Terminator (film franchise)

I remember my Higher English teacher at secondary school mentioning that Terminator 2 and Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey have basically the same plot. :) I'm not entirely sure which one I prefer.

I think The Terminator is the best film in the series. T2 justadds too much cmplication, IMO - which even extends to the theme tune. :)

Sarah Connor was a much more interesting character in that film than in T2, and John Connor is just annoying. And there's no way he's ten years old.

T3 (was it just 3, or did it have a sub-title?) is just poor. I liked the joke with the pink sunglasses, but that just demonstrated how much they were sacrificing for cheap gags. The 4th one seemed to be sold on the promise of "see all those cool dreams of the future in the first two? We'll do a whole movie of that!" and instead all the robots were all rusty.

I'm pretty sure that there already is a Terminator threat.....

Elaborate. -Quietly dons his shades to cover up glowing red computer eyes and hides the shotgun in a bowling bag-

And T3 has the subtitle Rise of the Machines. And if Kristanna Loken were the real Terminator I somehow think she'd kill me without a fight, simply by surprise.

As Sheldon says: The best way for them to infiltrate the past would be to send Terminators back who look like actors who've already played Terminators.

I liked Salvation if only because we finally got to see more of that Robot War we only got bits and pieces of in the last movies.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

The uncut version of T2 had a lot more stuff on the robot war than the theatrical cut did. Good too. What really bites my plums is that the uncut version almost never gets shown on network telly - it's pretty much always the one where John Connor doesn't work on the T-800's CPU instead.

That is the one thing I really want covered more is the War with Sky Net in the future. I thought the scenes of that war in 2 were pretty damn cool. I was hoping to see more of it.

I actually liked T 3 because it expanded the robot threat in a new and interesting way in my opinion. I also like seeing Sky Net take over and the first tentative roots of the future human resistance taking seed with John accepting his fate.

If they stick with Judgment Day being inevitable in the big picture they could next take us to the war in the future and show us why Sky Net is threatened enough to send robotic assassins in the past.

Terminator Salvation was in the future but I felt it really didn't do the war against the machines justice. The few short scenes from the other films were better. Now some of it was clever and I did enjoy parts it just wasn't what I was expecting. I liked the terminator motor bikes and things like the anti-terminator land mine.

edited 12th May '14 8:37:21 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

I want to see that cinematic where the Resistence won the war.

(V)(;,,;)(V)

In some of the comics they show how the resistance puts that pressure on Sky Net and they show additional details but I would love to see that put to film.

Who watches the watchmen?

I think a war with the machine film could have been done well, especially if Cameron had directed it, but it should have been set in the original non-altered timeline, as a prequel to Terminator 1. That way we can have our robot war and none of the timey-wimey confusion and contradictory aesops.

"I actually liked T 3 because it expanded the robot threat in a new and interesting way in my opinion. I also like seeing Sky Net take over and the first tentative roots of the future human resistance taking seed with John accepting his fate. "

Yes, once all the silly nonsense with Arnie and the fembot was out of the way, the last scene in the bunker was pretty good. I also liked how someone noticed that computing technology had moved on a bit from the mid 80s, what with the distributed "iSkynet".

I think one main problem is that Terminator 2 set the bar so high with regards to the stakes, discussion on time travel paradoxes (via You Can't Fight Fate and Screw Destiny), big scale action sequences and having the human condition at the heart of it all that all future movies are doomed to be compared to that. The first Terminator is a fine movie in its own right (hard to believe it had a shoestring budget for what they accomplished) but it's obvious there was room to grow and expand on.

Of course that is a problem with a lot of franchises, even down to individual episodes of a tv show (ie the Growing the Beard episode was so great, nothing that came after can compare). Star Trek will always have Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan as the bench mark. Star Wars has the original trilogy in general, and maybe Revenge of the Sith from the prequels.

Thinking about it in that way, that is one thing to admire the Transformers Film Series about. It isn't just a collection of mythology gags, recycled plot points and repurposed catch phrases, but despite some Sequel Escalation it is trying to offer a different experience with each movie.

