The Terminator franchise has been in need of a reboot for a while, something the movies themselves have been trying to accomplish with films such as Terminator Genisys and Dark Fate.
Despite being iconic and world-famous, the Terminator franchise has been in a rut ever since the third film's release. Though T3 and Salvation both received a mixed reception, it's the franchises' two most recent efforts Genisys and Dark Fate that tried to take things in a different direction. Both attempted to reboot the franchise in different ways, with Genisys trying to restart from scratch and Dark Fate attempting to ignore any films past Terminator 2 completely. Many have attempted to question what went wrong with the Terminator franchise, but the answer may lie in a series of comics from 1988.
The 1988 comic The Terminator by Fred Schiller and art by Tony Atkins introduced the concept of the peaceful town of Bedford Falls, which was secretly run by Skynet. A full 11 years before The Matrix, Skynet already had a plan that may have helped control humans. Once Skynet captured a human, they would transfer their brain into an endoskeleton, much like what the Terminators themselves use. Skynet would also seemingly brainwash the target, making them entirely docile and happy with this new life, as shown when it was done to poor Martin Reedfoot, a resistance member who was investigating the town but captured by one of the overseeing Terminators. Instead of the movies continually rehashing the time travel mechanic which has contributed to the convoluted mess of the current plot, they could go in a different direction. They could have Skynet, instead of trying to win the war through brute force, try to subjugate humanity with the Bedford Falls plan. Skynet is a learning AI, it would make sense that it eventually would learn that sending Hunter-Killers or Terminators back into the past isn't working, nor is continually waging war on the current resistance. Skynet could let the humans "win" and let them rebuild while controlling everything from the shadows.
Having humanity think it has won its freedom only to have its leaders and the general population slowly replaced by synthetic docile versions of themselves is a rather terrifying concept. Humanity's attempts to beat Skynet and Terminators were always flawed, but against this there would be little humans could do. It's also a new idea for the franchise. The machines in The Matrix tried to win by convincing humanity that the war never happened, which is how they kept the majority of them docile for so long. Skynet could attempt something similar but still distinct by trying to convince humanity that despite the war happening, they managed to win and could finally move on from Judgement Day, which would only make it all the more tragic when they discover Skynet is still very much in control.
This idea of Skynet secretly controlling things from the shadows was a pretty good one, although it wasn't explored much in the original comic. This could be the change the franchise needs to finally move past the convoluted timeline of the story and go in a different direction while still maintaining the soul of the series. It would also avoid the problem with the original Terminator trilogy, that of the future being immutable, despite how much characters like Sarah Connor state otherwise, as seen in the plots of multiple Terminator films.