Although Alan Ritchson has played a wide variety of roles over the years, five of the star’s best action scenes prove to me that he would be a perfect T-800 in a new Terminator movie. The Terminator franchise’s timeline is a mess, as evidenced by Sarah Connor’s inconsistent Terminator fates throughout the many reboots of the series. However, there is one consistent element that crops up in almost every outing of the series.
Even though Genisys and Dark Fate aged up Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator to justify the continued presence of the T-800, the franchise’s original тιтle character refuses to die. Terminator: Zero did cast Timothy Olyphant as a Terminator in 2024, but that Netflix anime introduced Olyphant’s villain as a new Terminator model instead of recasting the original T-800. Throughout two TV shows and seven movies, the Terminator series has still never recast Schwarzenegger’s original T-800.
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The House Mᴀssacre (Reacher Season 1)
Reacher Quickly Dispatching A Slew Of Goons Is Very Terminator-Coded
Fortunately, I know just the person to take over the role in a reboot. Alan Ritchson would be a perfect replacement for Schwarzenegger’s original T-800, and his existing screen CV has plenty of proof. Ritchson’s credentials as Schwarzenegger’s Terminator replacement are perfectly exemplified in Reacher season 1’s infamous house mᴀssacre, wherein the тιтle character swiftly dispatches a quartet of criminals who Dawson Kliner sent to clean up his mess.
Reacher rips a man through a car window and breaks his neck with a stomp, slits the throat of the team’s lookout man, and stabs a third man in the heart while disarming him.
In rapid succession, Reacher rips a man through a car window and breaks his neck with a stomp, slits the throat of the team’s lookout man, and stabs a third man in the heart while disarming him. Ritchson’s antihero goes on to repeatedly stab his fourth attacker before killing Kliner himself while the pair fight in a backyard pool.
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Aimes In A Street Fight (Fast X)
Fast X’s Ritchson Character Isn’t Slowed Down By Multiple Attackers
While Fast X’s large cast and family-friendly rating mean that the movie didn’t give Ritchson’s character Aimes as many opportunities to show off his similarities to the T-800, there is one pivotal scene that highlights the comparison between them. Aimes defeating a street gang while pursuing Dom proves how perfect Ritchson is for the role of the T-800, with his character trying to ignore his attackers and continuing his single-minded pursuit before, finally, mercilessly flooring them so he can return to tailing Vin Diesel’s character.
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Reacher Kills The Surgeon (Reacher Season 2)
Ritchson Embodies Reacher’s Brutal Efficiency
If the bloodless violence of Fast X’s fight scene makes Ritchson seem less intimidating than the Terminator, Reacher season 2’s best kill solves this issue. It is hard to imagine the Terminator franchise’s John Connor escaping the clutches of Ritchson’s T-800 when viewers see him unplug a fake surgeon’s bone saw, use the cord to yank the surgeon across the room, and knock him out in one smooth maneuver. Tossing the unconscious villain onto the still-running saw to slit his throat is just the cherry on top of this ruthless kill.
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The Opening Boat Fight (The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare)
Guy Ritchie’s Underrated War Comedy Showcased Ritchson’s Action Bonafides Early
Although 2024’s The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare flopped upon release, director Guy Ritchie’s movie was a brilliant encapsulation of why Ritchson is so perfectly suited to a role in the next Terminator movie. In the tense opening scene, Ritchson’s soft-spoken antihero appears to be held hostage on an enemy boat until a well-timed тιтle card reveals he is secretly in a better strategic position than he seems. What follows is a masterclass in Ritchson’s unique talent for onscreen bloodletting.
Ritchson’s Anders Lᴀssen swiftly slits the throat of one villain, dispᴀssionately stabs a half dozen of his henchmen, and beats another attacker to death as bullets fly all around him. Ritchson’s character never even flinches throughout the fight, a blur of brutality until all his attackers are left floating in the ocean or bleeding out on the boat. The long-delayed Terminator 7 would be lucky to offer viewers an introduction as threatening as this character’s first appearance, which immediately marks Lᴀssen as an unpredictable, lethal force to be reckoned with throughout the rest of Ritchie’s movie.
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Forest Fight (Reacher Season 3)
Reacher Season 3’s Standout Scene Proves Ritchson Is The Perfect New Terminator
In Reacher season 3, Ritchson’s character finally embodies another ‘80s action icon and ironically proves perfect for the role of the Terminator in the process. The forest fight from season 3 is clearly indebted to Rambo, with Reacher donning dark face paint to camouflage himself among the trees before setting out to break necks, slit throats, and kill as many henchmen as efficiently as possible in short order.
One is garroted, one has his neck broken, and one has his throat stabbed in a flurry of calculated, cold kills that prove Ritchson has the perfect screen presence for the T-800. Where Rambo was always driven by a shouty pᴀssion, Alan Ritchson’s stoic performance in this scene is much more reminiscent of The Terminator’s implacable villain.
