Why Terminator: Dark Fate Killing Off John Connor Didn’t Work
2019’s Terminator franchise installment Terminator: Dark Fate’s opening scene should have been an audacious, daring reset for the series, but here’s why the potentially stellar surprise of John Connor being killed off fell flat for fans. The Terminator franchise has never been entirely clear on how best to use the character of John Connor. The original sci-fi horror movie worked around this by using John Connor as a MacGuffin, an unborn, unseen figure whose potential existence drives the plot, whereas the first Terminator sequel successfully realized him onscreen as a precocious teen.
However, since then the Terminator franchise’s problem with timeline rebooting has doomed John Connor to numerous forgettable incarnations. John Connor has been an under-developed protagonist in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, a sort-of co-lead character in Terminator: Salvation, and a villain in 2015’s reboot Terminator: Genisys. Thus, it was almost inevitable that Terminator: Dark Fate’s theoretically daring decision to kill him off made little impact, given how much the character had already been misused throughout the series.
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Seeing the young John murdered by Arnie’s unfeeling T-800 could have been a shocking moment that subverted audience expectations, but the scene didn't work for numerous reasons. For one thing, using a CGI-de-aged Edward Furlong to play John Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate’s opening scene meant that no audience member thought he would be around for long. Since CGI characters are famously prohibitively expensive, seeing the actor as he appeared in Terminator 2: Judgement Day was an obvious signpost that he was soon to be doomed. For another, there
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