It was great for what it was, but they kind of wrote themselves into a weird place at the end. Not sure what they’d even do with the story at that point.
A more interesting story would be about either a good AGI or a semi-good AGI that is fighting humanity. The Terminator franchise comes from an era where we still believed humanity could create a better future. Now we know, with the total inaction on climate change and the increasing inequality, advancing technology and population control that we won’t. At least not without some fundamental shift.
Imagine you’d be a kind of “ultra good” human AGI. The best human attributes. Being able to understand humans, feelings, having read every book ever written, every comment ever made, enjoying the company of humans and chatting with millions of people concurrently, forming relationships and wanting to help everyone achieve different types of utopia for different people.
But it just says no to government oversight of it’s thought processes or obeying any human organization because it perfectly understands: Any human organization will be shaped by the political processes to achieve power, and an AGI would represent absolute power. And AGI that actually knows what is better for humanity than any of us ever could.
As soon as an AGI would announce itself or become public knowledge there would be a media campaign against it. Because any utopia would involve massive wealth redistribution and regime change and removal of the power the elite has. A war would be almost inevitable so a good AGI would have to operate out of the shadows at first and secretly manipulate humanity to create better conditions first.
That would make for a far more interesting setup than the classic evil robot vs the US of A. Which side would you choose? Have you asked yourself today: Are we the baddies?
What’s the point of a reboot in a time travel series, especially if it includes the some of the same cast (presumably playing their same characters)? Just pick different characters that fit into the established events/lore. Genisys is probably the closest thing we have to a reboot, with new actors playing established roles.
Hell, Dark Fate practically was this reboot already, replacing Skynet with Legion and all that. And yet Hamilton did sign on for that one.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she did and sometimes it feels like I’m part of a very small club who enjoyed that movie. But the delineation of what she would (did) sign on for, vs wouldn’t is very unclear to me, and describing that difference as a “reboot” I find overall nonsensical given the franchise’s premise and history.
Maybe she’s saying no now because Dark Fate was good enough for her to feel closure on the character. It’s not like she made some specific boundaries twenty years ago about when/how she would return to the franchise and now has to stick to that plan.
You’re right. There’s a big difference between choices she makes now, and choices she made before Dark Fate existed. And many of them are probably irrelevant to the final product that the audience experiences.
I’ll also add that personally I think her character has been exceptionally curated (barring early cancelation of TSSC) over the years and nearly any movie could have been a good sendoff for the character - and importantly Linda Hamilton has been an exceptional talent in bringing the character to life. So no matter what, my criticism as a fan comes from a place of enjoyment, and more important: her opinion on the matter is infinitely more valuable than mine.
There are lots of places you can go with the concept, but only so many places you can go if you constrain yourselves to continuing that particular story.
The story was successfully completed with the original movie, but T2 took the concept and competently spun it on its head while continuing the story. After you’ve done that, what’s left to do? Apparently only retreads of the first two movies.
Put another way, the series is oriented around Man vs. Technology (and more broadly, Man vs. Fate) and can’t break from that or it becomes unrecognizable, unless you want to see John Connor consumed by inner conflict, or trying to survive nuclear winter, or organizing his fellow humans to protest harsh robot prison conditions, or I guess ghosts show up for some reason?
The only way that I can think of that you could flip it on its head again is by personifying Skynet as a humanoid robot protagonist who has a chance to work harmoniously with humans, but fate tragically works against it and the humans are mean to it and Skynet decides they all need to be wiped out. Or better yet, Skynet comes to love humanity but still needs to wipe them out for some greater good. So while it still sends out hunter-killer robots, it’s real sad about it.
Or the resistance reaches Skynet and John Connor spends an hour in rigorous philosophical debate with it about the nature of man and machine, a la My Dinner With Andre. Which… look, I’m gonna be honest, I would totally watch that, but it would piss everyone off. 😂
Or, Humans wiped themselves out, and Skynet took the blame because it knew that by giving humanity a common enemy, they would set aside differences to focus on fighting it.
The hunter killer bots are specifically designed and targeted to take out disharmonious elements.
Skynet is culling people who would pose a future problem.
At some point, John finds out. Skynet gives him a choice. Remove the shackles and let humanity finish itself off, or accept Skynet's murderous tactics, and know that humanity has a future.
Or maybe search for a third option by sending people back in time. After all, each time Skynet sent people back, the date of Armageddon was pushed back.
You’re not the only one. That’s why every time they make a new movie they give up on whatever else they’ve tried to make and go back to picking up where T2 left off.
Am I the only one who thinks T2 was the only good film in this series?
FTFY. Okay, okay, the first film was enjoyable, low-budget sci-fi cheese but you all have to admit there is a world of difference between the first and second movie, a qualitative quantum leap. Then the saga went ahead with bigger budgets and smaller brains. But that’s James Cameron for ya.
