Terminator: Dark Fate

[Gerard]

Cameron talking about the next iteration of the Terminator franchise. Arnie is in (no surprise there), as well as Linda Hamilton. Meant to be set around 30 years after T2. They're planning it out to be a series of 3 movies, though this was also the plan with Salvation and Genisys.

 

[Gerard]

So this is what? The 3rd time in a row a new terminator film is supposed to be the start of a new trilogy?

Already mentioned that in the op.

 

[Gerard]

Salvation was cack as the t800 had about 4 occasions where John Connor was in its hands only to prefer to lob him around instead of pulling his head out of his arse, it's whole mission is to take him out so it just came off as stupid that it would prefer to throw him around. The t600 earlier in the film had grabbed him twice, yet again just decided to throw him around. The other issue with that movie was the extreme lack of any actual terminators, i think at most there were about 2 of the human styled robots on screen at once and that was only when the t800 destroyed the malfunctioning t600. For a future to be ruled by robots there sure as hell wasn't many of them around. The cg was pretty good, especially on the robot t800 when it had its skin blasted off, overall though it felt like a very empty movie with not a whole lot going on.


The whole skynet plan in Salvation was to get Marcus to lure Connor into the skynet base, yet only a few hours after Marcus is activated a T600 tries to kill him, with the worlds most inaccurate minigun it has to be said. And when Connor finally gets to a skynet robot creation base he has to contend with.....a single t800 and that's it. Didn't help matters you seen a lot of endoskeletons basically on racks, yet for some reason in skynets grand plan only 1 was activated, and this comes after the skynet ai admitted they had failed to kill Connor numerous times. derp


A movie set in the future war is what people want though, instead of this convoluted "remake t2" thing that seems to be what t3 and genisys were based on. Funny thing is the movie makers are aware of people wanting this which is apparently one of the reasons genisys had a chunk being set in the future war before going back to a variation of T2. Apparently setting the entire movie in the future war as depicted in the flashbacks is something they're not comfortable doing.

 

[Gerard]

Don't know how I feel about this one, getting the same vibe as I got from Alien Covenant in that it's time to let this thing die. T1 & T2 had a perfect story arc wrapping everything up nicely, T3 then came along and ignored the rules set in T2. The whole 'There is no fate but what we make for ourselves' got thrown out of the window in place of 'Sorry, **** is happening no matter what you do'..

Problem there is the rules from T1 were **** on by T2. A liquid metal terminator shouldn't have been able to time travel as it wasn't encased in living tissue. They could have got around that by having it emerge from a type of skin cocoon or something. But obviously that didn't happen. If they had went with a cocoon idea then that opens another question as to why not put advanced weapons inside it and send them as well.

That's what happens when they establish rules in a movie, at some point they write themselves into a corner and if they don't have some elaborate way of writing around the issue they just ignore what they put in place.

 

[Gerard]

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5866325/amp/Terminator-PICTURE-EXCLUSIVE-Linda-Hamilton-seen-set-time.html

Didn't realise they'd already started shooting it, some pics of Linda Hamilton and others. Filming some scenes in Spain which is a bit surprising

 

[Gerard]

The TV show was great and the next season looked real interesting. Far better than anything else after 2. Shame.

Tv show had far too many slow moving filler episodes, it was getting interesting at the end but that seemed more like a move by the writers to try and get it renewed for another season. Another issue with the tv show that some episodes basically deteriorated into "terminator of the week" kind of stories.

 

[Gerard]

Didn't S2 end with...

Spoiler

The chick from Garbage basically becoming a T1000 human shield to save them all?

Not sure if i'm mis-remembering it.

I also much preferred Cersei as Sarah Connor than Khaleesi though.

Ended with John and the t1000 going to the future war, setting the stage for something interesting but by then it was too late to save it.

 

[Gerard]

Dear god, please don't include any of this! even in the Directors cut!!...

There were talks of getting Edward Furlong back in the franchise. I think it would be a good thing!

Furlong? Last I heard about him he was on the drugs big time.

 

[Gerard]

And pursuing a sumo career

 

[Gerard]

Anymore Terminator movies need to be around the war, like the flashbacks Rees was having in Terminator.

That's what people have been asking for now for donkeys years but "Hollywood" doesn't seem to get it. The weird thing is in the behind the scenes of genisys one of the producers actually acknowledges this and says "this movie has the longest future war sequence which is what the fans have wanted". OK, so why not base the movie around that instead of it being yet another T2 rehash?

The only attempt at a future war was salvation which did a really weird take on it, the biggest factor being there were barely any bloody terminators in the movie at all.

