For me, Predator was straight action. That the predator was some alien hunter was the only science fiction element it had. I enjoyed the movie for what it was though, a typical of-the-era action move. And besides, who can forget the classic lines "GET TO THE CHOPPER!" and "If it bleeds... we can kill it." :lol:
Terminator was pretty good too. Remember it was a low budget movie but time travel is always an interesting idea to explore, particularly the idea of a conflict waged between two different timelines. After all, the instant time travel is invented, you basically fork reality and the timeline in which the terminator / protectors appear in 1984 become dissociated from the timeline in which they were sent.
Terminator 2 was again rather more straight action, but was, let's face it, awesome. Terminator 3 was weak and salvation wasn't much better.
The Sarah Connor chronicles, on the other hand, showed a lot of promise. It was a shame Fox, in their infinitesimal wisdom canned it like they do so many shows just as they are getting good.
I disagree about the Sarah conner chronicles. The problem with terminator was that everytime a machine came back in time it cheapened the story. The original was the best and the second was awesome as you say because they introduced something new in the x1000 but with so many terminators it just got silly.
The original terminator was the best but when it turned into a franchise they changed the rules. At the end of T2 they supposedly stopped skynet being invented which was logical and made sense but they broke the rules and now there is no reason 1000000 terminators can't travel back until they succeed. Really dumb story telling.
I'm not a fan of time travel stories in general as there isn't a standard set of rules of how time travel works so the stories never seem convincing somehow.
Also i agree that avatar had an interest sub story with Pandora itself being alive and interconnected. The idea of plants being intelligent is really cool. It's a shame about the movie though.
