I would be all for a almost entirely CGI/miniature/model-based Terminator installment, based around the early days after Judgement Day, the Rise of the Resistance (hey! there's a neat title to follow-up after the Rise of the Machines, donchya think?) once the country and the world has become livable again... seeing the rebels come from underground, learn the weaknesses of the flying H/Ks and the T-1 rovers, so SkyNet keeps advancing and improving the designs etc etc.. seeing John and Kate's relationship develop from simple survival into friendship and love, even though they already know they are 'destined' to be married and make babies and fight this war together, and they try to ignore their feelings and 'just simply survive'... fate just makes things happen, you know?
so, they might not need any Arnold or an Arnold stand-in or anything else in the next installment... of course, there would be ways of making such a thing happen if they skipped some lot of years of the war and got to the good stuff, the creation of the 'skinned' cyborgs later on, and finally to the t-800 and beyond, but I think I would miss the developments of all the time in between, so a movie that skipped over so much history of things to come would probably end up sucking ass, regardless how good it was, or if Arnold or Linda or Edward or Michael Biehn came back...
Only the SkyNet of the post-T2 time-line creates the T-800s way way way later in the war, like closer toward 2029... because of the alterations in the timeline, things change, SkyNet becomes stranger faster, and mostly because stupid humans take the future tech and try to use it for their own evil purposes, without knowing that they are puppets of SkyNet by doing just that... like the arm could be used for anything else besides on a 7 foot tall robot without looking goofy. Humans are generally vain and all about symettry, so they would build a prototype machine to fit the future-tech left overs, thereby making the future-tech present-tech, and altering things further...
you never know where T4 could go, but imagine if the Crystal Peak resistance forces use the leftover future tech from T-X and T-850 to start to construct their own cyborgs, all under the watchful eye of the leaders of the resistance... hmmmm... imagine the possibilities....
yes Im a real writer! just not a published real writer...
James Cameron thought the Terminator story was complete after the first original movie, there was no need for even a second movie... 10 years later, he was convinced that some of his ideas for the first movie, ideas that didn't make it into the completed first movie, could be expanded upon and included in a sequel, so Terminator 2 was born...
after T2, Cameron decided for certain that there would be no more Terminator movies, then someone else wrote T3, and CAmeron read it and laughed at how stupid the whole idea was, so he didn't want to do it... even Arnold tried to convince him to do it any way, because Arnold was interested in another go-round, but Cameron just said NO!, kicked Arnold in the nuts, and ran away...
that's all true... I heard it from SuperShadow! 🙂 hee hee!
T4 would be better without Arnie because as you pointed out Slickrick69, the T800 & 50's were developed later on in the war so we should really see how the resistance came together and fight what machines there are until T5. I think that only part where we should see Arnie in T5 would be where he comes to kill John like he said in T3 and see him reactivated by Kate Brewster and sent back in time to protect them both and thats it. And then continue the film where we see John come back to life as Arnie succeded in T3 as we know and then see the rest of the movie without him.
ya enuff of cyborgs going back in time. bring on the war dude. and btw, cameron said he loved t3: ONE WORD 2 PUT IT, GREAT. some of u may say that he said it because he didnt wanna say it infront of every1 but he had no problem in saying that his alien franchise was COMPLETELY ruined( same interview)