Amph Come with me if you want to live: The Terminator Thread

Terminator 3 was totally Bogan. You would expect John Connor from Judgement Day who is young and intelligent to not be afraid of a dog and a girl 10 years later.

 

hulk goatse.

 

Buttvengers.

 

Sometimes, the only way to fix temporal damage caused by terminators is MORE TERMINATORS

 

Is Robert Patrick going to make a cameo?

 

Watch the trailer again.

If it's not actually Robert Patrick, they must have hired that extra because of the resemblance.

 

So is there anyone else than me who likes Salvation better than 3? Don't get me wrong, I don't love any of them, but Salvation is a much better looking production than T3 and it at least has an original story. It doesn't make much sense... but it's original. Whereas 3 is pretty much a repeat of 2 until the end, where the inescapability of Judgment Day brings about a new turn of events. Unfortunately, that's where the movie ends.

 

There should be no sequels after T-2, the ending of T-2 was perfect.

I always think T-1000 is better than T-800 as a villain.

 

They should have included the Bale rant into the movie.

 

You can kinda "choose your own adventure" in the Terminator canon. T1 & T2 are a singular loop. T3 introduces the concept of alternate timelines with the Terminator simply saying "Judgement Day is inevitable". Sarah Connor Chronicles is a T2 sequel in a different direction (the introduction of Chromartie and Cameron are an offshoot of that timeline going all "Temporal Cold War"). Salvation is another alternate timeline, while Judgement Day happens I think pretty much the same time as T3 - basically - the timeline is different due to the introduction of the Terminators earlier into the war. And Genisys seems to be fully embracing the alt-timeline madness. Which I am totally okay with, I dig me some wackiness.

 

Because of the time travel element, sequels are kind of essential. Skynet still destroys most of the world, and John Connor still becomes humanity's champion. The only way around that would to have T2 end with Sarah Connor waking up in 1984, telling her roommate that he had a really bizarre dream, then going about her life as a waitress.

James Cameron painted the franchise in a corner.

 

Salvation's two biggest problems were a. they didn't delve into and embrace the Future War that we saw in the first two Terminator movies with the fields of bone and laser weaponry, opting instead to make what amounted to Transformers. Or Transforminators.
b. It turned into the Christian Bale Show. There was really no need for John Connor to have more than just a cameo in the movie, but as soon as Christian Bale signed up, he forced them to re-write it so that he'd have a bigger role. McG was so gung-ho about getting Bale on board that he acquiesced...and the rest is history.

 

That's called ending the story. Because there's nothing more to say about it. Maybe people should have taken the hint.

 

Agreed. But I'd go further and say the story was ended in the first movie.

 

Only ended after the first film? Blasphemy!

... well, okay, the first film has a great circular ending but taken on it's own the first film ends on an incredibly nihilistic note (Sarah Connor driving away into an oncoming storm to give birth to John but, yeah, humanity is wiped out by robots). T2 is the super-mega-happy ending, even with it ending towards an unknown future. (Yes, it did originally end with Old John as a Senator but that was cut out, and rightfully so! Unknown future black highway is about as happy as this series can get.)

nice pull that Bale caused a bunch o rewrites on Salvation. However, even despite the "WHAT DON'T YOU %&*$%$ UNDERSTAND?!" Bale histrionics, I actually kind of like and think "Salvation" does a good balance between Marcus Wright and John Connor as the co-leads (their "face off" scene is pretty damn great). The character who ends up getting relegated to supporting duty in that is really Kyle Reese. But I still like Yelchin's performance as Reese anyway but I'll admit I like Yelchin in pretty much anything.

Somewhere in the multiverse there's a version of "Salvation" that I would assume has Reese and Wright as the movie's leads, and John Connor as a cameo. Also that original crazy kinda ending where Marcus kills Connor, or Connor dies and they graft his face onto Marcus so Marcus = John Connor. (There's also an interview where McG admits that was one of the endings they had, can't track it down now) Which is nice and twisty but a bit too much so. I kinda dig the "Marcus sacrifices himself for Connor" ending we have now.

I will fully admit there is not an installment in this entire Terminator series that I flat out hate. Just varying levels of "Dig" to "Outright freakin awesome".

 

I'm just not sure what to think about this new one.

 

In all honesty, I don't think they want you to do much thinking.

 

On the plus side, it looks like Genisys is gonna flat-out start at the Future War endgame with all the plasma rifles and endosekleton warfare we can handle. So we've seen the beginning and the end of the Future War if you view T1 to Genisys as a single continuity. It's just gone completely sideways due to all the time-travelleing buggity-boo. So, actually, going back to T1 in Genisys kinda works. Well, at least to me. Hopefully. But bring on the time-travel, alternate timeline T-1000 in 1984 and Old Arnold vs. Young Arnold craziness.

Fun fact: initially T2 did start with a full-on Skynet Future War John Connor sends back Terminators and Kyle Reese craziness. (go here http://www.terminatorfiles.com/media/scripts/ and download the "omitted scenes" link to read that opening. I remember originally reading it on the freakin' T2 lazer disc extra features. I think this is a copy n paste of that info.) Cameron just dropped it after the scripting phase so all we get in T2 is that short opening bit of Connor on the battlefront. But it looks like Genisys is gonna do finally do a version of that opening now.

 

Is it going to even do that well?