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Terminator Franchise

The Scribbling Man

The Scribbling Man

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Maybe I'm just blind, but I couldn't find a general thread for the Terminator Franchise anywhere (some for individual films or an ideas thread, but not the franchise as a whole).

I don't have any particularly cracking icebreakers but I felt bad for the potential derailing for @spence 's thread and felt that it would probably be a good idea to take the conversation here should it continue.

Carry on!
 
Glad you did create this! It's a bit puzzling there isn't one already.

I'll start with a laugh, hopefully: the first VHS edition of The Terminator in Spain had an absolutely hilarious synopsis at the bottom of the cover. Tell me you didn't do your homework without telling me you didn't do your homework:

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Translation: "A real jewel of science-fiction cinema. Terminator, an extra-terrestrial, will confront the most extraordinary situations in order to get the love of an Earth girl. Filmed without sparing any means, this film is one of the imagination cinema masterpieces. 1st Prize Avoriaz 85."
 
I always wondered if it would be possible to create a wholly new Terminator movie by using all the different timelines/versions of characters we got with the most recent sequels. It would necessarily involve a lot of throwing ideas around, a lot of work and a lot of skill to actually achieve something that holds together as a single movie and not just a sequence of scenes. But who knows, you may also get something interesting (at least using all the movies' faults to a reason). A sort of John Connor multiverse (wtf) where in one timeline (DF) he died and Sarah is still alive and in the second one, war has begun and JC is fighting with the Resistance (T3/Salvation), with bits and pieces of Genysis to meld the thing together.

I might just leave this idea here...
 
As a long time Terminator fan since 1994 when I watched T2 for a first time on a VHS I can say this:

T1 - 10/10 - the one and only, perfect Terminator movie.
T2 - 10/10 - basically high budget remake of T1, but I can't help it, I love it. Watched it countless times on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.
T3 - 8/10 - actually pretty good sequel with quite satisfying ending.
T:S - 6/10 - good visuals, but the story is lacking and unfocused, too much stupidity in the script, still watchable though
T:G - 3/10 - nice prologue and some interesting things in first act but then it goes downhill and never recovers
DF - 1/10 - total trainwreck from beginning to end, no redeeming factors, it was a painful experience and I dont want to see it ever again.

So, basically, Terminator film series ends for me on Salvation, which isnt too good, but tolerable and with some values that make me want to rewatch it from time to time. I've never rewatched two last movies and I am not going to.
 
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Terminator 1: pretty good, I recall not liking Sarah and Kyle ending up together though I don't remember why. I've only seen it once, as with the others.

T2: not much to say, it's really the best one innit?

Terminator 3: every-other scene I found myself yelling at the screen, "You're overdoing it, movie!". Garbage.

Salvation: my personal favorite, don't @ me.

Genysis (MegaDryve): somehow worse than 3?

Dark Fate: really good, right behind T2.

Bonus- Universal Soldier: Shitty Terminator ripoff, I really can't help but compare them. Obviously the premise is different, but the core plot and character dynamics are the same. The premise is still interesting though, and the more recent entries in the series are neat and do something different.
 
My idea for a contemporary Terminator sequel takes place in an alternate timeline in which Sarah was killed while destroying the T-1000, and Uncle Bob, in order to continue protecting John, chose to stick around. Judgment Day never happened, but another, weirder apocalypse did: a magical apocalypse, maybe something to do with the Mayan 2012 calendar. Ghosts, giant spiders, werewolves and vampires, wizards, etc., all rule the land, and most humans have to stick to drier, hotter climates due to the bug infestation of cooler areas. In this strange, eerie world they never saw coming, two weary travelers, John Connor (Nick Stahl) and Uncle Bob (Arnie), wander the land, helping those they can along the way. They meet a Mexican witch (Agents of SHIELD's Natalia Córdova-Buckley), with whom they must team up in order to defeat a deranged sorcerer and his apprentice (Jai Courtney and Emilia Clarke) from unleashing a portal to Hell, thus bringing humanity to extinction once and for all. And, could the real villain, the one pulling the sorcerer's strings, be the grand Empress of the Underworld Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) herself, back from the dead, to lead the infernal army?

