Poll of the Day > Why do they keep making Terminator movies?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Each one they make always flop.

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money

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The first 2 were good. 3 was fine

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So the IP rights don't expire...

just like how there is always a new spiderman movie

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Dmess85 posted...

So the IP rights don't expire...

just like how there is always a new spiderman movie

I dont think rights usually work that way do they? I thought that was a uniquely Marvel deal thing. I think Ive heard that Disney influenced that the laws be changed in such a way that companies can just maintain ownership rights indefinitely as long as they keep paying to renew them

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Mead posted...

I dont think rights usually work that way do they? I thought that was a uniquely Marvel deal thing. I think Ive heard that Disney influenced that the laws be changed in such a way that companies can just maintain ownership rights indefinitely as long as they keep paying to renew them

Nah. Not uniquely marvel. DC has had to do it with watchmen. And iirc the guy who has the rights to Dick Tracey did a interview dressed as him to keep the rights

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mooreandrew58 posted...

And iirc the guy who has the rights to Dick Tracey did a interview dressed as him to keep the rights

im going to look this up now, awesome


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They really should have stopped after 2. People say 3 is fine but not really. It's a joke compared to the first two. The other sequels I consider to be fan fiction

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So the matrix has source material to steal from.

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It has a household name, a legendary actor and had some great movies once upon a time so it's worth milking.

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Mead posted...

money

Nail on the head. People watch one groan about how bad it was and then hear a sequel is coming out and say it can't be bad as *****. The studio makes money on up fans refusing to give up until the next hit

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With the direction Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines went, I was really hoping Terminator Genisys would focus on the war and come full circle back to Terminator 1 instead of the reboot. I actually enjoyed Terminator: Dark Fate but wished it had a stronger tie-in to the existing films.

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If time travel is a core mechanic of a franchise, they can just literally keep swinging until something lands.

If anything down the line hits for half of what T2 did, it's a huge win.

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Cotton_Eye_Joe posted...

Each one they make always flop.

People dislike them, but they never really flop. Nearly every Terminator movie has generally recouped more than double its production budget.

The only real exception was the last one, and that still technically made more than it cost to make... though once marketing factors in, it lost about $100 million overall.

The fact that they've been so profitable right up until last year (and there's an argument to be made that external factors may have hurt it more than otherwise) is why they keep making them. And why they'll probably try again at least once.



Dmess85 posted...

So the IP rights don't expire...

just like how there is always a new spiderman movie

That's not really how/why it works that way at all. In any case where rights expire, it's when one party is licensing the rights to a secondary party long-term, and there's a specific clause in the licensing deal to prevent IP camping (ie, the studio just sits on the rights forever and makes it impossible for anyone else to ever access them). But licensing deals aren't always (or even often) that open-ended - the Marvel deal mostly just sucked hard because the company was on the edge of bankruptcy and desperate for money, so the studios could pretty much force any deal through, no matter how predatory or uneven. Which is part of why Marvel spent a lot of time trying to get all of those rights back after they were bought by Disney.

With Marvel, the original (bad) contracts the company signed while desperate for money basically required Sony and Fox to make movies based on a given IP within a specific window of time or else the rights would lapse back to Marvel - but as long as they kept making movies, they'd retain the rights pretty much forever, with no cut-off window. Which is why Sony goes out of its way to keep making Spider-Man movies to preserve those rights. Fox was doing the same thing with X-Men, up until they sold all the rights back to Marvel/Disney.

With Terminator, the rights are owned by James Cameron, and he freely licenses them out on a single-use basis to whatever studio wants to make a Terminator film and is willing to pay for the rights, so there's no "lapsing" mechanic at play.

The only other scenario where rights issues tend to pop up is with trademarking, which is why Marvel keeps publishing "Captain Marvel" comics every few years, and why DC can't call their "Captain Marvel" character from the 1950s "Captain Marvel" anymore (and thus renamed him Shazam). But that's an entirely different (and long) conversation.



mooreandrew58 posted...

Not uniquely marvel. DC has had to do it with watchmen.

Technically, DC doesn't.

DC straight up owns the rights to Watchmen (one of the many reasons why Alan Moore hates DC). They're not legally required to ask him permission for anything, and they technically don't have to ever do anything with the IP ever again to own it forever.

The main reason DC has started doing so much stuff with Watchmen is because it makes them lots and lots of money. They're not obligated to do it, they want to.
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Hasn't been good since Judgement Day. Dark Fate ruined it even more.

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I havent given these movies a shot since the 4th one with Christian Bale.
I didnt even find that one to be terrible, just boring as hell, which in some ways was worse.
At least I can have a stupid bad time with T3.

I rewatch Terminator and T2 every couple years and Im satisfied with that.

InfestedAdam posted...

With the direction Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines went, I was really hoping Terminator Genisys would focus on the war

Just the way you wrote that, you do realize there was a movie was set during the war?

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Justin2Krelian posted...

Just the way you wrote that, you do realize there was a movie was set during the war?

Are you referring to Terminator Salvation? Sorry for not being clear. I meant focusing on the war after John takes lead and the movie ending with Reese being sent back thus coming full circle back to The Terminator.

Basically the beginning part of Terminator Genisys being the entire movie without the reboot.

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InfestedAdam posted...

Are you referring to Terminator Salvation? Sorry for not being clear. I meant focusing on the war after John takes lead and the movie ending with Reese being sent back thus coming full circle back to The Terminator.

Basically the beginning part of Terminator Genisys being the entire movie without the reboot.

Yeah, I see what you mean now. Salvation wasn't really John's movie.

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InfestedAdam posted...

Basically the beginning part of Terminator Genisys being the entire movie without the reboot.

It would be kind of interesting to see a future plot revolving on what happens after the future war part of T1.

Namely, the humans have more or less just "won" the war. Sending Kyle back in time was meant to prevent Skynet from changing the past and undoing that ending.

So Kyle succeeds, the future is preserved... and the humans are now the winners on a devastated world (though they may still need to run periodic mop-up operations for years to come). And John, who has spent 30 years fighting the war, has now "completed" his destiny. His presence was necessary to win the war - the war is won. He needed to send Kyle back to complete the time loop - the loop is now completed.

So what does John do now? And what does humanity do, now that they've reclaimed what's left of their world?

It might make a pretty shitty movie, but it would probably make a pretty interesting story in general.
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"And then, like, they went back even farther, man!"

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Metalsonic66 posted...

"And then, like, they went back even farther, man!"

Hey now, seeing terminators trying to kill George Washington and Ben Franklin would be pretty cool. Especially when Franklin saves the day by getting one struck by lightning with his kite.







Though to be honest, it makes sense why Skynet doesn't send more terminators back even farther in time. If you're trying to alter the future, you have to be careful to not retcon yourself out of existence. Skynet is basically trying to kill the resistance while simultaneously not changing the past so much that it's never invented in the first place.

Though the fact that the series doesn't seem to be able to decide whether or not it wants it to be possible to legitimately change the future or if fate is inevitable kind of shits all over whatever story you want to do regardless.
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The Rick and Morty episode took the concept to its extreme

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Because they don't know how to terminate them.

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I guess people like them and Hollywood will make sequels as long as people keep watching them and now that we have various options outside of traditional movie theaters, to watch movies, it's inevitable to avoid sequels.

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