Thoughts on the Terminator franchise

I was in college in the mid to late 90’s, back when this newfangled internet thing was just getting going.  One of my friends who knew I was a fan of both Terminator movies, somehow found this script online.  Basically, a guy wrote up his idea for Terminator 3 and put it online in the hope that if enough people read and enjoyed it, the studio would make it.  I think my friend only read the first few pages, but was curious what I thought of it.

I read the hundred pages or so, and from what I remembered, some years after Terminator 2 John is in college and Sarah is dating someone and trying to get her life in order.  But then two T-1000s are sent back, and I believe a good T-800 also shows up.  The good one leads them to an old fallout shelter and Judgment Day happens.  They stay in the shelter for a year or so, and I think over the radio start setting up the Resistance.  They finally blow up the time machine and there’s a whole mess of timey-wimey stuff, the world isn’t destroyed, and Kyle is alive again and married to Sarah.  John and Sarah are the only ones who remember the alternate timeline, and it ends with Kyle going to work for Cyberdyne and he carpools with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Patrick.  If any of you remember this story, I’m kind of curious what happened to the guy who wrote it.

Anyway, the story was pretty much garbage.  I don’t fully remember the details, but I have a vague memory of the dialogue being horrid, the tone being off, and the ending being completely stupid, in the sense of “Just throw everything at the wall and hope nobody asks any questions.”

So a couple of movie reviewers I watch recently talked about great movies and spent some time on the first two Terminators.  I started thinking about this old story where a good terminator leads them to a fallout shelter, they start the Resistance, and then this timey-wimey bullshit ending.  And then I realized, That’s Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genisys.