Terminator is a sci-fi film franchise ostensibly about assassin robots from the future who can blend into the crowd. In reality it’s…something else.

This is honestly the best film in the franchise. Yes, I said it.
The premise is simple, but it executes it flawlessly. The T-800 is terrifying.
Even the story is wrapped up flawlessly.

People say this is the best film in the franchise, and I disagree. Though if you want to know why, I recommend going down into Time Travel Issues.

If you ignore all the story flaws with this film, it becomes good. But that’s not how you judge stories, so I’m just gonna say it’s kinda mediocre.

Obviously the action and special effects are a step up from the previous film…and turning the T-800 into a hero was an interesting choice. But…the time travel? Yeah…that’s all messed up.

The plot here is kinda broken and nonsensical, but I honestly think this is where the Terminator franchise should have continued from. The simple reason being that they threw out the time travel stuff.

Obviously, it could have been better. But what’s there isn’t bad, it’s just kinda average. Also: much better than everything that came after.

Is it better or worse than Terminator 2? That’s a difficult question to answer…
I think that it’s better to see Salvation as a sequel to the original Terminator, rather than a sequel to Terminators 2 or 3. It just seems to come from the same general mold.

Also, casting Christian Bale as John Connor was fantastic.

This is where the series starts to go downhill and fast.

The most notable thing about it is that it’s mildly entertaining, but otherwise not great.

I’m not going to grace this with anything more than to say it’s bad.

This critique isn’t going to make a lot of sense if you subscribe to the widely-held belief that Terminator’s time travel fits together. The truth is that…well…
The first film’s time travel does fit together, but everything afterwards falls apart.

Terminator 2 actually introduces a major plot hole to the franchise: the idea that the events of that film did change the future and Judgment Day was prevented. Despite how backwards this’ll sound, this was a really really bad thing in the context of the whole series.

What’s the issue? Let’s recount the events that occur:

• Skynet sends the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor.
• This is because Sarah Connor gives birth to John Connor.
• John Connor defeats Skynet in the present/future and Skynet wants to prevent its own destruction.
• In response to Skynet sending back a Terminator, John Connor sends back Kyle Reese to protect his mom (and pump her full of his Reese).
• The resulting destruction of the Terminator and pumping of Sarah leads to John Connor’s birth, which guarantees Skynet’s downfall.

This is all actually internally consistent, but it’s also all just the context present in the first film. The second film, however:

• Skynet, as a backup plan, sent back a more advanced Terminator to kill John Connor as a child in the event the first Terminator fails.
• Realizing this is the case, John Connor sends back a reprogrammed Terminator to protect his past self.
• In the process, Sarah and John Connor (of the past) decide to try to prevent Skynet’s creation in the first place.

There are a bunch of issues in there, but let’s start with a few simple ones.
Why didn’t Skynet send the T-1000 to kill Sarah Connor initially? If it did, Sarah would have definitely died, which guarantees Skynet’s ultimate victory. Alternatively, why not send two of them to the same place?
The other issue is that Skynet is implicitly assuming it’s going to fail. If it didn’t assume failure, it never would have sent the T-1000 back in time after the T-800. It would have switched their positions or only sent back one.

Now we get into the actual time travel issues that result from Sarah trying to prevent Judgment Day.
To put it bluntly: this causes a time paradox which ultimately leads to Skynet’s victory.
This is because if Skynet never comes online, then there’s no Judgment Day…which means no war between humans and machines. And that means that Skynet can’t lose…which means that it never sends a Terminator back in time…which also means Kyle Reese is never sent back in time…which means John Connor is never born…which means that Skynet’s destruction in the past can’t happen, because nobody who is meant to tell Sarah Connor about Skynet actually meets her. Thus: paradox.
You may be tempted to point out that Skynet sending a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah Connor also creates a time paradox, but this is not actually the case. If Sarah is dead, Judgment Day continues – except now there’s no John Connor. All Skynet has to do in this scenario is send back a Terminator to kill Sarah again. That would create a stable loop. Skynet could’ve even placed a message inside the T-800 telling itself about this plan.

So preventing Judgment Day just results in Judgment Day happening again (or whatever happens when a time paradox is created in real life) and the Terminator succeeding doesn’t create a time paradox…so…?

The only logical conclusion you can reach in this situation is that Sarah should just sit back and wait for Judgment Day to happen. Because Kyle being sent back is the ultimate proof that humans end up winning the war. All Sarah needs to do is make sure she survives long enough for John to be capable of taking control of the resistance…and then he just has to send his dad back in time.
There’s a guaranteed victory for humanity and, for some reason, this isn’t seen as enough. Like, I get it, but the alternative is waaaaaay too risky…because nobody in-universe actually knows what happens when a time paradox is created.
Sarah and John should just aim to preserve the timeline as-is.

• I’ll eventually add links.