original Terminator movies were. On the face of it, Terminator: Genisys turning John into a villain sounded intriguing, but giving this away in the trailers meant the character had nowhere to go in the sequel and acted as little more than a red herring. A lot went wrong with Terminator: Genisys, but attempting to use one of the franchise’s only recurring heroes as a major villain only to then give this away early was a major misstep on the part of the sequel. Worse still, the twist was essentially lifted verbatim from the original ending of Terminator: Salvation, wherein the android Marcus kills his human allies and reveals himself to be evil after having John’s face grafted onto his and replacing the now-dead resistance leader. Thus, Terminator: Genisys’ twist not only failed on its own merits but also ruined a potentially great ending to the earlier movie.
Terminator: Dark Fate’s John “Twist” Was Obvious
Few viewers were surprised by Terminator: Dark Fate’s opening scene, despite the belated sequel’s attempts to shock audiences by killing off a well-loved franchise figure. Once a CGI’d Edward Furlong appeared onscreen, it was obvious that young John Connor was not long for this world no matter what version of the timeline this Terminator installment took place. Killing John off (again) meant that the franchise well and truly ended any future attempts to reinstate him as the hero of the series, but the moment nonetheless lacked punchy impact because of how many times John had been set up as a false protagonist before.
Why Terminator 7 Can’t Use John Connor Any More
The primary problem with bringing back John again is that there is nowhere for the character to go now. The story of the Terminator franchise’s Connor family has been exhausted over and over, with both Sarah and John being killed off and revived numerous times via rebooting, recasting and timeline-hopping. Terminator: Genisys proved that John could not work as a villain, Terminator: Dark Fate showed that viewers would not be shocked by his sudden death, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines showed he couldn’t lead a movie on his own, and Terminator: Salvation proved he couldn’t share leading man duties. There is no other narrative function for John Connor to serve in a potential Terminator 7, and thus the Terminator franchise must let its erstwhile hero finally complete his mission for good as a result.