Terminator: Dark Fate **Spoilers from post 983**

Mr E

Yup.

Circuital

RayCun wrote: »

One good film 35 years ago, a series of sequels that got steadily worse, and people are still enthusiastic about a new one?

One very good film followed by one of the best sequels of all time 28 years ago.

Yes.

If you don't rate T2 then maybe it's just not for you.

RayCun

http://www.michaelfuchs.org/re/index.php?story=2010-03-01

SoundsRight

Circuital wrote: »

One very good film followed by one of the best sequels of all time 28 years ago.

Yes.

If you don't rate T2 then maybe it's just not for you.

I used to rate T2 as better than T1, but on reflection T1 is the superior film. There's a brutality to it that is missing from the bigger budget sequels.

Circuital

SoundsRight wrote: »

I used to rate T2 as better than T1, but on reflection T1 is the superior film. There's a brutality to it that is missing from the bigger budget sequels.

I agree with that point. Overall though I think T2 is superior. I like how the story developed, the T-1000, the characters - particularly the direction they went with Sarah Connor, the f/x, pacing, everything. It's a masterpiece.

Wheeliebin30

Circuital wrote: »

I agree with that point. Overall though I think T2 is superior. I like how the story developed, the T-1000, the characters - particularly the direction they went with Sarah Connor, the f/x, pacing, everything. It's a masterpiece.

Linda Hamilton’s performance in T2 was incredible.

To go from her character in T1 and change so much in T2 was brilliant

Wasn’t noticed as much because T2 had so many good things going on.

Dades

SoundsRight wrote: »

There's a brutality to it that is missing from the bigger budget sequels.

The T-1000 made up for that by upping the Terminator with guile and new tech.

It was like going from early, slow zombies to the zombies from 28 Days Later.

Tony EH

Circuital wrote: »

One very good film followed by one of the best sequels of all time 28 years ago.

Yes.

If you don't rate T2 then maybe it's just not for you.

T2 is a stupid movie. Dumb and loud.

Not that 'The Terminator' is going to win any Mensa positions any time soon. But, it's a far superior film.

But, while T2 is irritating, it's watchable. The sequels just get progressively worse and worse though. We're at life support now. Time to put this nonsense out of its misery.

Tony EH

Dades wrote: »

It was like going from early, slow zombies to the zombies from 28 Days Later.

Which was probably the worst thing ever to happen to zombie movies.

Circuital

Tony EH wrote: »

T2 is a stupid movie. Dumb and loud.

Just no.

It's done everything a sequel should - developed the story, the universe, the characters, introduced new ones central to the story, drawn a conclusion (to a point). But it's an action sci-fi movie so it conveys and builds all this around brilliant action scenes and cutting edge effects for its time.

Tony EH

Circuital wrote: »

Just no.

It's done everything a sequel should - developed the story, the universe, the characters, introduced new ones central to the story, drawn a conclusion (to a point). But it's an action sci-fi movie so it conveys and builds all this around brilliant action scenes and cutting edge effects for its time.

Just because it's "biggerer", it doesn't make it a good sequel.

It's just a tiresome action flick, whereas 'The Terminator' was more a horror movie, with some sci-fi elements, that had a better tone.

T2's liquid robot is incredibly dumb and Arnie wanting to be the hero instead of the villain was sickly saccharine. That thumbs up ending makes me puke.

It's the younger, louder, brother of a smarter guy. Ok to be around for a little bit, but you eventually want to tell him to feck off.

seamus

I liked the new films. No, they were nothing on T2. A little shaky around the edges, a little too predictable and clichéd, huge chunks of canon ignored. But not bad enough to make you walk out of a cinema. If I was flicking at night and any of the later sequels were on, I'd watch it.

The way people attack the sequels you'd swear they were like Police Academy 4 or Robocop 3.

On their own, they're pretty solid movies. A good 6.5/10. T3 is probably the weakest of the lot IMHO.

TerrorFirmer

I would agree with the above, to be honest. T1 is the best in my opinion too, but T2 is about as perfect a sequel as one can ever reasonably be expected to be. T3 is.... fine, it's a major drop in quality from its predecessor but still perfectly watchable, and I would say the same of Genisys and Salvation - the latter two are even more flawed, but they're still far from horrible. T3's ending is really good though and surprisingly dark, almost a hark back to the original.

Some of the later Resident Evil movies are a better example of sequels becoming so intolerably bad they're almost unwatchable, which being realistic is rare to say of most franchises, despite inevitable dips in quality. It's not an easy thing to make an unwatchable movie devoid of redeeming qualities, and none of the Terminator films really belong anywhere near that category.

