When filmmaker James Cameron made the first two Terminator movies, he could not have known he was setting future filmmakers up with the near-impossible task of trying to match up to his work for the next three decades. Most recently, Tim Miller attempted to take the franchise in a new direction with Terminator: Dark Fate. The movie was not successful critically or commercially. In an interview for the Happy Sad Confused podcast, actress Mackenzie Davis, who played one of the lead roles of Grace, blamed "franchise fatigue" for Dark Fate's underperformance.

"I loved the experience of making that movie. It was hard and rigorous, as I've already said, but the people were amazing. Tim was an incredible director, just so dedicated and devoted to making it the best thing it could be. As far as the box office and stuff, it's Terminator 6, nobody saw the last three, I get it, it's okay, I don't think that means what we made was bad, but I understand that the audience's appetite has been exhausted."

Dark Fate was positioned as a direct sequel to Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Three years after the previous movie, John Connor was killed by a different terminator. Thus, the future was changed, and Skynet's place was overtaken by a new malevolent supercomputer that called itself Legion.

The supercomputer sent a new terminator back in time to kill a young woman named Dani, who is poised to take John's place as the new savior of humanity. Protecting Dani is an older version of the T-800 terminator, Sarah Connor, and Davis' character Grace. Some felt the movie's decision to kill off John and focus on the three main female characters proved detrimental to its box-office performance. For her part, Mackenzie Davis does not want to engage with such speculations.

"How much you attribute [the low box-office earnings] to there being three women in the lead, I don't know, I never really wanted to engage with that stuff because I can't control it. I am a woman and I really liked the part and I felt proud of what I did so I couldn't be like, 'No one's seeing it because they're sexist.' It seemed like an easier answer for me to be like, 'Alright, six is too much, now we know.'"

It is true that no Terminator movie has managed to reach the heights set by Terminator 2: Judgement Day in the years hence, and the audience might simply not be interested in seeing new additions to the franchise when Judgement Day wrapped up the story so conclusively. Still, there were plans at one point for a follow up to Dark Fate, which according to Davis, would have explored yet another alternate timeline.

"It was gonna be a sort of timeline thing, where there'd be another timeline that you'd explore. Like, there's no resurrection, but [Grace] came from the future, so..."

It is highly unlikely that there will be a sequel to Dark Fate greenlit any time soon, but Davis appears proud of the work she got to do in the series. Hopefully, another meaty action role in the future will allow the actress to show off her impressive action skills in a better-received project. This comes from CMS.Megaphone.fm.