Discussing the state of the “Terminator” franchise in 2020 is pretty depressing. After the franchise kicked off with two incredible films, James Cameron’s “Terminator” and ‘T2,’ the series just hasn’t been able to find its footing. And in the decades since, the franchise has tried multiple times to reinvent itself, all without much success. So needless to say, there’s a lot of “What If?” scenarios that surround the ‘Terminator’ franchise.
Speaking to The Production Meeting podcast, screenwriter Patrick Lussier talked about one of those “What If?” scenarios. You see, Lussier is one of the co-writers of the second attempt to reboot the sci-fi series, “Terminator: Genisys.” (The first attempt was the futuristic “Terminator: Salvation,” and the seemingly final attempt was last year’s “Terminator: Dark Fate,” if you’re keeping score at home.)
‘Genisys’ positioned itself as a hard reboot, remixing both “Terminator” and ‘T2,’ offering an alternate universe version of those films while also setting up a future franchise that diverges from what Cameron and Co. envisioned. The film was a pretty big disaster, both creatively and financially, and any thoughts of sequels were quickly killed. But on the podcast, Lussier explained what might have been if ‘Genisys’ was a hit.
“We wrote like two drafts of the next one, the direct sequel, and had an outline for the third one, what that would be, that answered all the questions that were presented in ‘Genisys’ and brought it back around and closed it all off,” the writer said.
READ MORE: ‘Terminator’: Mackenzie Davis Says It’s “Quite Insane” To Think Fans Want Another Sequel
He added, “They dealt more with how the future and where Skynet comes from and what that sort of time loop is. You know, the Matt Smith character. It became much more of a focus, so they were probably a little trippier and stood away from ‘T2’ a little more. Started having their own identity. There’s sort of an interesting escaping the fatalistic part of it, how it opened was very cool… who knows? Maybe one day they’ll release it as a comic or something.”
The fact he brings up the idea of a comic book isn’t that crazy. We’ve seen “lost” scripts get turned into comic books as a fun little exercise in the past. George Lucas’ original vision for “Star Wars” was released as a comic book series titled “The Star Wars.” The original script for “RoboCop 2” was also released as a graphic novel, previously. So, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility these ‘Genisys’ sequels could get a new life in a different medium.
But as for a possible film future? That’s most definitely not happening. Even if there was interest from fans, the studio has already tried a third reboot, ‘Dark Fate,’ which makes the events of every film past ‘T2’ a moot discussion. See? The franchise is in disarray. What a sad state of affairs.
You can hear the full podcast below.
