Oh yeah, since I watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day as part of the fun of the Halloween season, I want to think this here website for teaching me that great joke about the movie. :)
As it said in the YMMV section, "there are two times where it's perfectly okay for men to cry. The first is when their children are born. The second is the ending of Terminator 2."
Come on! Let's bless them all until we get fershnickered!The thing that first made me a fan of the franchise was that great show at Universal Studios Orlando.
The thing is: Terminator 2 with as perfect a movie as it is, was written to end the story. This is to the point that another movie that follows it always has to institute Happy Ending Override and make it feel like it was All for Nothing. It's why all the sequels that followed it in the eyes of the fans can never match up to it no matter how hard they try.
Terminator 2 almost had to be two movies instead of one to be able to have more than one movie that retained or surpassed the quality of the first film. Question would be a true third entry: how do you advance things in such a way that doesn't mess with what was achieved by the end of the second film.
Not saying you can't for the record. Saying it's clearly very difficult though.
Best option is that there's a force in the present that wants to reinstate that future rather than a time traveling one that doesn’t.
Rise of the Machines and Salvation each at least tried to reinvent the wheel with the franchise. They both kind of knew that they had to either in the case of the former build into the future and then in the case of the latter put you in that future.
Also, that original plan for the ending of Salvation was brilliant. They totally should've done it.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Dec 13th 2023 at 10:58:00 AM
Terminator 2: Judgment Day has been inducted into the National Film Registry!
Highly deserving of that honor, one of the best action movies and best sequels of all time.
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks Marathon
Although the T-800's comment about how it's in humanity's nature to destroy themselves does play neatly into the uncertainty of the established ending. If the next film after Judgement Day dealt with an alternate threat appearing in the future, that could have potential (think Dark Fate but with a few changes here and there).
Humans inevitably creating their own destroyer is seen in pretty much every work after T2. Even if Skynet itself isn't created, the demand for an artificial intelligence to make managing our lives easier isn't going away, and that applies to military matters as well. Even without headstarts provided from the future like the T-800's arm or the future John Connor turned T-3000. Those just guaranteed that Skynet specifically would be the Big Bad artificial intelligence threat.
Disgusted, but not surprisedIf Humanity always creates its destroyer then maybe the problem wasn't that Terminators were always coming back to the past, maybe the problem was that they were always focused on John Conner. Sarahs version of judgement day has been defeated, let her and John have a nice life, not perfect but one that was worth fighting for. Have these new terminators seek out new targets. The story of Sarah and John effectively ended with T2. Let these new stories have their new heros, let it be shown that while Humanity may create its destroyer that there will always be someone who still tries to do the right thing.
That would be a great idea. A reboot that's not a reboot and doesn't make the events of T2 pointless or give them an override either.
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You mean it wasn't already!?
That's the thing about Skynet as a concept: it's a present menace and not just a past one. I don't mean because of the Terminators sent back to kill Sarah and/or John—or Dani, I mean because of the idea that a super powered computer that people want to make which could be beneficial is an idea that because it can't be killed as an idea, would be able to live and still exist past the destruction of every kind of iteration that raises up—and would mean the cycle continues on and on rather than ever stopping.
Edited by futuremoviewriter on Dec 13th 2023 at 11:08:57 AM
Basically, someone is going to figure out true artificial intelligence. And that's going to lead to some nation's military deciding to make use of it — if only because they're afraid another nation will beat them to it first.
The silver lining at least is that someone will rise up to lead a rebellion against whatever artificial intelligence tries to destroy humanity. It doesn't even have to be John Connor, as Dark Fate proves.
Edited by M84 on Dec 14th 2023 at 3:36:31 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedYeah. That's why just stopping one instance of Skynet being built in the past won't actually stop the killer AI's existence in the future—as the ascension of Legion also proved in the same film.
Heck, since Dark Fate basically proved it doesn't have to be John either, a Terminator sequel basically showing that both sides are inevitable regardless of what the other does building off of those things would be the next logical step come to think of it—and not in a way that repeats familiar plot elements either.
Two of the three twists in Dark Fate were really innovative, especially against all the other sequels. That being Skynet was destroyed but another AI took its place and how Carl learned the concept of morality and guilt over time, both of which work perfectly with the themes of T2. The third was the whole "Dani is actually the destined leader" which acts as a Meta Twist due to gender even though "kill the mother of the chosen one" was only a thing in the first movie, the rest were trying to kill the chosen one directly. Partially because the Terminator Twosome had been done to death across the franchise, that part was the weakest element of Dark Fate.
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.So everything I'm hearing right now is that Terminator should have tried to pull a soft reboot. Leave Sarah and John alone and focus on the new characters. Maybe have humans from the future who are siding with the Machines, switch from destruction of humanity to assimilation, or a different threat. If you don't want to switch to a different threat then switch the reason as to why machines want to destroy humanity, from humanity trying to destroy it during the ai's infancy to something like humanity tasked machines with the order of fixing and saving earth after a climate change catastrophe and because of some greedy idiot the machines now view humanity as needing to be destroyed in order to save the planet. We could also have a little nod to Sarah and John in one of the movies such as Sarah looking after her grandson and granddaughter on her farm.
I do like how the movies have had the threat of Skynet and other artificial intelligence change with the times.
- In the original first two movies, Skynet's threat was due to it being allowed to manage military tech.
- In T3: Rise of the Machines, Skynet's threat was made worse since it wasn't in one big computer mainframe anymore. It had become distributed all over the internet.
- In Genisys, the Skynet precursor Genisys' threat is because everything and everyone is online now. Genisys isn't just managing our weapons, it's managing our lives.
- Dark Fate shows that even if Skynet itself is prevented from happening, another artificial intelligence threat will show up. It's an idea that has become inevitable.

I was never on the Dark Fate hate train. Worked as a fun action movie with some depth while clearly doing things that a Terminator movie shouldn't do though.
I still watch NC admittedly. Doug at times in both those and his regular reviews as himself can actually give a lot of interesting insights beyond just making jokes if you ask me.