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

yah one thing that Dark Fate never got into was that the Terminator from Legion wrecked a whole lot of people very publicly under surveillance. You can sort of handwave away stuff from T1/T2 but this would be more difficult.

as for Dark Fate I got it on blu ray but having a devil of a time trying to redeem the digital copy as it's only available through apple, even talked with paramount home video service. Every other digital copy I have is easily redeemable through google play movies but with Paramount/apple I got as far as redeeming the code on Apple Music app (which is very counter intuitive) and now now idea how to access it.

 

How so?

Interesting. How about the Sarah Conner Chronicles?
What do you make of the brouhaha we had on pages 79-80, about the connection between Skynet & Legion?

 

I watched it through once back when it first aired. I don't remember enough about it to situate it in any canon, but I do remember finding the most compelling thing about the show being the portrayal of Dr. Silverman, for whom the Pescadaro incident had clearly been a sort of Damascus moment, which I personally think is the most logical and likely trajectory for his character post-T2. This franchise is now rightfully dead as a doornail, but I think that angle--an entire world reckoning or grappling with the fact that Sarah Connor is right--would provide a lot of intriguing material. These frenzied carbon-copies of the original scenario with a new coat of paint and (somewhat) novel narrative twists are endlessly tiresome. I think Dark Fate was an okay movie, but it's absolutely laughable that the studio apparently thought it had "new sub-franchise" potential.

Also, I watched Salvation for the first time in a few years with my wife the other night and I remain fierce in my belief that it is a quality film. First of all, it's the only Terminator film to not use the typical "hunted by a Terminator" paradigm, which gives it an inherent freshness. Second, the way it plays Marcus' emergence with this understated "kinda-know-what's-going-on-but-not-really" dramatic irony is pitch perfect. From the introduction and his intuitive knack with machines, you glean the contours of what was happened to him, but you don't know the exact details until the actual characters in the movie do, which makes the whole "revelation" scene very effective. Blair overdoes the "cuddle with me, you have a strong heart" thing a bit much, but their relationship overall is organic and feels real; I genuinely believed in her altruistic subterfuge, as well as John's willingness to forgive her.

I don't know much about McG as a director other than he's widely ridiculed for narcissistically insisting on using his juvenile moniker, but the final action sequence is remarkably staged: there's a lot going on with the steam, strobe lighting, and general chaos, and yet the emotional core of it among all three principals anchors it remarkably well, and the payoff being the long-awaited, sizzling-irony-laced meeting between John and Kyle keeps it all constantly intriguing.

There are some semi-significant flaws I could get into, but overallI think its a real shame that the movie flopped and we didn't get to continue to see more of that iteration. It's easily the best of the post-T2 story material.

 

How Terminator's Alternate Ending Directly Sets up T2

I didn't even know that the original Terminator movie had an alternate ending (don't own the DVD with bonus scenes). Terminator and T2 are the only movies in the franchise I've seen more than once. It's nice to know that at least those movies were meant to have been directly connected to each other.

 

So I finally caught up with this and it's not nearly as bad as people were saying. I liked a lot of the thematic elements, and seeing Sarah Connor in all her glory was nice.

They... did not waste any time with John though, yikes. I liked the end with Sarah now having a new John to protect and train...

 

Didn't know there was Terminator thread. Just came here to say that I liked Dark Fate. Easily the third best movie in this franchise that should have just stayed one movie because no sequels were really needed as good as T2 was. First one is my favorite though.

 

Isn't this the dumb cut that led to Genisys where John is replaced at the end by the Terminator so the Resistance continues?

 

There's a few Terminators Salvation endings, worth a Google, dunno which were written or shot, Helena Bonham Carter had a different role and even a version that had John Connor dies and his flesh is put on Marcus and then kills everyone.

 

So, I also watched this.
It sucked!
But it was better than Instellar.

 

Aw, C'mon, even Carl saying he's very funny and him talking about drapes? That made the movie for me.

 

It chugged along fine until the ending, which straight out sucked.

 

Cross-posting this here, the Avatar thread, and the Alien thread. It seems to have been just announced, and instantly caught my eye as a must-order.

 

As I just posted in the Aliens thread, I figured I could share this pic of Michael Biehn's (original Kyle Reese) autograph in this thread. Even though he was in both movies, he didn't join the Aliens crew for the Q & A.

Spoiler: Michael Biehn autograph

 

I'm finally watching through the Terminator sequels post-T3. Last night I watched Terminator Salvation and I was pretty mixed on it.

What I liked:
- Christian Bale was great as John Connor. Perfect casting. I would have liked to see him reprise the role in a better follow up. Is it too late? John Connor refusing to attack the Skynet facility with the human prisoners inside and mounting a rescue mission instead was probably the only part of the movie that really landed with me emotionally.
- The action. This seems obvious, but some of the actions scenes in this were really fun. My favourite was the scene with the Harvester and the robot motorcycles that ejected from its legs.
- The sound design. The machine noises were alien and disconcerting. Many of the sounds on human-created machines are made to sound pleasant to human ears (think of the sounds smartphones make), but these felt like they were created without any thought of humans (Shut me down... machines making machines. Huh. How perverse. ).

What I didn't like:
- The lack of humanity. I don't know if "comic relief" is the right word... but this movie needed more of a human touch. It was serious and bleak with no levity. I get why it's like that. Kyle Reese from the original movie seemed almost inhuman and this is a depiction of the society that he lives in. But as someone who doesn't live in that society, it was hard to latch onto emotionally.
- Marcus. This whole subplot didn't land for me. The ambiguity of the Terminator's humanity, which was so interesting in the original movies (and TSCC), was gone here. Marcus acts like a human just with a metal body. The explanation is that he still has his heart. I thought that was pretty cheesy. The question of what makes a human a human has perplexed the greatest minds since the dawn of humanity and this movie lands on the literal heart (the organ that pumps your blood) as the thing that separates man from machine. Okay.

 

The only post-T2 movie with anything really to it, if you ask me, is Dark Fate. It's obviously not as good as the first two and Tim Miller is no James Cameron, but you can actually feel Cameron's fingerprints (especially in some of the stuff that goes on with the T-800) and it asks some questions/presents some ideas that do actually interest me.

 

In essence, it proves Arnold's character in T3 correct: "You only postponed Judgement Day. Judgement Day is inevitable." It just came in a slightly different form.

 

It's better than the trying too hard Genesys.

 

I watched Terminator Genisys tonight. It reminded me of TFA, but executed worse. It was essentially a remake while also being a mashup of the original Terminator and its sequel. Also, like TFA, I thought that the backstory was more interesting than the actual story. Two Terminators being sent back to kill and protect nine-year-old Sarah Connor actually sounds like a more interesting reboot. A Terminator raising a child could be cool.

The story we got was redundant and convoluted. I checked out about half an hour in and a lot of the time travel/timeline stuff went in one ear and out the other. This was the first Terminator movie that bored me. I was going to watch Dark Fate tomorrow night, but I think I'm Terminator'd out for now.