The ‘Terminator’ series has never been clear on how to best utilize its erstwhile main protagonist effectively, but there is a clear reason that ‘Terminator: Genisys’ evil John Connor didn’t work. Reinventing the hero of a franchise as its villain is usually a pretty compelling twist. Making Ellen Ripley into a part-Xenomorph clone, for example, was one of few intriguing ideas in the fourth Alien installment. More broadly, charting a character’s gradual moral dissolution typically makes for engaging viewing. But ‘Terminator: Genisys’ wasted the narrative opportunity with its evil John Connor twist.
The Terminator movies conclusively proved that the franchise had no idea how to use John Connor when 2015’s reboot ‘Terminator: Genisys ‘made him one of the movie’s many villains. On paper, the prospect of the human resistance leader switching sides and joining Skynet is a dark and interesting idea, but in practice, the twist fell flat with audiences upon the release of the movie. The reason for this failure was rooted in the nature of the Terminator’s franchise villains as morally uncomplicated automatons.
It’s too late for John Connor to be the star of ‘Terminator 7’, but back in 2015 ‘Terminator: Genisys’ initially appeared to be onto something when it made the hero of the series into the movie’s antagonist. Turning John into Terminator: Genisys’s villain could have been a compelling twist, in theory, but the problem was that the villains of the Terminator franchise are famous for being unthinking, unfeeling androids. As such, John became just another Terminator in disguise and was interchangeable with any of the many shapeshifting villains of the series. The issue was that it didn’t affect or evolve his character in any meaningful way.
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