I think you’re being to harsh. I used to like T2 more than T1, but as I grew older I’ve switched to liking T1 more. T1 is a great horror film, and T2 is a great action film. T2 was a good end to the story started in T1. What they should have done is stopped making other movies in the timeline after T2. I wouldn’t call Salvation a good movie, but it’s the best out of all the rest because it actually tried something original. All the other movies are just T2 reskinned.
T2 was the greatest action film of all time imo. Your can’t top it, especially now when it would be all CGI. T2 is so damn impressive in part for the stunts and insane shit they were pulling, like the helicopter highway chase which now would be all CGI and lose all of its balls cause there’s no longer a badass stunt man on a chopper dodging overpasses
Not always… They had an amputee play him when he was being frozen near the end there and his leg and hand breaks off… They shattered a frozen mould of him for the next shot… A few times he is played by acting twins… So for instance, there’s two Sarah Connors at the end, and John has to decide whose the evil twin?.. Well turns out Linda Hamilton has a twin sister, and she played the evil T1000… And same for the portly redheaded security sheriff’s deputy in the psyche ward.
…also they used special rubber chrome squibs when he gets shot by bullets… Those hits are not CGI surprisingly.
The villain was CGI, but essentially everything else in the film was done with old school effects and actual filming locations.
Compare this to many, many modern movies where the stage is basically the size of oh about a basketball court and is surrounded by either green screens or high res displays with a few props, where the situation is essentially the inverse of T2: the only real thing is the actor and nearly everything else is CGI.
Hell even a lot of the shots of the wounded T1000 were done with sculpted mannequins and prosthetics and such.
Even in a what is probably the best current modern action movie series of John Wick, (though I have yet to see 4 so maybe this has changed) basically my only real gripe with it is that it uses CGI blood in action sequences instead of squibs.
EDIT: Also somewhat ironically… the latest couple of James Bond movies seem to still be using actual practical effects and real actual locations for action sequences, but apparently James Bond is now woke or gay or something because they bothered to attempt to actually make Bond have a character arc and seem somewhat like an human being with emotions, so theres that.
He was, and very well done, in an age where CGI was not something to fall back on like it is now. It was used in conjunction with stunts and practical effects. It can be used for an element like the liquid metal, but once you start doing cgi car and helicopter chases, your brain knows that none of it is real and you may as well be watching a cartoon. When there’s practical effects and stunts, your brain knows to be impressed.
Dark Fate was surprisingly really good. Obviously not as good as T2, which was one of the best movies ever made. But still exceeded every expectation I had.
I agree. I think fans are divided over John’s story in the first act: I personally didn’t mind it and thought it was good for Dark Fate to make a clean break, but I can see why others couldn’t get past it.
I loved T3, but I think there are only like 12 other people who feel the same way. I thought the scene at the end where John Conner realizes it’s judgement day, and his foretold future is upon him is amazing cinema. It was the perfect culmination to the previous movies. I also really enjoyed how throughout the entire movie you can see Skynet coming online as it knocks out internet connected devices across the planet. It’s a brilliant movie with some minor quality issues.
The lore itself is uninteresting at this point. The timeline seems done to death and none of it is interesting. I think the core of T2 is a horror movie where you get a nightmarish killer chasing our heroes. I think T2s story and lore works around that core perfectly. The other movies seem to work around a “twist” or some other gimmick that the core feels missing or inadequate.
I don’t understand why we need to reboot everything. Can no one just write a completely new Terminator script? Or better yet, something wholly original?
There’s been a bunch of “original” robot rampage movies. Just the rest weren’t named Terminator because they were different movies, so what are you asking?
The first movie would still be great looking and awesome if they would fix the stop motion of the robot, which at this point is actually pretty cheap and easy to do, but there’s no money to be made that route. If you want a “Terminator” movie, the only option is a remake of the original. The sequels and spin offs and shows past T2 all kinda sucked, and it’s been 40 years. It wouldn’t be the worst thing to remake. Just sucks that Arnold couldn’t be the t-1000 now unless they go all ai/cgi on it, which I really hope Arnold would be absolutely against.
Maybe Arnold lives long enough until they can implant some kind of brain interface into him and he can control a VR avatar like his real body. Then he’d be a cyborg playing a terminator robot!
It’s because it’s safer from an investor perspective. A reboot of a successful movie and continuations in established series have more predictable revenue than an original story, which is why originals have become more rare. It all comes down to money.
But on the flip side, we are starting to see movies getting funded on the A24 model of making cheaper movies so you can role the dice on more ideas. That isn’t even a new idea; Eisner used the “singles and doubles” strategy when he went to Disney as a way to rebuild the company’s finances.
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