They're neither good nor evil. Not the Terminator himself obviously. I never said that I don't think. Concepts of righteousness and virtue are completely foreign to him, as it should be. But through John Connor? Yes. I think we can all agree that John Connor in the first two films is one of the "good" guys with a positive moral compass. That's the reason he's leader of the human resistance in the future, because he values human life and will protect it at all costs. That is the ONLY reason the Terminator is "good" in that movie, is because of John Connor. Carl doesn't have that excuse. He killed John Connor.
The Terminator in the first film is a tool by Skynet to eliminate Sarah Connor. The Terminator in the second film is a tool by John Connor to protect his younger self. That's the extent of it. He's a villain in the first film and a hero in the second, because the story demands it, but it's the same exact character and if you break them both down since they both lack agency, they're both anti-heroes. About as morally grey as the shirts they wear under that black leather jacket. If you took that first Terminator from the first film and changed it's mission, it would be the same character. The story paints one as the antagonist and the other as the protagonist, but they both have the same gleam in their eye whether they're killing cops or maiming cops. I don't care if the Terminator in T2 doesn't kill anyone, he still has the same antagonists as he does in the first film, authority figures, LA's finest.
What I'm saying is, Carl, like Pops before him, is not that. He's not the two of them. I mean the character actually
shows remorse for killing John Connor and hurting Sarah, so much so that he dedicates his life to protecting another woman and her child AND owning a drapery business. That's not something a killing machine does. You're saying you see Carl as an extension of Uncle Bob had he lived on, and I'm telling you that's BS and not the case.
I think the biggest problem with the sequels is that they can't let Uncle Bob go. They can't let that concept of Arnold as the protector die
because it was done so well in 1991. So they write up these horribly contrived scripts where that "hero" archetype lives on despite fundamentally missing the point of both T1 and T2. Hate to break it to them, but that character was lowered into molten steel and died. This has been a problem since T3 where almost every scene I was thinking "Cameron's Terminator would never do that" or Genisys where I kept thinking "Cameron's Terminator would never do that" or with this one, where I kept thinking "Cameron's Terminator would never do that". Those iterations also never "earn" it. In T2, it's taught the smiling, the catch phrases, the keys behind the sun shade, the thumbs up, etc. very much like the first Terminator acts like an easily impressionable child by repeating "**** you, ass hole" from the first human interaction he experienced. All those moments are learned and earned.
T3, Pops and Carl don't earn it. They're stupid.
