I had a lovely time watching The Terminator with the 13yo. (Who is categorically too young for this film, but actually not really, except for the sex scene which is never something you want to watch with your Dad and the skip forward button may have been deployed by them at that point.)
I noted something that hadn’t stood out to me before: the story is entirely and definitionally complete. You know everything that happens by the end of it. (That is: computer nukes the planet and proceeds to try to exterminate humanity, humanity fights back led by brave leader John Connor, machines are defeated, but just as humanity wins the machines send a killer back in time to change history.) The entire future history is defined; the only question mark is whether it can be changed. The film shows that it cannot, and in fact (by way of a bootstrap paradox) it never could have been.
The Terminator‘s narrative is a perfect and complete circle. It leaves no questions unanswered, and no space for any sequel. The war with the machines is done! It’s a brilliant piece of science fiction writing that successfully tells a complete future history mostly through a series of chase scenes in the 1980s.
And that’s why there was no sequel to this cult hit film. How could there be? Creator Jim Cameron did too good a job with the construction of his film, and left no avenues open for further exploration. How foolish!
Breaking: i am advised there somehow HAVE been sequels to the terminator 1984 ?? seems fake ?
So it seems someone released a film called Terminator 2 Judgement Day after The Terminator? A sequel? And apparently one of the most commercially and critically successful sequels in cinema history? Hmm. How?
T2, as it was styled, managed the seeming impossible because director/writer/auteur Jim Cameron is very very VERY good at what he does. To make a decent sequel to The Terminator, you need a very strong new idea, and Cameron understood this. In fact, I would argue he managed to thread the needle with T2 because he didn’t just stop at one good idea: instead, he had no less than five separate strong new ideas, each of which could have been the basis for a decent sequel by itself.
Strong New Idea One: What if we make a sequel to The Terminator but this time Linda Hamilton isn’t playing the resourceful ordinary person, instead she’s a full-on action star, holding space like Arnie and Sly do in their big films?
Strong New Idea Two: What if we make a sequel to The Terminator and we build the concept of the enemy robot around an entirely new form of special effects that no-one on the planet has ever seen before?
Strong New Idea Three: What if we make a sequel to The Terminator and we make the point of view character a kid so it’s kind of a Spielberg/Goonies action adventure? (To be fair this one is not necessarily a good idea but it is the kind of strong new idea that you can build a sequel around so.)
Strong New Idea Four: What if we make a sequel to The Terminator and Arnold plays the robot again but this time he’s a good guy?
Strong New Idea Five: What if we make a sequel to The Terminator and it’s all about whether the foundational concept of the first film, that the future is set and therefore no sequels are possible, can be broken?
Jim Cameron was the right kind of maniac at the right time, and T2 absolutely justifies its existence as a result. But also, it kind of closes off the space for strong new ideas. Where else can you take The Terminator as an idea? A bunch of sequels followed but none of them had enough strong new ideas to stand tall. Some of them didn’t have any strong new ideas at all (I think, I haven’t watched a single one of them all the way through).
Tentative proposal, then: to make a truly great sequel, you can’t get by with just one good idea executed well, you need a whole stack of good ideas executed well. I think if you look at the acknowledged Great Sequels – Godfather 2, Toy Story 2, Aliens, Empire Strikes Back – and compare them to the acknowledged Well I Guess This Also Exists Sequels – [too many to list] – this will be seen to be true.
But I’m not going to write that blog post.
Thanks to Katherine H for the conversation that inspired this post!