No Fate But What We Make #1: THE TERMINATOR

“Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can’t help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you can imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.”

The Terminator (1984)

“The whole thing goes: the future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

I was 14 years old when the first Terminator was released. It was more than just a movie to me. It was a lightning bolt. It was a dare. It was a filmmaker throwing down and showing just how much you could do with almost nothing. It was an important moment for me.

But just because I’ve been here from the start and just because I felt that strongly about the first movie, that doesn’t make me more or less right than anyone else. Oddly, I’ve written very little about the Terminator films over the years, especially considering how much I love the first two. If you read any of my coverage of the development of these films over time, then you probably know that I’m skeptical of any Terminator sequel, and that hasn’t changed.

Talking about the Terminator series means talking about the very nature of sequels and what makes them worthwhile. Or, as the case may be, not.

So as part of this new Ghost era, I thought I should write about all of it, the entire franchise, for the very first time.

Based on the box-office reaction to Dark Fate, this may be the last time as well.

There are not many series that have taken this strange a path, nor many that have lasted this long. It’s been over 35 years of truly strange twists and turns and stops and starts and highs and lows.

And it all started simply enough…