My idea of the future in the Terminator series is possible too bleak for what the studio suits dare do. From Reese's descriptions we are basically talking concentration camps with nothing but suffering and abuse and trying to stay alive in an environment where you can be dead for no reason a few minutes later. Where you are not only suffering the constant watch of the machine sentries, but also people snitching you out, even people working as guards to get better rations, better perks and a chance to stay alive.
The factories were said to be automated, but someone had to build them, and Skynet, with the people in the camps, had all the free workers it needed. They are basically building the factories that will produce the very weapons and machines that will be used against any and all survivors outside the fences. How is that for drama!?
The experiments with cloning living human flesh to use for the cyborgs is another element and should come when Skynet realizes that the rubber skinned T-600 was too easy to spot - so, late in the war. Another horrible aspect of the future war.
All this would add to the gritty, grueling, bleak look of the future under the reign of the machines.
We don't need fancy transformer robots or silly fancy machines. The T-800 should be the pinnacle of the machines. The best, most advanced... and should barely be seen until the end. The evolution of the machines should lead up to them, so what came before should be as bulky and powerful, but ultimately simple and stupid sentry and hunter killer machines, controlled by a simple instruction or linked and controlled directly by Skynet, with only the Terminators being given the ability to learn and adapt and being separate from the hive mind of Skynet - so basically rogue and self-thinking agents. A desperate attempt to best the humans, by ultimately letting go of the control and ultimately making a machine that could essentially turn on its creator, like Skynet turned on its creators: humans. The self-thinking and adapting aspect of the T-800 is the real Achilles heel of Skynet, in a way, as they only create those out of desperation and the lack of success of its other creations.
Since the suits in Hollywood do not dare to do the future war justice... I know I'll never see the future that Reese came from and talked about in the first movie. A place filled with horror and despair.
