The year is 1992

>future war
>mission to reach whatever in Skynet's territory with a ragtag bunch of merry retards
>turns out objective is the time displacement device
>movie ends with John sending back Reese into the past with the two of them saying "No fate, but what me make"
There, we got the future war we always wanted, the loop is closed and the franchise is saved.

Reimagine T2 ending in a what if thing. John Connor saves his Terminator and shuts it down somehow. Locks it away in a shed until his adult hood. He's a computer programmer working on time travel with some terminator mumbo jumbo, why? Because he thinks sending his terminator back in time will stop his nightmares of being killed by Arnie in Future War. Somehow I haven't worked it out yet but his mother abandons him yet again for the South America, knowing she can still reproduce and John should be on his own, he'll make it. He's the leader of the resistance. Any way... John achieves his goal and send his Terminator back in time to an undisclosed time and location. This opens up the second half of the movie in another timeline... it's hard to explain all the details of what goes where, but if we ever get to work together, you'll see the picture.

>Have two Arnold terminators sent back to the time of adult John Connor.
>One terminator is working for skynet and the other for the resistance but no one can tell the difference leading to confusion from Connor and distrust.

First half John Connor beats the machines and dies of old age in a future with tamed machines, the same one who sent it back. The camera pans up and outward as if in a dream, we see John Connor asleep at his desk as paper fly into his face. At the end of this second half, John Connors nightmare will come true off-screen. as again the camera pans out over the future battle field plasma blasts from over the horizons.. explosions more and more... over lay fire becomes les translucent and more solid, through the flames the unmistakable shining chrome of a t800 and it's eyes fixed upon you. in a metallic rather demonic screeching kind of sound "YOU ARE TERMINATED." DUN DUN DUN DUN

In his nightmare, Eddie Furlong is in a trench.. not the future leader in his this timeline. Just some guy who gets FUCKED UP. First half John Connor is the legit story.

Let's see:

>1992 so that means at least two years or more, possibly 3 in dev so 1995/96-ish release
>poke around for a couple months to find a solid tv writer with time off of something like Forever Knight that is cheap to give me a framework
>pound on script for 3 months or so going Harve Bennet angle & maybe bring in Nick Meyers since he is coming off of Undiscovered Country of Star Trek, but he will be expensive & worth it
>Call up Arnold to let him know it's a future war deal & see if I can't get Kyle Reese off the sauce to reprise Old John Connor
>Know that CGI is shit so stick to practical hunt & horror action flick using miniatures & models
>no daylight shots make it all night time until end of movie so easier on mattes & camera tricks for practicals
>see if Arnoldus is up for a long shoot to take our time, same with Reese, due to low budget & scrapyard world of working with what we got, so it forces them to actually act against each other instead of line repeating "acting"

We could probably pull it off if the studio didn't rape it down from a chase-horror to shitty kid franchise, with hard action in the first 10 to 15 (expensive), going to another hour of chase (cheap), on a budget of maybe $20 to $25 million, though most will be burnt on practicals, actor salaries and Nick Meyers saving it.

Throwing more money at actors, scripts & movies don't save them or the franchise, as we were taught with all the other Terminator, Alien and Predator movies.

And if given the chance, directors, studios and writers will emit product so badly written and cheaply done, it goes into C-tier as "blockbuster"...never trust them.

he climbs out over the top and as he does so, a beam of sunligt breaks out and shines down upon a t800. it's high noon beneath the black smoke filled sky. This momentarily stuns him as it scans his body and delivers rapid fire shots to pass through and disorient him and knock him back through a fissure in the road where hes suspended upside down, blood comes from his mouth as he tries to break free from the wires, and from the darkness comes arnie with a shotgun aimed at his face. thats the nightmare that scares first john into sending his terminator back. Here's the best part.. the idea was to score a cross over Terminator vs Conan. Terminator wins but is sealed inside a mountain where second hald john connor finds it thousands of years later.

Cameron's T2 universal studios ride had the interesting idea of bringing young John into the future war.
I think the Terminator franchise is just inherently limited. It's got two good stories (stopping a robot assassin from the future/preventing the robot war from ever happening). Since Terminator is such a closed loop, everything else seems superfluous.

Only Terminator 3 that makes any sense is one that shows John Connor's war against Skynet. It lets us ignore the whole time loop thing and focus on just WHOA! COOL ROBOTS! without affecting the main storyline.

also all t800 look like arnie so second half john connor doesnt have to have some sort of past connection

Also it should be called Terminator 1.5 because after 2 the war is no more.

Someone got to John Cameron, I think, Told him if he wants to make it, he has to "friendly" up his style. T1 was a new take on the slasher genre, instead of a knife wielding psycho, it's a robot from the future.

T3 had the worst soundtrack. The only stuff that sounds close to T1 and 2 is the unused stuff youtube and even that just barely qualifies.

sounds pretty based... although coming out in 95 audiences might consider it outdated

>I think the Terminator franchise is just inherently limited
The future war has plenty of untapped potential imo and the sarah connor chronicles were pretty promising in the season and a half we got.

I really like the idea that Judgement Day would always happen, it's just delayed time and time again as the discovery of new technology is set back by the events of each movie, but eventually humanity would advance, as technology tends to do, and they would inevitably come to that point. But I think the story of Terminator has always kind of guided itself towards eventually shifting its tone in that way, as it no longer becomes about John, but its really about the war and what happens after.