There are parallels between the Terminator saga’s distressing downward spiral into creative redundancy and its own essential mythology. For over time, these movies have lost their humanity: James Cameron’s rich and vivid early visions of ordinary blue-collar Californians battling to avert the machine apocalypse have been replaced by storytelling so plain and by-the-numbers that one imagines everything from 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines onwards might have been produced by Skynet’s own screenwriting department.

Insipid 2009 effort Terminator Salvation was even financed by an investment advisory firm known as Pacificor, a moniker with so little sense of humanity about it that it’s hard not to visualise its corporate emblem as a single, demonic neon-red robot eye, Hollywood’s answer to Wall-E’s relentlessly mercantile Buy n Large. The production company behind last year’s middling Terminator Genisys, Skydance Media, even sounds a bit Skynet-y. Perhaps, fed up with Arnie and his pals averting Judgment Day on at least half a dozen separate occasions, the merciless machine reich simply went and infiltrated Hollywood instead.

Cameron needs to find some way of restoring the essential fear factor of the early Terminator movies

Fortunately Cameron, the ultimate architect of high-octane Hollywood futurism, might be back to revive Terminator as a going concern. Deadline reports that the Canadian film-maker will regain his rights to the franchise in 2019 and is currently working (perhaps with Skydance) on some form of reboot. Given the Terminator saga’s reliance on time travel and the potential for reset timelines, this doesn’t necessarily mean a new movie ignoring all its predecessors. But with luck, it might mean removing the story from the increasingly redundant John Connor/Sarah Connor loop that has systematically failed to return any real moments of enjoyment since 1991.

Salvation might have been about as entertaining as a night on the tiles with Robert Patrick’s T-1000, but at least it did its best to shift into new territory by beginning to give us a vision of the post-apocalyptic, machine-ruled world. Genisys had some vaguely intriguing ideas – not least the return of John as some kind of part-cyborg Skynet stooge – but its biggest mistake was to revisit the ground covered with so much more brio by the first two movies, with Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke sadly miscast as the new Sarah Connor. Could they not, at the very least, have given the British actor a dodgy 80s perm and questionable wardrobe? Or was this some alternative version of the decade in which the fashion police, rather than the machines, have taken over?

Cameron is said to be eyeing Deadpool’s Tim Miller to direct the new episode, while presumably taking a producer’s role. Miller is a special effects expert rather than a sci-fi visionary, but there’s vague talk of bringing in one of the genre’s top-flight writers to give the project extra weight, which could be vital.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christian Bale in Terminator: Salvation. Photograph: Allstar/WARNER BROS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Terminator’s problem ever since T2 has been its intellectual mediocrity, lack of attention to detail and short-sightedness as a saga. With luck, Cameron’s newfound control should give him the chance to present one final story that brings the tale he began with 1984’s The Terminator to a satisfactory conclusion, while perhaps opening up the narrative to usher in a new era of movies. What we don’t want to see is a repeat of the ast 20 years, with each new film featuring a completely new cast, and produced by an entirely different creative team, each with wildly varying theories as to what makes Terminator tick.

And so to the casting. For the vast majority of fans, Linda Hamilton will always be Sarah Connor, Edward Furlong will always be John Connor and Michael Biehn will always be Kyle Reese. Furlong’s career has been irretrievably derailed by a longstanding substance abuse problem, and Biehn’s version of Reese was killed off in the 1984 film. But there is no reason why Hamilton could not be brought back – Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek-style – for a future instalment set in the present day, should the Avatar director decide to make a direct sequel to T2 that spins off into new territory. Sarah Connor was written out prior to Rise of the Machines, but nobody owes that awful movie anything, least of all Cameron. It’s arguable Jonathan Mostow and his team owe all of us who saw it two hours of our lives back.

Schwarzenegger is a different kettle of electric fish. Genisys used a younger body double and a motion capture performance by Schwarzenegger to bring back the youthful T-800 from 1984 for some action scenes. Might Cameron now consider going further for the new instalment, with Arnie brought in to provide an entirely mo-capped performance as Terminator Jr, in the mode of Peter Cushing’s CGI resurrection in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? It would certainly be one way of boosting audience intrigue, and therefore box office returns.

And yet, ultimately, bringing back Arnie only delays the inevitable. Cameron might squeeze out one more movie spun around the T-800 and its various offshoots, but if the Terminator series is to be successfully revived, we need fresh characters and storylines to get excited about. That might mean no more Connors and Reeses, perhaps even no more Judgment Day lurking eternally in the background – with only the Hollywood equivalent of the team from the IT Crowd standing between mankind and the imminent machine apocalypse.

Cameron needs to find some way of restoring the raw, visceral thrill – the essential fear factor – of the early Terminator movies. A little R-rated ultra-violence should do it. It’s hard to believe, given how non-threatening the last few instalments have been, but the T-800 was once up there with slasher-flick cinema’s greatest rogues – the xenomorph, Michael Myers, Freddie Krueger – for its ability to inspire heart-stopping dread. Nowadays, the sight of those glowing ruby peepers is only so horrifying because it means there’s another new Terminator movie to sit through.