Terminator 2 was a dramatic subversion though, no decay there. They told you, straight up, in-character, “we reprogrammed this evil robot to fight the other evil robot” and the rest of the movie is an exploration of morality.
“What are you doing!? I told you not to kill anyone!”
“They’ll live”
Less of a villain decay but also perspective - Arnold was the most iconic part of Terminator and so the writers found a logical way to retcon the actor to continue playing the role.
In universe, John is exposed to the T800 as a hero but his mom only knows him as a killing machine. These characters have to grapple with the role reversal in story. In Saw no one (that I recall) ever said “Wait, isn’t this guy just an asshole?”
Terminator 2 was a dramatic subversion though, no decay there. They told you, straight up, in-character, “we reprogrammed this evil robot to fight the other evil robot” and the rest of the movie is an exploration of morality.
“What are you doing!? I told you not to kill anyone!”
“They’ll live”
The whole point was that the T-800 was a bottom barrel cyborg. They were all modeled after Arnold, but there were thousands of them.
They basically found a junker in the trash and reprogrammed it. He was NOT the same T-800 from The Terminator. He was a completely different robot.
Less of a villain decay but also perspective - Arnold was the most iconic part of Terminator and so the writers found a logical way to retcon the actor to continue playing the role.
In universe, John is exposed to the T800 as a hero but his mom only knows him as a killing machine. These characters have to grapple with the role reversal in story. In Saw no one (that I recall) ever said “Wait, isn’t this guy just an asshole?”