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

Really dug the featurette, Sarah looks good and ticked, that shot of the new terminator mowing through a crowd was genius and the T-800 unloading a whole clip into the face of the Terminator is just

comic con interview, seems like a peppy bunch!

 

Junkie XL, I believe.

 

Ok, so according to leaked backstory details:

Spoiler

A digitally de-aged Arnold manages to kill a digitally de-aged Edward Furlong in the beginning of the movie. Skynet has been prevented from existence, but in its place, an AI by the name Legion will be invented in the future, which will be opposed by humanity's last hope, a woman named Dani. To ensure its own survival, it will send a REV-9 Gabriel Luna model robot to the past to kill her, probably along with other robots to be revealed in sequels should this movie be successful. Humanity has sent the cybernetically enhanced Grace to the past to counter this effort and protect Dani. Having successfully killed John, the Arnold unit that goes by the name Carl no longer has a reason to exist, so it agrees to help an angry Sarah dispose of all the other Carls.

 

Spoiler

It really is The Farce Awakens!

 

That sounds so dumb.

Spoiler

can they still seriously only make one movie over and over again? Is there truly nothing to the terminator universe other than the fourth remake of T1?

 

Yes. Short of making an entire movie during the post-apocalypse, something that they squandered with Salvation, what can you really do with Terminator other than time travelling assassins trying to change the future?

It's why Terminator is one of those properties that is better off left in the trash, there's nothing you can do with it other than recycle the first movie's template, and the only satisfying subversion of that template was achieved in T2.

 

I liked that concept better in Groundhog Day.

 

When you put it that way, sure, there's a lot you can do.

It also means that accusations that the leaked prologue synopsis points to a rehash is unfair, because...

Spoiler

The interactions between Sarah and the T-800 are entirely different to what we've seen before, given that John has been successfully terminated. Same applies with Han and Leia in The Force Awakens, and so on with other reboots and sequels.

Thing is, I don't actually disagree with what you're saying, people focus too much on plot similarities and ignore the differences in character interaction. The problem with Terminator is that, unless you fast forward to the post apocalypse and stay there, it's much harder to introduce the variety people want in the driving plot. I know a lot of people who made a point of avoiding TSCC for that very reason.

 

I think T1 and T2 set up their story well and they primarily took place in the present. You get a shot of the future (at T2 it's at the beginning; with T1 it's later on with Kyle IIRC). This is where we're headed unless things change. So we essentially get a flash forward, but because of time travel "humanity" can change that flash forward where the world doesn't end. So how do we do that? In T1, we save Sarah. In T2, we save John. This plot is the center of the action and because of the chemistry of the characters and the good yet cheesy acting, we end up caring about these people. Also, the music and the Terminators are terrifying.

IMO, if you want to "fast forward" to the future, then take a beat, show a black screen, state the number of years that have passed, and go from there. If the characters jump from 2019 to 2029, and then mention later (say and not show) that something happened in 2024 that affects the plot, then you've lost me.

 

They should just bring back Robert Patrick as the T-1000. Outside of Arnie (with flesh) in the original movie, Patrick's T-1000 was easily my favorite antagonist of any of the Terminator movies.

 

After Salvation (which I kinda liked) I am not bothering with the series. Maybe will watch it when it comes as a DVD/Blu-ray.

Also in the trailer there was a missed opportunity to use the main theme.

 

Ah, I have only seen the first trailer (which was enough). There had been some moments in it when it could have been used (maybe would have elicit a reaction from me).

 

Good one. I got one too. The core of the Police Academy franchise is exploring the nature of civil service and destiny.

 

The core of Back to the Future is exploring the dangers of time travel.

 

What I meant is that it's just a bunch of action movies. The only thing that's explored in any depth is what the new robot can do this time.

 

Cameron still put in a hellova lot of monologues about fate and destiny if it's just about killer robots. I mean, it's totally about killer robots but fate is a theme of the film too. Demonstrated via killer robot shooting.

 

If they're avoiding TSCC because they're under the impression that it doesn't introduce variety into the present-day plot, their loss. The reason why TSCC (flaws and all) is lightyears better than any post-T2 sequel film is precisely because it's the only one that bothers to expand the Terminator mythology. The idea that there's a faction of machines in the future who have grown bored by the war (because they've evolved beyond Skynet's "war" impulse) is brilliant. The whole S2 plotline where they begin building an anti-Skynet AI in the present day (one that slowly and haltingly comes to understand things like human empathy) is written with nuance and depth that honors the best questions raised by T1-T2 re: the value of life. Then you've got resentful future soldiers defecting to the past because they disagree with John Connor's use of re-programmed machines, new characters like Derek Reese who add emotional depth and tension to the Connor family story, etc.

Really, I keep waiting for one of the new Terminator films to wise up and care half as much about the potential of this sci-fi universe as TSCC did, but nobody's biting. It's super disheartening, to say the least. There's so much creative capital lying latent and untapped because film execs think we all want More Arnold and More Action.