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2022-07-30

How to Watch Terminator

I've re-watched all the Terminator movies in the past few days, trying to determine how they fit together in some sort of watch order. (A small disclaimer is in order: I haven't seen a single episode of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. This post is about the movies only.)

It's not... easy. Almost all those following Terminator: Judgment Day are reboots or rewrites of the storyline. Although they do take advantage of the confusing mechanics of time travel to sort of make it work.

So how do we do this? Let's attempt to make some sense to it. Here's what I choose to call the School Bus Approach to Terminator (stupid name, sure, but I'm just now re-watching the scene in Genisys where a school bus tumbles around on the Golden Gate Bridge).

• Terminator, Terminator: Judgement Day, and Terminator: Dark Fate are the canon trilogy and should be watched in that order.
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is an alternate timeline.
• Terminator: Salvation is sort of an odd one out, taking place completely in the future. It fits pretty neatly in either of the two established timelines, but as I said it's an odd bird. It does star Christian Bale and Sam Worthington and has a lot more conversation and acting than the others, which adds to its qualities as a movie in general.
• Terminator: Genisys is... uhm... Well, it is. It's a movie, and it has terminators, but it's honestly a little bit of a mess and it doesn't fit either of the two already established timelines. In my opinion it's more of a time travel film than a terminator film, really. Watch it last, if at all. It does have its moments, and the ending isn't half bad.

In essence the very best of the franchise is the original trilogy. If you want to enjoy the highlights but aren't a hardcore fan then stick with that. The rest of them can be watched in any order, since they're not really sequels or prequels in any meaningful way. Except watch Genisys last, as I said. If you've gotten tired of robots from the future already by then it's no loss.

-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal