You’ve probably heard the news by now that hedge fund Pacificor, LLC has purchased the rights to the Terminator franchise from Halcyon’s bankruptcy auction. This transaction has sparked massive speculation on the franchise’s future. Will McG make more sequels? Will T1 and T2 screenwriter Will Wisher’s treatments turn into the next two sequels? Will Pacificor go for a total reboot?
The future not set: there is no fate but what this shady hedge fund makes, right? Well, I wasn’t content with that. As a rabid Terminator fanboy, I needed to know how this turns out, so I took the liberty of using the Overthinking It Time Displacement Field (OTITDF) to travel ten years into the future to see what will become of our beloved franchise.
My report is as follows. Be warned; it ain’t pretty.
2012-2014: The Sequels
Pacificor’s first move was to get a sequel to Terminator: Salvation out the door as quickly as possible. McG, not having anything else better to do, agreed to helm the sequel. Christian Bale, upon hearing that McG had brought on the same Director of Photography from the last movie, refused to participate.
McG, in a bind, recalled Freddie Prinze, Jr’s fine work in Wing Commander and tapped him for the role of John Connor. Nicolas Cage just showed up on set, and nobody had the heart to tell him he wasn’t actually in the movie.
Pacificor, for its part, contributed the title:
To no one’s surprise (well, this guy was surprised), Terminator: Short Sell tanked at the box office. Pacificor demanded a new direction for the franchise, one that would appeal beyond the hard-core fanboy demographic. Pacificor fired McG, but retained Freddie Prinze, Jr., whose nuanced performance in Terminator: Short Sell was one of the few parts of the movie that gained critical praise. Pacificor then did what it should have done in the first place: exploit Freddie’s comparative advantage in romantic comedies:
There’s Something About Terminator, with a much smaller budget than any of the previous films in the franchise, produced a high Return On Investment (ROI), but by this point, Pacificor’s management had grown tired of the feature film business and sought new ways to leverage its Terminator asset.
2016: Busted on Broadway
Although There’s Something About Terminator succeeded in opening Terminator up to previously untapped audiences, Pacificor sought to recapture the original fanboy demographic and make its next offering a true “four quadrant” entertainment product. Fans were at first overjoyed to hear that Pacificor had succeeded in reuniting original Terminator stars Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn but were puzzled and outraged when they learned the nature of the new project:
Critics called the new show “better than the U2 Spider-Man musical.” But just when it seemed like Pacificor had succeeded with its gamble, it was hit by a massive plagiarism lawsuit. The hit song from the show, “I’ll Be Back,” turned out to be stolen from a little-known YouTube fan-video from the previous decade:
The songwriters won their lawsuit and claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and back royalties from the hedge fund.
2018-2020: Back to Basics
The now-humbled hedge fund turned its attention to far less ambitious projects. First, it attempted to recreate the success of the viral internet sensation “Two Gentlemen of Lebowski” by commissioning its own Shakespeare-ification of the original story:
Much to their dismay, the project went no further than appearing on a bunch of hipsters’ blogs and a short, unprofitable theatrical run in New York’s East Village.
Finally, in a last ditched effort, Pacificor put the franchise in the hands of author Stephenie Meyer, who by 2019 had still failed to replicate the success of her Twilight saga. The resulting novel was predictable…
By 2020, Pacificor was preparing for further installments of Stephenie Meyer-penned novels and subsequent film adaptations of those novels–and to profit handsomely from them.
Conclusion: No Fate?
Now that I’ve seen the future of Terminator, I’m rather upset. Sure, winning that lawsuit and all of that money will be nice, but Terminator is more important than any of that. Look what’s happening to Star Wars: the original trilogy is being erased from existence. If Pacificor moves forward with Freddie Prinze, Jr. movies and Stephenie Meyer novels, surely it will try to suppress any knowledge of the original sci-fi masterpieces T1 and T2.
I can’t let this happen.
It appears I must take the future into my own hands.
No fate but what we make.