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

You are obviously still free to watch and enjoy the old movies, even though they technically "didn't happen". I mean, if Trek 09 didn't expressly state that it happens in a parallel timeline, would that ruin old Trek for you?

 

Uhurah's "Parallel reality" line is a pretty good escape hatch for the old Trek canon. Although technically it does break Star Trek time travel rules every single Star Trek time-travel story from "City on the Edge of Forever" to "First Contact" and beyond goes along the lines of "Ahhh! Our reality is gone, lets time travel to fix it. Phew, that was close!" and Abrams "Star Trek" specifically says that it has created an alternate reality just... cuz. Which, y'know, whatever, I'm fine with either interpretation. The core of the Terminator series is it's all a single path, however, as noted, it has been inching towards alternate timelines/realities since "Rise of the Machines", "Genisys" is the first one to go whole-hog on it. But, for people who watch the series, mainly the first two installments which this movie cribs from, if it's following the rules of those movies which is one single timeline. Which "Genisys" proceeds to explode.

 

Except that Trek established alternate universes first with the Mirror Universe and then TNG episode, "Parallels" introduced different quantum realities which ran concurrently. In fact, Orci and Kurtzman both said that they were using that episode as a partial jumping off point.

 

So how is the box office overall?

 

China is a now huge market, I'm given to understand. I hope it at least ekes out enough globally to warrant a sequel. The last couple of installments have been non-starters followed by reboots or at least resets. It would be nice to have a direct sequel for a change.

 

Just got back from watching it at the cinema.

I thought Arnie was good in it. I thought how they did 1984 Arnie looked fantastic. Sarah Connor wasn't too bad. Jai Courtney I've never really taken too since the mess that was die hard 5.

I'm not sure about John Connor in this one, he started off well in the future, but once they made him into a new Terminator (or whatever it was) it all became rather convoluted and messy. Speaking of which what was Matt Smith supposed to be? The central computer system itself?

The new version of the T-1000 was a weak point for me, maybe Robert Patrick made that role his own.

The exposition about alternate timelines was confusing too. Although up until they jumped again to 2017 I thought it was going well.

Did they leave the 1973 questions (who sent Arnie back to help her and who sent a T-1000 back to kill her) unanswered for a possible sequel?

Overall I'd say a 6 out of 10. I'm just not sure where the series is going though.

 

If there's a multiverse in this story, then that establishes that all permutations of the timeline trigger a new branch, doesn't it?

That aside, I have one minor nitpick with this movie. At the end, when Pops came back and had been upgraded, did he slice through a foot thick bomb shelter door, and then just toss it aside? Yes, they have been shown to be strong, but that strong? I know he keeps a bus from falling earlier in the movie, but he doesn't pull it up. He just keeps it still. Isn't a bomb shelter door of that size about the weight of a bus? If he has the strength to slice through foot thick steel like butter, he should be able to juggle buses in the air if he wants to. And they've clearly never intended to portray the terminators as being that strong. So they've contradicted their own rules and should have written that scene differently.

 

A bomb blast door does not have to weigh multiple tons to be effective. A bus off the top of my head might weigh between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds. A bomb shelter door like that might be at most a couple of tons.

 

I guess I underestimated the weight of the bus. I thought a typical school bus like the one earlier in the movie would weigh 4-5 metric tons, but your 15-20,000 pounds amounts to 6-9 metric tons. I don't recall in exact detail how the blast door looked but I seem to remember something looking like a bank vault door. This bank vault door weighs over 20 tons. Even if the door in the movie wasn't this heavy, it was certainly plenty thick, and a foot of massive steel is still pretty heavy. I think you might be underestimating the weight, but regardless of that, Arnold cut through it using only the strength of his arm!

 

A door that size might mass anything from 1500 pounds to 2 tons.

 

Very well.

 

You trust VLM. Aka Mr. Weights.

 

Being a truck driver gives one a sense of mass.

 

I was so horrified by the trailers that I did not want to see this film at all, but I was dragged kicking and screaming to see it. I must admit it wasnt as bad as I feared, but I still came away believing it shouldnt have been made. I guess my big problem with the film is that - atleast for me - Terminator has never been really about time travel at its core. Time travel has obviously been used as a tool to tell the story, but for me Terminator is more about the realities of nuclear holocaust and the anxieties of technology and how we cope with it. Perhaps if they had made clear that this was a remake and not a sequel and if they had not had Arnold it could have stood as its own movie and therefore might have been decent in its own right. I recently picked up the first two on steelbook and had a much more enjoyable experience with them.

 

The fear of technology is carried over quite on the nose (too much so, IMO) with the "Skynet is an app" angle. The nuclear holocaust scare I think is not so relevant today as when the first two movies were made. It's a different world. To play that up as a theme would maybe feel out of place. Or not. In the end, it comes down to execution. If done well and told convincingly and effectively, you can get the audience on board with just about anything. All in all, I agree it wasn't a memorable film, but I still found it alright.

 

^^^ I actually liked the "skynet as an app" angle, - which, again - makes me think it could have worked as an all out reboot /remake rather than a sequel.

Just wondering, does anybody know someone that was disappointed with Terminator 2 when it came out in 1991? Specifically wondering what older fans who loved the first film thought of it. I dont know anybody who was disappointed but I was only 11 when I saw it in the theaters and this was before the internet. I have to imagine that the whole thing with Arnold being the good guy and all the comic relief with him and John Connor had to be a potentially scary thing for diehard older fans of the original Terminator. I accepted it easily because I was only 11 - though even looking back as an adult I think it worked perfectly.

 

Sure, there are a few here who dislike T2, or at least rank it inferior to 1, for just the reasons you mentioned. Paging JoinTheSchwarz.

 

I saw it over on another message board back when the third film came out. So it isn't just the later films.

 

Yeah, I think it's an inferior movie, but I don't obsess much about it. We are talking of a 7/10 movie compared to an 8/10 movie.

I do tend to think of T1 and T1+T2 as completely different things. One is a dark and gloomy horror sci-fi movie with a very gritty and dark outlook, the other one is a considerably more light-hearted (and more pretentious) action movie with a lot of heart and a happy ending.

 

Saw this a couple of weeks ago. Despite it taking a massive, bloody, and disgusting **** all over the first two movies, I had a lot of fun.

 

I agree that there's a big tonal shift from 1 to 2. They're stylistically different too. It is intentional, of course, but I also chalk it up to the big change in outlook that would legitimately occur, were you to discover the possibility to convert one of those dreaded steel agents of death to do your bidding. The gloomy tint of fear wears off and you would see them simply as the inert tools that they are. They become normalised, and the movie inadvertently will reflect that, tonal shift or not. It's like if in the sequel to Jaws, humans found a way to mind control sharks.

 

Wasn't the original plan for T2 to have Arnold be both Terminators, one a protector, the other a villain? That would have been an interesting twist: John and Sarah initially not trusting the T-800, then trusting him; the villainous T-800 managing to pose as the good T-800 leading to all sorts of mayhem.

 

I actually like how Terminator 2 doesn't really pull the "evil twin" gag much that often, aside from a little bit with Sarah but generally when someone is the T-1000 they're pretty clearly presented as an antagonist. Genisys does do the "evil twin" gag between Sarah, Reese/T-1000 but it's over real quick.