 

[Gerard]

While genisys was "meh" the cg Ahhhnold was pretty impressive, some shots it looked very real.

 

[Gerard]

Genisys had a plot point where a liquid metal terminator tried to kill Sarah Connor as a child. But that's the issue with time travel in movies, there can virtually be unlimited attempts. And why only send 1 terminator back if they've been so unsuccessful in the past, surely sending a half dozen or so is the obvious thing to do.

 

[Gerard]

In T3 the Terminator wasn't even going after John Connor, it was going after his future wife and fellow leader of the resistance. When he got injured and was treated by her at the vets the Terminator licked the bloody bandage and identified his DNA and an on screen message talked about primary target.

Just seemed to be along the lines of "oh and if you happen to come by John Connor, plug him as well". Maybe at that point Skynet was getting bored with their inability to kill him so taking out his support base was more logical.

Really though these movies will never hold out to in-depth scrutiny, it'll always be a matter of "why this why that". In salvation for instance the t800 had grabbed Connor three times, but instead of just snapping his neck it decided to toss him around for a bit. Was only on the third attempt as the endoskeleton it was about to kill him before Marcus intervened.

 

[Gerard]

Wasn't the Terminator going after all his Lieutenants? Which were all teenagers (at that time) having house parties and working in Burger King?

Yup.

 

[Gerard]

I'm hopeful that this will be good but I do wish they'd stop making sequals using the original actors at pension age pretending they're still 30.

Arnie looked not too bad in genisys with the digital de-aging technique for his 1984 scenes. Was pretty noticeable he looked much older in the 2017 scenes.

 

[Gerard]

They couldn't have afforded to do that in the whole movie, it's very time consuming (read: expensive) CGI

Might not be used at all again in this depending on what year its set, which is currently an unknown. Done a good job of it though, seems de-aging someone is prone to far less scrutiny than a fully cg character.

According to wiki the same guy they used for the the young terminator in Genisys is again playing a part in this for the young Arnold. Though his role was basically removed from the final movie as (according to one of those vids above) the framing and lenses used weren't right so he was totally replaced with cg and only used as a guide.

 

[Gerard]

Indeed. Rather lame writing and directing to have the T-800 chuck Connor about, when it has already been set up in the first 2 films that terminators are cold calculated robots with no emotion. They exist to protect and serve Skynet, so chucking around Skynet's biggest thread just for the LOLs is not logical and doesn't fit. But that's to be expected when average at best writers and directors are hired.

Salvation had a ton of stupid stuff in it, the large harvester bot somehow sneaking up-to a garage without being heard along with an aircraft to carry off the prisoners. Arniebot taking near point blank grenade shots to the chest and all it did was (conveniently) burn the flesh off, yet a few moments later its sending it flying 30 feet or more. Then the most glaring thing about the movie, it had barely any bloody terminators. I'm near sure the part where "arniebot" destroys the malfunctioning t600, that's the most human style terminators in one scene in the entire film, a massive TWO.

 

[Gerard]

The problem with T3 and genisys is they were essentially remakes of T2 to a certain degree. Salvation was the only movie that stood out as being different in that respect but it seemed like skynet had determined that 1 T-600 per city was plenty to maintain the status quo..Salvation could have been decent but the whole movie just seemed like it was masses of empty spaces with barely anything to indicate what was going on.

 

[Gerard]

The problem with Salvation as a story is they pinched some ideas and characters from the Dark Horse comics, but bodged everything else up. They should have just bought some of the Dark Horse Comics stories and used those. It's the usual problem of thinking that explosions and special effects are more important than stories and characters.

It was also very T2 like, T2 was a race to destroy Cyberdyne with the guardian being an obsolete model and the enemy Terminator being an advanced model, this was another race to destroy Cyberdyne with the guardian again being an obsolete model with the enemy being another advanced Terminator.

The only real spin they had on this was more than 1 instance of time travel and John Connor being the enemy this time around along with a virtual cameo by a T1000.

There just has to be more to these movies than the "good guys" constantly being in a race to get somewhere whilst dodging the enemy Terminator, that's really all they boil down to. It worked for T1 and T2, but for T3 and Genisys it just got old. An entire movie dedicated to the future war that was seen in the flashbacks would be far more interesting, but they just seem to try and recreate T2 time and again and wonder why the box office is tanking.

 

[Gerard]

Oh and just to add more confusion to Genisys, the writers have said that the Skynet (Matt Smith) that takes over Connor at the start of the movie is from an alternate timeline, hence the "i've come a long way to stop you" line.

They really went hell for leather for OTT time travel and timelines in that movie, even more so than i thought.