At worst, they're entirely unremarkable entertainment, at best, somewhat decent action films. I'd still be immensely looking forward to T6, and not necessarily being I've my fingers crossed for a return to the glory days either, just because I love the concept of the franchise and at the very least I'm guaranteed a good dumb time.....but naturally it'd be nice to get an objectively good Terminator movie again.

One concept which they had just started to explore in the TV show when it got cancelled was the idea of humans becoming emotionally and sexually entangled with Terminators, and there was an ambiguituy there as to whether John was being blatantly manipulated, or Summer Glau was 'evolving' and learning as it's programming intended it to. This is also suggested/portrayed in other films but on a much less complex level then the direction the show was heading. Such a shame it got cancelled, despite being low budget it had some really solid ideas.

Lorelli!

Terminator 1 is not an action movie. It's a love story with action (no pun intended )! It is more unique from a lot of other action films because the character relationships were so authentic.

It's about the strange dynamics of a family (Sarah, Reece, John) lost in time to protect each other and obviously to protect the human race. John Connor is a symbol of the human race.

In T1 Reece had to save Sarah at any cost but John also sent Reece specifically to ensure that he was born. In T2, Sarah is continuing his mission, hardened after losing the Father of her son and trying to live up to the woman that Reece knew she was and was expecting in the future. It's also a paradox movie because if they destroy skynet then technically Reece would never have been sent back and John wouldn't exist. Think Back to the Future

They're both great movies and imo nothing that followed onwards was able to achieve the same standard. The new one probably won't be any good but I'm still looking forward to it especially since they are not including all the other crap sequels. I can't even remember half of them because there was nothing special about them whatsoever.

Circuital

Tony EH wrote: »

Just because it's "biggerer", it doesn't make it a good sequel..

If you believe I just said it's 'biggerer' then you didn't read my post.

Anyway, we obviously differ on it so let's leave it there.

Dades

Circuital wrote: »

One very good film followed by one of the best sequels of all time 28 years ago.

And Cameron has previous with this - Aliens.

Though I suspect Tony EH isn't a fan of that, either. :P

RayCun

Hmm, does Aliens have one of the aliens change sides and rescue Newt?

Does a xenomorph sacrifice itself to save Next, but manage to croak out "I ... wuv...you" before it dies?

No?

Not terrible then.

Tony EH

Dades wrote: »

And Cameron has previous with this - Aliens.

Though I suspect Tony EH isn't a fan of that, either. :P

No, 'Aliens' is a great film. But, I prefer 'Alien'. Sure, I even like 'Alien 3'.

But like the Terminator series, the plug should have been pulled on that a long time ago too.

They keep trying to revive it, and it slips into a worse coma each time.

Tony EH

Circuital wrote: »

If you believe I just said it's 'biggerer' then you didn't read my post.

Anyway, we obviously differ on it so let's leave it there.

No, we're not going to agree. I didn't really like it in 1991 when I saw it in the cinema, so I'm certainly not going to change my mind about it now.

In saying that, I don't actually hate the film. In fact, I probably seen it about 5 times or something.

I just think it's stupid and has the unfortunate tendency of overshadowing its superior predecessor.

o1s1n

RayCun wrote: »

Hmm, does Aliens have one of the aliens change sides and rescue Newt?

Does a xenomorph sacrifice itself to save Next, but manage to croak out "I ... wuv...you" before it dies?

No?

Not terrible then.

The t-800 in Terminator 2 was captured by rebels and reprogrammed, it didn't just wake up one day and decide to change sizes.

RayCun

o1s1n wrote: »

The t-800 in Terminator 2 was captured by rebels and reprogrammed, it didn't just wake up one day and decide to change sizes.

yeah, reprogrammed and given a heart, so sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAHTsoYfskw

seamus

^^ To be fair, this is probably one of the things which annoys me about the original cut of T2.

The director's cut contains a scene which is arguably pivotal to the second half of the movie. When they're in the motel, Sarah gets into a conversation with the Terminator about the chip at Cyberdyne.
The Terminator reveals that the chip inside his head is exactly the same type of tech that Skynet works off, but he is incapable of exceeding his programming because of an artificial limiter that Skynet has placed on it. "To prevent you from learning too much", remarks Sarah.

They then go through a whole scene where they deactivate the Terminator to try and disable the learning block, and John and Sarah argue about whether they should leave him deactivated and destroy his chip.

