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Why do you think it is impossible to create good Terminator and Predator sequels past part 2 (I stand firm that predator 2 is underappreciated)
By the time T3 came out (in 2003), the style of action scifi that the Terminator 1 & 2 were was getting too far out of style. Since then it's only gotten worse.
This may be nostalgia but to me both Terminators appear to be more "grounded" than more modern action scifi films. Yes, there are killer robots but once you get down to it most of the on-screen action could be described as "Young man and woman try to escape a monomaniacal Austrian bodybuilder in a leather jacket while falling in love" and "An Austrian bodybuilder in a leather jacket tries to protect a teenage boy and his mother from a psycho killer while learning to be more 'cool'". If you remove that groundedness, a sequel just doesn't feel like right.
Then there's is the cautiously optimistic vibe. A part of what made both T1 and T2 feel so good was that neither had a downer ending or even setting. The end of T1 implies that the bad future has been averted while T2 finishes with Sarah Connor saying "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too". How do you make a sequel that manages to keep things reasonably optimistic without basically undoing everything that has happened?
Finally there's just the fact that both movies were just goddamn great and it really isn't easy to make a worthy successor for a movie of that caliber while having to stick to an established setting, never mind for two. Good plotting and directing, quotes galore, outstanding music and iconic characters. The T-800 is Arnold while Linda Hamilton starts as a fairly realistic slightly ditzy girl next door in T1 and evolves into a a fucking ripped warrior mama who leaves no doubt that she is capable of doing what needs to be done to protect her son all the while staying feminine (ie. no unrealistic freak territory).
Terminator 3 was a semi-ok movie as such if you're ok with John Connor looking like a hobo Beverly Hills 90210 / Dawson's Creek "teenager" but ultimately is what you get when a sequel loses the vibe and just isn't that good. Terminator: Salvation was a sequel only in name. Genisys tried to be a proper sequel but replaced Linda Hamilton with a silly little girlboss with zero credibility and the ending was frankly ridiculous. Dark Salvation was some weird dystopic and depressive attempt at probably being "gritty and real" but mostly seemed to just concentrate on removing everything good from Sarah Connor to the extent that I couldn't make myself watch more than a few scenes where Arnold showed up.
I think Terminator 3 (or perhaps right after it) was the final moment when a proper sequel was possible but that would have required involvement from James Cameran and for everyone to have been more enthusiastic about it. Any time after that there was too much baggage in modern Hollywood trends that prevented making a proper sequel (in addition to Arnold playing The Guvernator during most of the 2000s). Just compare Linda Hamilton with the girlboss replacement.
What strikes me looking back at the whole series, actually, is how much every film except Terminator 2 feels profoundly of its time. The Terminator is a 1980s action horror. I watch it and I am back there in the 80s. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is definitely a film of the 2000s, with a lot of early CG effects, trotting out a film star who is just starting to look too old for this, and a lot of military-industrial complex, War-on-Terror paranoia. I have not seen any of the films past 3 (I hear I'm not missing much), but I'd be shocked if anybody remembers Genisys or Dark Fate as anything other than interchangeable, forgettable action films.
Terminator 2, by contrast, feels fresh and timeless every time. Maybe it's because it was one of those seminal films that created the modern action film? It marks the end of the genre I think of as 80s action, creates the 'modern', 90s-and-onwards genre, and because we've spend the last thirty years or so in cultural stagnation, that still feels new?
Maybe it's just that Terminator 2 is really good, but I'm not sure that's it - if nothing else, I like the first film more! But notwithstanding, I think Terminator 2 transcends its origin in a way that The Terminator does not.
Agreed. With the exception of some questionable soundtrack choices and John's totally radical slang, Terminator 2 feels remarkably timeless.
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