Universal Pictures/TriStar Pictures

Let’s be clear right off the bat: I love both Jamie Lee Curtis and Linda Hamilton, and am glad they’re getting work. Hell, just a week ago, I singled out Ms. Curtis for my proposed sitcom starring four 60-plus actresses (even though she’s actually just 58), because she’s hilarious and awesome and I want to see her on screen more than I have in recent years. My issue is that, by returning to their iconic roles of Laurie Strode and Sarah Connor, respectively, they are selling themselves short. Or, at least, Hollywood is.

One of the things aging actors often do is return to the roles that made them famous in the first place. Just two years ago, Sylvester Stallone got his first Oscar nomination in almost 40 years by playing Rocky Balboa again, Arnold Schwarzenegger simply can’t stop playing some form of the Terminator, and Bruce Willis is supposedly pulling on John McClane’s shoulder holster one more time, so it’s not like this isn’t an issue across the board. The difference is, all three of these guys are getting cast in numerous roles that have nothing to do with the ones that sent them into the stratosphere. It’s not clear the same is true for Curtis and Hamilton.

But this isn’t a screed about gender inequality in Hollywood, or ageism, or anything of the sort, because I’ve covered all that extensively in this space and there’s no real need to delve into it again, at least not at this juncture. I’m more interested in the idea that two fading franchises are returning to their origins — literally decades after their peaks — following numerous attempts to continue the story, all of which fell flat. Shouldn’t Hollywood be rethinking ways to tell these stories, particularly with regards to casting?

Now, granted, I have no idea what direction the new Terminator and Halloween films are going, or how those stories are going to be told, so perhaps I’m jumping the gun a bit to get all Judgey McJudgerson over here. I mean, look at what Ryan Coogler did with Creed, giving us an entirely fresh and new spin on the Rocky ethos that revitalized a character and a franchise that even its creator seemed to have put to bed with the elegiacal Rocky Balboa in 2006.

That said, I do know that Jim Cameron and Deadpool director Tim Miller are choosing to ignore everything that came after 1991’s T2: Judgment Day, and it appears that director David Gordon Green and his co-writer Danny McBride are doing the same with everything that happened after the second Halloween movie, which came out in 1981. That apparently includes 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, a movie that was supposed to be part of the franchise’s canon because it was the first time Curtis returned to the role and that itself disavowed several previous sequels, but is now… not? I guess? I’m honestly not sure, though I do recall that they actually killed Michael Myers in that one, then resurrected him four years later for Halloween: Resurrection, which also starred JLC and, in fact (15-year-old spoiler warning) killed her off once and for all, too!

To be fair, I’m not the biggest horror guy, and so I’m not always clear on how these things work, but I think that if you want both your hero and your villain to actually be living and doing battle, you want to disavow those times you killed them off. But then, maybe I’m naive.

It’s entirely possible that something similar to Creed is in store for the new Halloween and/or the new Terminator, but either way, it’s clear that, rather than starting over, the filmmakers are once again content to drink from the same old well. Creed was, to me, an outlier — a rare exception to the Same Old Same Old of Franchise Fatigue that worked because of its originality. While it’s certainly possible that one of these two films could have a similarly satisfying take, my concern with them are akin to my issues with the Star Wars universe, where, as previously noted in this space, I’d really like to see some stories told that have absolutely nothing to do with the Skywalker clan. The same goes for Terminator and Halloween.

Each and every incarnation of Cameron’s brainchild — five movies, and a TV show that lasted two seasons — has revolved around Sarah Connor or her son John, and of the 10 Halloween movies — including a pair of rebooted entries from 2007 and 2009 — six have featured some incarnation of Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton played the role in the latter two flicks). At some point, doesn’t it sort of make sense to try something new? You’ve got some really talented guys behind the camera on these things, guys who have given us some terrifically entertaining movies over the years and might, one would think, have some different notions about where to take these central concepts. But rather than foster that and try something potentially new exciting, it’s the standard fall back of, “Hey, what if we catch up with these women [fill in the number]of years later?”

I don’t want to lose the idea introduced right up front, which is how glad I am that the 58-year-old Curtis and the almost 61-year-old (on Tuesday!) Hamilton are not just being cast in big, high-profile movies, but are in fact front and center for them. That, in and of itself, is something of a victory over which we assuredly should not gloss. I just think it would be far more interesting if they each fronted something new, something that could accentuate their respective strengths without necessarily revisiting frequently trod paths. A new horror story starring Jamie Lee Curtis? Love it. A new action flick led by Linda Hamilton? Totally on board. Both are more than capable of trouncing villains they haven’t already defeated, so how about we let them?

I have faith in these filmmakers, but at this point, I don’t think we can count on a Creed-level outing here, as these franchises have failed multiple times. Let’s instead give these two fabulous women new battles to fight, and maybe start the franchises over from scratch.

Neil Turitz is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent close to two decades working in and writing about Hollywood. Feel free to send him a tweet at @neilturitz. He’ll more than likely respond.