Why The Terminator Franchise Should Return To Its Slasher Horror Roots
James Cameron's The Terminator closely followed the template of slasher films of the early 1980s while adding a time travel twist, and future movies in the franchise should get back to those horror roots. James Cameron began his career in horror, helming Piranha II: The Spawning, and he used the experience of making a low-budget horror film for the high concept premise of The Terminator. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator in the original film was an unstoppable killing machine stalking «final girl» Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), not unlike the iconic slasher movie villains Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees that proceeded him.
However, the following sequels abandoned the horror elements that made the original Terminator so intense exclusively favoring sci-fi and action, much to the detriment of the franchise.Terminator 2: Judgment Day took a wildly different approach to the Terminator character, portraying him as a sympathetic hero instead of a villain. Filling in for the villain role was Robert Patrick's T-1000, a liquid metal Terminator who could mimic other people and form his appendages into blunt weapons. While the T-1000 was a terrifying presence, the very nature of its shape-shifting form moved the film's threat from a humanoid terror into full uncanny sci-fi territory, distancing itself from the grounded horror of the original film's Terminator.
Related: The Original Terminator 2 (Before James Cameron)
While Terminator 2 is widely regarded as one of the best sequels of all time, the Terminator franchise needs to go back to the original Terminator's slasher movie roots is that every sequel following T2 tried to mimic its success to increasingly diminished effect. The franchise's villains became more over-the-top,
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