After that, the entire sequence includes snippets of John teaching the Terminator "normal" behaviour, saying "Hasta la Vista", doing high-fives, smiling (another cut scene), etc.

These scenes work if you never know that the Terminator can't learn, but they do come off a little cheesy - the love of an innocent child taught a robot how to care.
But with the backstory, they serve as real character development. You can see the Terminator learning and understand why it's happening now, and not before. And thus the "I know now why you cry" isn't some saccharin nonsense.

RayCun

seamus wrote: »

And thus the "I know now why you cry" isn't some saccharin nonsense.

Oh, so it's the love of an innocent child and they inverted the shield polarity.

That's so much better.

Dades

Tony EH wrote: »

But like the Terminator series, the plug should have been pulled on that a long time ago too.

They keep trying to revive it, and it slips into a worse coma each time.

There's not too many arguments that the Terminator movies have gotten progressively worse.
The only difference of opinion here is at what point did the decline start.

You think things went downhill after Terminator, whereas most people think T2 was equal, if not the high point (and raised the bar for every action blockbuster to follow).

SoundsRight

T1 had the dynamic of man vs. machine. The tech-noir theme was cool. Throw in Michael Biehn and Lance Henrikson, it's faultless.

Fourier

RayCun wrote: »

Oh, so it's the love of an innocent child and they inverted the shield polarity.

That's so much better.

Well it's not technobabble like shield polarity, it's simply that his capacity to grow mentally has been turned off.

I agree with seamus that it's a good addition, it shows you how paranoid Skynet is as it is afraid of other AI developing and ultimately other machines are really only "bad" because they are enslaved.

Skynet's paranoia is implied throughout T1 and T2 where you really get the impression of a super-intelligent child that just "woke up" to find everybody wanting to kill it.

Frank Bullitt

https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1113823974251737090

TerrorFirmer

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I would agree with the above, to be honest. T1 is the best in my opinion too, but T2 is about as perfect a sequel as one can ever reasonably be expected to be. T3 is.... fine, it's a major drop in quality from its predecessor but still perfectly watchable, and I would say the same of Genisys and Salvation - the latter two are even more flawed, but they're still far from horrible. T3's ending is really good though and surprisingly dark, almost a hark back to the original.

Some of the later Resident Evil movies are a better example of sequels becoming so intolerably bad they're almost unwatchable, which being realistic is rare to say of most franchises, despite inevitable dips in quality. It's not an easy thing to make an unwatchable movie devoid of redeeming qualities, and none of the Terminator films really belong anywhere near that category.

At worst, they're entirely unremarkable entertainment, at best, somewhat decent action films. I'd still be immensely looking forward to T6, and not necessarily being I've my fingers crossed for a return to the glory days either, just because I love the concept of the franchise and at the very least I'm guaranteed a good dumb time.....but naturally it'd be nice to get an objectively good Terminator movie again.

One concept which they had just started to explore in the TV show when it got cancelled was the idea of humans becoming emotionally and sexually entangled with Terminators, and there was an ambiguituy there as to whether John was being blatantly manipulated, or Summer Glau was 'evolving' and learning as it's programming intended it to. This is also suggested/portrayed in other films but on a much less complex level then the direction the show was heading. Such a shame it got cancelled, despite being low budget it had some really solid ideas.

The last few episodes of TSCC are amazing and set it up so well for the 3rd season.
Gutted it was cancelled.

rockatansky

Lorelli! wrote: »

Terminator 1 is not an action movie. It's a love story with action (no pun intended )

Both T1 and T2 ultimately are love stories, just like most of Camerons over films (The Abyss, Avatar, True Lies, Titanic) with Aliens probably the exception.

For me the first 2 films are perfection. I've watched the rest but for me they barely register on the radar.

Inevitably we're going to keep getting substandard sequels until the day that Cameron gets back into the Directors chair. Even then it takes him about 10 years to make a film in his vision!

rockatansky

Tony EH wrote: »

No, 'Aliens' is a great film. But, I prefer 'Alien'. Sure, I even like 'Alien 3'.

But like the Terminator series, the plug should have been pulled on that a long time ago too.

They keep trying to revive it, and it slips into a worse coma each time.

Aliens is the only movie of the Franchise I watch repeatedly. Although that probably to do with the fact that you can really see the similarities between it and Terminator, Troop Transporter/HKs, use of large screen projectors, Biehn/Paxton/Henriksen, Phased Plasma Rifles, Nukes, I could go on and on!