Technically this kid *did* save the world, lol.
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Could have built a sequel around this kid ( Tim)
In a film about the "future war", Tim and his family get sent to a Cyberdyne death/labor camp. After being scanned and ID'd, he's told he has to find the Resistance, find John Connor, and lure him out, or his family will die. Or in exchange, if he succeeds, he and his family will be sent to a Cyberdyne underground test facility, where humans are given fair treatment, but observed, as human experiments to help further the cause of the machines.
IMHO, that would be interesting. Someone from John's past, where nostalgia kicks in, where he breaches right through the normal protocols and chain of command ( like young Henry Hill in Goodfellas) , to see if he can compromise him for good. They could have done flashbacks to John and Tim as young teenagers together as well.
You'd get lots of future war type battles for pure spectacle, plenty of fan service, some flashbacks to younger Sarah Connor, maybe some light scenes with middle aged Kyle Reese and older Connor, and a huge arc about the different tonal qualities of "Trust" in the middle of total despair. Unfortunately you'd need alot of SFX/CGI for this, but the technology is there now. Not cheap, not fast, but it's there.
"Friends" from your childhood ring different. They just do. There are people that you'd never be friends with if you met them as an adult, but because you had proximity, time and youth, you bond. A guy I knew as a kid, not huge friends, but we were cool, he ended up a drug addict later in life, starting around early college years. I saw him strung out in an aisle at a grocery store a long while later. He didn't see me, nor would he probably recognize me ( hoodie, hat, etc) but I saw him from a distance. Just kind of dug at me a bit, to see what he was before, and what he became. I think everyone has a story like that somewhere. And it's a template to relate to the audience.
Put it this way, there was a lot of better potential Terminator stories out there, don't have to be mine, that could surpass Genisys real easy.
