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

Appearing onstage, Miller said there are still months left of VFX work needed to complete the movie and therefore the footage screening at CinemaCon was not final. Paramount showed off two clips from the movie and a reel. The first clips prominently featured Mackenzie Davis, who is seen time traveling and landing in Mexico City and fighting police in the first one. The second clip found Hamilton interrupting a fight between Davis’ character and two Terminators. Hamilton’s Sarah Connor is seen firing off a bazooka and saying, “I’ll be back.” The line prompted a huge reaction from the audience.

 

I thought she was back?

 

The audience cheers drowned out the full line - "I'll be back, right after these messages" and then the movie cuts to commercial.

 

So let's get this straight, the new Terminator movie acts as if T3 and the two other movies never happened, supposed to be a straight follow up to T2, and Sarah is with Arnold's Terminator character in the not-to-distant future? What am I missing here?

 

The official synopsis is:

Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (T-800) return in their iconic roles in Terminator: Dark Fate, directed by Tim Miller (Deadpool) and produced by visionary filmmaker James Cameron and David Ellison. Following the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator: Dark Fate also stars Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, and Diego Boneta.

***

Sarah Connor is 29 years old, stated my her psychologist, (Hamilton is 35 years old) in T2:JD and is now ?60? years old (Hamilton is 63 years old) in T-DF so I'm guessing there has to be some exposition to explain what happened the 30? odd years between the two movies. Probably shortly after the events of T2, another "T-800" was sent back to protect her. The only reason they melted the T-800 was to stop Judgment Day, but as we know, there's no stopping it - until they stop making movies.

OR they won't explain anything at all and they'll focus on the characters of Rey, BB-8, Finn, and Poe Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna, and Diego Boneta.

 

Does the character of John Connor play any kind of a role in the movie? If it's 30 years in the future (my timeline with the franchise is fuzzy, so forgive me), would that mean that there's a possibility Sarah would actually reunite with Kyle Reese - who obviously would have no memory of her - along with her adult son who sent him back in the first place?

 

No details that I know of concerning John or Kyle. They were the focus of Salvation so I'm guessing they're moving away from them. Mackenzie Davis is playing the character of "Grace". My guess is that Grace's last name is Connor and she'll be the future's saving ... yeah.

 

I love that they are tossing Rise of the Machines on out. Cameron is involved in this next one as a producer and co-story writer so this is likely the closest we will get to his original vision for T3. I know he has said before that T23D at Universal could be considered his T3 but then he walked that back and said he thought about doing a full on T3 film. That was before Titanic came along and he disappeared for a decade.

 

Logo in the background. Seems appropriate.

 

I don't understand pre-movie hype for movies that require you to pretend other movies were not made.

 

It's might be something like getting hyped for The Force Awakens and easily pretending the prequel trilogy didn't exist.

It's Tim Miller that got me back into being interested in the franchise after Genisys. I love what he did with Deadpool on a relatively small budget for a comic book film; and he did the DC Online animated feature trailer for the video game. He's a fanboy with talent, and so it's doubtful he'll make the same mistakes of the other films.

 

You see, that just makes it more confusing. It seems that they're playing as if T2 will be the driving force of the new movie; and yet John is out of the picture and Sarah has a camaraderie with the T-800? Throughout the entire movie until the last sequence, she's treating him as if he's nothing more than a machine. It's only at the last sequence where she shakes his hand and accepts his human qualities because of how he connected with her son.

 

But isn't that enough to demonstrate how her feelings towards the T-800 have completely come around? I can accept that considering what happened in T2 and where she started the film and ended it. John's absence seems more difficult to explain though.

 

Arnold is said not to be a T-800. On page 48 of this thread:

John could have been killed by cancer. Sort of a roll reversal from Judgement Day. Personally, I'd rather have John killed off than return as a terminator.

 

T-Whatever (Arnold): I've been sent from the future. It turns out your daughter Grace saves the day.
Sarah: I don't have a daughter.
Arnold: I have been provided with the proper equipment.

 

I think I seen that...

 

So the canon movies are the original Terminator movie and T2; and yet it seems as though they're doing nothing more than rebooting the idea of the first movie.

 

To be fair, T2 is basically very very similar to Terminator. Yes, it does continue the Sarah Connor character but it really leans heavily into the first film as well, down to the T1000 smashing the toy with the police car. It is chock full of callbacks(imagery and dialogue).

 

Not just a reboot. In this one John Connor will be known as John Reese!

 

John: Whoa, wait a minute, Mom. What are you talking about? What happens to us in the future? What, do we become *** ***** or something?
Sarah: No, no, no, no, no, John. Both you and your wife turn out fine. It's your kids, John. Something gotta be done about your kids!

 

For what it's worth, Josh Friedman, who worked with Cameron on the Avatar sequels, is listed as one of the writers on this movie (top writer on IMDB credit if that means anything), and Friedman also worked on this show called Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which went pretty deep into a temporal cold war with Skynet and by the end alternate futures so we may see a bit of that here. Me I'm going to keep my eyes peeled if the script worked in any easter eggs or mythology from Sarah Connor Chronicles. Just gimmie a Chromarie or Summer Glau as hey izzat Cameron the Terminator? Well, probably not but I am hoping for something from SCC to show up.

And we did see alt. futures in Genisys as well but not so much temporal cold war. Also Cameron's often pronouncement that Skynet has already won since we're all on our cell phones that may be a bit. Genisys had Skynet as an App but that was more of a ticking clock plot thing than anything deeper thematically.

I'm thinking T2 ends with Sarah all "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too... HEY! Watch out! Stop the car!"
*BZAPP!!*
"I'm back!"
"Well that was quick!"
(cut to 30 years later)

Maybe not entirely improbable either because

Spoiler

on thearnoldfans.com site I believe they had pics with two actors who were playing mid 90s era Terminator and John Connor and there's going to be some VFX wizardy to make them look like T2 era actors. So it's possible we're definitely getting SOMETHING that happens fairly immediate post T2 in a flashback. Or time travel.

 

Anything short of this teaser of T3 and I'll be disappointed. And yes, I know that T3 sucked.