Here's How You Can Watch Every Movie In The Terminator Series

Few film series have ever blended chilling horror, thrilling sci-fi action, and twisty time travel antics as effectively (or as awesomely) as the Terminator movies. The inaugural entry, 1984's The Terminator, simply caught everybody by surprise. It was a very early work from future King of the World James Cameron, it made a household name out of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it spawned a film franchise almost as difficult to stop as its namesake killing machine, the cyborg sent back from a dystopian future to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of future resistance leader John Connor. Not bad for what was, at its core, a low-budget slasher flick from an unheralded filmmaker, starring an Austrian bodybuilder with a name few Americans at the time could pronounce.

Cameron's follow-up, 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was upon its release the most expensive movie ever produced, thanks to Schwarzenegger's greatly increased paycheck, a plethora of large-scale action set pieces, and some (still impressive) early CGI work. The film is a stone-cold action classic — but it took a dozen years for the next installment in the series to surface, by which time Cameron had moved on from the director's chair. Helmer Jonathan Mostow's 2003 effort Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was reasonably well-received, though, and it paved the way for a new generation of filmmakers to take their cracks at the franchise.

Unfortunately, most fans agree that the next two entries — director McG's Terminator Salvation, the 2009 flick that effectively put a fork in the series' narrative to that point; and Alan Taylor's 2015 entry Terminator Genisys, which was intended as a soft reboot — were inessential installments, to put it politely. 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate from Deadpool director Tim Miller was something of a return to form, with Hamilton returning to the role of Sarah Connor for the first time since T2 and Cameron once again having a hand on the wheel in a producing role.

All six Terminator movies are available for rent or purchase on Amazon, but there other streaming options for you if you're in the mood to marathon. Here's how you can watch them all online.

The third and fourth flicks in the series were mightily divisive among fans, but they're both worth a watch — and if you subscribe to HBO Max, then you're in luck, because they're both part of the streamer's ridiculously deep catalog. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines had an incredibly tough act to follow, and many fans would have preferred to have T2's Edward Furlong back to portray the now-adult John Connor rather than Nick Stahl, who turned in a surprisingly charisma-free performance as the savior of humanity. But the flick benefits from some crackerjack action sequences, a steely performance by Kristianna Loken as the new and improved T-X "Terminatrix," and some of the most deadpan Schwarzenegger line readings of the entire series. The movie can also be rented on Amazon for $2.99.

Terminator Salvation saw the role of John Connor taken over by Christian Bale, who has never been anything other than totally committed in every role he's ever played. He acquits himself nicely, but this is the movie in which the entire timeline of the Terminator series started to come off the rails; it serves as both a sequel to Terminator 3 and a prequel to the whole series, exploring Connor's early days in the resistance and his relationship with Kyle Reese (the late Anton Yelchin, stepping into the role originated by Michael Biehn in the first film). If you simply let the craziness wash over you, it's an entertaining enough entry — but if you're not an HBO Max subscriber, it'll cost you $3.99 to rent it on Amazon.