For a large part of this year I’ve been working on a collection of Terminator-inspired short stories. if you’re wondering “why…?” then you can read my introduction for the collection below, or you can always just skip right ahead and download the ebook from a variety of online bookshops (for free) or grab the epub directly right here.
Let’s get the elephant out of the room first: I’m more of an Alien/Aliens fan.
But I’m not exclusive. I dabble.
I can’t remember the first time I might have seen Terminator, but I vividly remember Friday evenings as a teenager watching a VHS copy on a tiny portable TV in my friend’s bedroom (an excellent movie is still an excellent movie regardless of the viewing experience). As such, it was a seminal part of my life experience as a maturing adult. In my—possibly flawed—memory we watched it multiple times, the viewing becoming a sort of Friday night ritual. Back then we just enjoyed it for what it was: a cool film about a killer robot from the future. We probably speculated what might come next—perfectly natural, given the whole movie is essentially about what comes next—but i don’t think the idea of sequels, let alone a franchise, ever factored into our thinking back then.
And then the sequels came.
Released in 1991, a long seven years after the original, Terminator 2 is, in my view, probably the finest blockbuster movie ever made (sorry, Spielberg). I recall Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines (arriving in 2003 after another gap of 12 years) being a reasonably fun ride. Terminator: Salvation (2009) was another film that they made. Terminator: Genisys (2015) had some fun ideas and some godawful ones (the spelling of the title being an example of the latter). In fact, I could probably write a whole essay on Genisys alone … but not today.
Which brings us to 2019’s Dark Fate. I was reasonably excited about this one. After all: they brought back Linda Hamilton; they brought back Arnie; and even James Cameron seemed to be giving it the thumbs up. It basically had me thinking: “they got the band back together—they’re finally gonna do something worthwhile!”. And then it came out, and … it pretty much went nowhere commercially or critically. Even the fans didn’t seem to have much to say about it. It was just another stalled attempt to kick new life into a series that seems to be increasingly allergic to cinema. My interest in going to see the latest chapter evaporated almost as quickly as its box office performance.
I did finally catch up with Dark Fate a couple of years ago and I thought it was pretty good. In fact, as a film on its own merits, I thought it was really good. What held it back (in my humble opinion) was that it was telling exactly the same basic story that we’ve seen regurgitated since 1984 (ironically, Salvation was the one movie that tried to do something different, but I can’t remember anything about it because I was asleep at the time).
I found myself thinking more and more about this. I had really enjoyed the characters I met in Dark Fate. The movie had told its story well, and I couldn’t help thinking if they had only come up with a more original story, maybe it could have worked. Surely there are original stories to be told in this cinematic universe?
Well … challenge accepted!
While I never presumed to imagine that I could come up with a screenplay for a blockbuster Terminator movie, I did start thinking to myself: given the elements available, what stories can be told that don’t simply rehash the formula from the first movie?
It didn’t take me long to come up with four distinct ideas, none of them necessarily movie-worthy, but each a starting point nonetheless. Those basic ideas were:
- The characters from the first movie are caught in a time loop (caused by the events of the first movie);
- A group of kids (Stranger Things style) befriend a Terminator who has had its memory wiped;
- After changing the future in Terminator 2, John Connor struggles with becoming a nobody, having lost his future as saviour of the human race;
- The premise of the first movie, but what if Kyle Reese was just a disturbed predator spinning a story about killers from the future as a ploy for kidnapping vulnerable women?
None of these ideas would be enough for a movie (apart from maybe the second one) but each provided the opportunity to tell a different kind of story in the Terminator universe. Those ideas stuck with me for a while, to the point where I figured I may as well write them down and turn them into actual stories. Just for fun.
So I did. And here you are.
As you’ll find out, these four ideas turned into six stories, and a few drifted away from the original concepts but I’ll go more into that after you’ve read them.
My intention is that you should be able to enjoy these stories without any knowledge of the films, but there are various nods here and there to elements that fans of the films will be familiar with. Whether that’s you or not, I hope you enjoy the read ahead.
Interest piqued? Grab your free copy from the online store of your choice or download directly instead.