One subtle aspect is the depiction of the T1 terminator vs the heroic T2 is how its wounds are represented. T1 has zombie like decay where the skin he's wearing starts to rot the skin loses it's color and there's even a scene where one bystander says that the terminator smells awful because he's wearing dead flesh. Towards the end, it even takes on a zombie like gait because of the damage it's taken.
meanwhile, terminators from T2 and onward never have their injuries being depicted as anything but heroic. They're battle scars, and unless it's to progress the plot, the injuries are superficial and for the purposes of showing how badass Arnold is.
I think it'd be cool a terminator movie was written with these aspects in mind and played around with them somehow. Depicting the terminator as a threat is easy, but it's evocation of zombies could be made to make a new plot formula so it isn't "new terminator assigned to kill X while old version (that is always arnold) is protecting them" because that shit is just so old to me.