That’s not exactly right, by Terminator, the machines are losing the war. That’s the reason they sent the Terminator back to find and kill Sarah Connor before John is born.

I think there’s been a problem with editing in Hollywood for quite a long time now. Many movies are much longer than they need to. A recent example is Anora, which could have easily trimmed 20-30 minutes of its runtime without losing any plot or character development.

Sure, but you can subvert archetypes or mix different types to make new stories. If you’re going to follow one of the archetypes, you need to have good dialogue, character development, visuals, etc.