What is the best Terminator movie? Our definitive list from worst to best!
With Terminator Genisys set to explode into cinemas this week, we went back over the entire franchise to date taking in entries from the 1984 original to 2009’s Salvation. We’ve combed through the car chases, endured the punch ups and winced at the many (many!) one liners. And now we’ve got the definitive list of Terminator movies from worst to best.
You probably already predicted this, but Terminator Salvation is absolutely, positively and objectively the worst Terminator film ever made.
And that’s kind of a shame because of the four movies made to date, it’s the one which takes the biggest risks by actually giving us an entire movie set in the Future War timeline. The world is already gone, Skynet has won and the few survivors are on the brink of extinction.
That’s pretty cool stuff, and the film goes out of its way to play things differently – right from the opening with Sam Worthington’s character on death row.
Unfortunately it’s all a royal mess. The film is basically a series of awkwardly connected chase scenes with characters who hardly interact and a pretty nonsensical plot. But it’s really McG’s direction which kills it – he’s got no sense of where the emotional or action high points are, rushing through every edit on the way to the next explosion.
If you’re searching for plus points the film looks great, especially the focus on large scale practical effects and some of the action beats are halfway enjoyable. But otherwise Salvation is just an awful, awful disaster of a picture.
Rise of the Machines is actually pretty good, especially when you watch it in the context of Salvation!
In truth, we always quite enjoyed Jonathan Mostow’s 2003 feature. It may not measure up to James Cameron’s original two movies but that doesn’t stop it from being a fun event movie in its own right.
Pre-production was a chore and reportedly Arnie offered to come back for $30 million just to see if they’d pay it… and they did. That made the budget balloon close to $200 million but at least a lot of it ended up on screen, especially evident in the extended crane and car chase scene which ends the first third of the movie.
Schwarzenegger is back and looking great and he’s got so-so support from Nick Stahl and Claire Danes – who both seem to be trying really hard. Then there’s the lady-Terminator (Kristanna Loken) who is just there to make it seem like this is a different movie.
Rise falls down hard on one major point – its sense of humour. It’s often utterly daft, with jokey sound-effects and far too many giggles at Arnie’s expense. It almost makes a mockery of the franchise even as it rips off familiar scenes. And then the whole film ends with a pitch black sucker punch that’s actually one of its most redeeming features.
Rise of the Machines is better than you remember, but still not as good as…
This is one of the most important films ever made. Not only does it show what you can do with determination and a $6 million budget but it also truly birthed the filmmaking phenomenon who is James Cameron (it’s technically his second film but his work on Piranha II was meddled with).
It’s a pared back sci-fi thriller with intense action scenes and inventive use of special effects including stop motion, rear projection and some highly detailed prosthetics from the legendary Stan Winston.
And The Terminator is certainly an entertaining film but it’s a very simple one. Essentially Cameron replaced the implacable killer from a slasher movie with a cybernetic enemy. It’s shifted into sci-fi by the time-travelling premise but he’s nothing more than a movie monster.
He’s a great movie monster, and the image of the gleaming metal endo-skeleton has rightly endured. But Cameron was really stretching his abilities with The Terminator, especially when it comes to pacing and the simple matters of human dialogue. He’s always been a corny writer but some of the exchanges between Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton are painful to listen to.
And the budget often shows through quite keenly – especially in those Future War sequences. One of the first shots is a jerkily animated Hunter Killer, a moment which is re-used later in the picture and looks like it would be more at home in Thunderbirds.
Yet somehow these many issues hardly matter because of the energy of the piece, the inventive effects work and the terrifying force of the unstoppable Terminator, a role which helped to create the superstardom of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Which brings us to the inevitable conclusion – Terminator 2 is the best Terminator movie around.
The reasons are many. It’s one of the defining action blockbusters of the 90s – the biggest movie of 1991 and Cameron’s third highest grossing picture at $520 million (which is way behind Titanic and Avatar).
It’s also, quite simply, one of the best action films ever made. CG spectacle may have increased in scale in the intervening years but nothing does choreographed mayhem like Cameron. He created full-scale warzones and set but crafted each moment with meticulous, maybe even insane, levels of detail.
He might actually be a crazy person – often operating the camera during the craziest of stunts and insisting on voicing the death-scream of the T-1000 himself because no one else was living up to his vision. But the results speak for themselves in terms of visceral action, perfect set pieces and that wonderfully emotionally pay off.
T:2 is also an incredible showcase for Cameron’s development as a filmmaker. It’s clear his work on Aliens and The Abyss has taught him numerous lessons in finessing the production and his audience as well as numerous clever methods of cost-cutting which allowed him to eke out even more from his nearly $100 million production budget.
Just take a listen to one of his commentaries sometime (or check out the exhaustive trivia track on the blu-ray release) to find out the ridiculous work he puts into each and every detail. For T:2, the entire production went from script to cinemas in just 12 months, and that includes developing and implementing ground-breaking digital effects which still hold up today – mostly because they’re used sparingly and effectively.
It’s really just one of the finest examples of action cinema ever committed to celluloid, building on structure laid down by the first film and taking advantage of Arnie’s increased fame to create a towering cinematic villain turned hero.
For these reasons, and many more besides, Terminator 2: Judgement Day is the best Terminator movie ever made.
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