Necroing time on account of a Terminator related update:

Deadpool director Tim Miller will direct the next Terminator.

Oh come on, another one? The hell are they gonna do with this one?

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

Well, the whole timeline's been destroyed and altered, so they can do whatever they want, right?

My various fanfics.

I guess, I just don't know what the hell they'd be planning for it at this point.

Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

I feel like the only way to save the Terminator franchise is to do a serious reboot and get James Cameron involved again

Or they could explore the aspect of terminators across multiple timelines

edited 16th Sep '17 2:53:51 AM by Ultimatum

New theme music also a box

I actually liked Genisys, but they probably won't be moving forward with that.

My gut says reboot.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I liked it too. :)

Princess Aurora is underrated, pass it on.

Genesis was unadulterated shit. But it did provide a (somewhat) interesting notion in the character of Pop, the T-800 terminator who seems to be on the path to achieving self-awareness.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

I'm guessing it flopped?

...did that stop Genisys after Terminator Salvation?

In an ideal world, Salvation would have reflected a darker future where the future Sarah warned John about turned out differently because of the various time travel trips. This could have led into Genisys where the soft reboot happens and then... well Genisys was the reboot.

You can't really reboot Terminator any harder at this point and Arnold kind of needs to be involved no matter what.

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

I liked Pops, I liked Sarah Connor being given a more proactive role, and I liked the reveal of John Connor as a Terminator.

Because honestly, f*ck John Connor. From the franchise's inception, he's never really been a character. He's a MacGuffin. The purpose of the rest of the cast is that John must live to the end of whatever is happening so that he can be important later. All of the films are like this. Even Salvation, while it also passes the MacGuffin torch to Kyle Reese, also has that element of "John is important because of what he'll do later, not so much what he's doing now."

John has never been an interesting or engaging character because of this weird idea that gets more and more ridiculous with every film in which he will just someday wake up and be the hero of the human resistance. He has no journey to becoming that. It's just his destiny, and it's never influenced in any way by the events that occur around him shaping him into someone completely different from the man who originally sent Kyle into the past.

The idea put forward is that if John is still alive by a certain date, humanity just sorta wins.

John is the franchise's albatross at this point. He constantly wrestles to be interesting because Hollywood is in love with the Everyman trope and thus they want John to be a hapless Everyman, but John is supposed to be a brilliant and super-awesome military leader who shoots lightning from his mouth and craps nuggets of pure victory, so having him bumble about just weakens the entire premise of the series.

He ultimately works better as the Big Good, and as the franchise's focus has shifted more and more to trying to show him as the scrappy underdog hero trying to make his name, the quality of the films has dropped significantly.

edited 17th Sep '17 7:17:21 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Which is one of the reasons Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was awesome. It portrayed John attempting to balance being a normal person with being a highly-trained soldier raised for that purpose from birth, and eventually it all fell apart and he had to just accept that he'd never be normal. The moment where he confronts Jessie about her attempts to manipulate him is great, since he had spent that entire plotline apparently unaware of what was going on, until suddenly he's there, explaining how stupid her plan was. "I think if you pretend not to know who I am I might shoot you in the head."

No, but much like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it proved to be a Stillborn Franchise within its own greater franchise. Salvation was meant to be the start of a trilogy showing how humanity ultimately defeated SKYNET (necessitating it sending the Terminator back in time to kill Sarah in the first place), but those plans were scrapped when it underperformed.

I'm guessing Genesis will be the same way (and no, fuck you Paramount, I'm not spelling it with a y!). There'll be another Terminator movie someday, it just won't be a sequel to Genesis.

edited 17th Sep '17 7:58:20 AM by comicwriter

Technically, you would be spelling it with an "i" instead of the second "e" and a "y" instead of the "i" in the original spelling, not just "spelling it with a y".

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Oh.

...Terminator 3?

Terminator 3 and Salvation seemed to indicate that, no, he didn't just wake up and become the leader. Up until that point we never really had a clear picture of how John actually pulled off what he did.

Was this not Terminator 3 and Salvation?

edited 17th Sep '17 6:01:28 PM by Soble

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!