My idea for a contemporary
Terminator sequel takes place in an alternate timeline in which Sarah was killed while destroying the T-1000, and Uncle Bob, in order to continue protecting John, chose to stick around. Judgment Day never happened, but another, weirder apocalypse did: a
magical apocalypse, maybe something to do with the Mayan 2012 calendar. Ghosts, giant spiders, werewolves and vampires, wizards, etc., all rule the land, and most humans have to stick to drier, hotter climates due to the bug infestation of cooler areas. In this strange, eerie world they never saw coming, two weary travelers, John Connor (Nick Stahl) and Uncle Bob (Arnie), wander the land, helping those they can along the way. They meet a Mexican witch (
Agents of SHIELD's Natalia Córdova-Buckley), with whom they must team up in order to defeat a deranged sorcerer and his apprentice (Jai Courtney and Emilia Clarke) from unleashing a portal to Hell, thus bringing humanity to extinction once and for all. And, could the real villain, the one pulling the sorcerer's strings, be the grand Empress of the Underworld Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) herself, back from the dead, to lead the infernal army?
Moral of the story/pitch: there are always more stories to tell in any given fictional world...
if, that is, you have the guts to diverge enough from that which came before to create something fresh enough to make telling such a story worthwhile. And, as the post-2003 films have shown us, in the case of
Terminator, that divergence has to be
pretty effin' big to really justify making another one.