Moral of the story/pitch: there are always more stories to tell in any given fictional world... if, that is, you have the guts to diverge enough from that which came before to create something fresh enough to make telling such a story worthwhile. And, as the post-2003 films have shown us, in the case of Terminator, that divergence has to be pretty effin' big to really justify making another one. :cool:
 
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T1: eliminate the mom; mission failed
T2: eliminate the son; mission failed
T3: eliminate the son's friends; mission partially failed
T4: eliminate the dad; mission failed
T5: assimilate the son; achieved, but skynet destroyed
T6: eliminate the son; achieved but new leader emerges, mission failed
T7: assimilate and enslave all human kind; mission achieved, but emergence of new leader
T8: reveal only way to save human kind to leader to ensure control of humans; mission failed, leader chooses anomaly path & catastrophic virus entered into system
T9: entrust future to human leader in order to survive; mission achieved
T10: reconstruct and assimilate leader and convince him his life was a dream to deter him from path of saving humankind; mission failed

Wait....those last four weren't Terminator movies.....
 
Gieferg said:
As a long time Terminator fan since 1994 when I watched T2 for a first time on a VHS I can say this:

T1 - 10/10 - the one and only, perfect Terminator movie.
T2 - 10/10 - basically high budget remake of T1, but I can't help it, I love it. Watched it countless times on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray.
T3 - 8/10 - actually pretty good sequel with quite satisfying ending.
T:S - 6/10 - good visuals, but the story is lacking and unfocused, too much stupidity in the script, still watchable though
T:G - 3/10 - nice prologue and some interesting things in first act but then it goes downhill and never recovers
DF - 1/10 - total trainwreck from beginning to end, no redeeming factors, it was a painful experience and I dont want to see it ever again.

So, basically, Terminator film series ends for me on Salvation, which isnt too good, but tolerable and with some values that make me want to rewatch it from time to time. I've never rewatched two last movies and I am not going to.
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It's wild to me that you hate Dark Fate so much, especially more than Genesys, which I consider to be one of the absolute worst big budget studio films in recent memory.

Is it just the content/story of it that you dislike? Because in every conceivable way, from writing to editing, action choreography, special effects. it's significantly better than Genisys.
 
Genysis is a truly terrible film. Shockingly so. Dark Fate was just a mediocre rehash.
 
It's wild to me that you hate Dark Fate so much, especially more than Genesys, which I consider to be one of the absolute worst big budget studio films in recent memory.
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Dark Fate kills everything Terminator is about in first minutes just to replace it with another version of same thing (another skynet, another future leader etc.). This is completely pointless and I cant see a reason to watch something like that especially when it is only boring re-hash without a single good idea or action scene. Arnold's role is an insult to the franchise too. This movie piss on the series from beginning to end.
Cameron wasnt happy with what happened at the beginning of Alien 3 with his characters, but he approved something way worse here.

Genisys on the other hand has nice prologue (with totally miscast Reese, but still) and some interesting ideas in first act (that whole messing with T1 opening had some potential), unfortunately they all lead to nowhere, and movie totally falls flat when they find that time machine. After that, it's as hopelessly bad as Dark Fate. I was bored to death by both of them, didn't care for anyone or anything that happened on screen, so I can't see how one is better than the other in terms of action, writing etc.

I prefer to pretend those two movies don't exist, rewatching first three and sometimes Salvation as a bonus - that movie at least doesn't destroy the whole story, shame it never got a sequel.

I think that there was no movie that pissed me off (and disappointed) more than DF. I have even AVP-R and Black's Predator on my shelf (I consider both to be epic failures), but will never buy Dark Fate. I would say that there was no franchise killed and raped more brutally than Terminator.
 
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Gieferg said:
Dark Fate kills everything Terminator is about in first minutes just to replace it with another version of same thing (another skynet, another future leader etc.). This is completely pointless and I cant see a reason to watch something like that especially when it is only boring re-hash without a single good idea or action scene. Arnold's role is an insult to the franchise too. This movie piss on the series from beginning to end.
Cameron wasnt happy with what happened at the beginning of Alien 3 with his characters, but he approved something way worse here.

Genisys on the other hand has nice prologue (with totally miscast Reese, but still) and some interesting ideas in first act (that whole messing with T1 opening had some potential), unfortunately they all lead to nowhere, and movie totally falls flat when they find that time machine. After that, it's as hopelessly bad as Dark Fate. I was bored to death by both of them, didn't care for anyone or anything that happened on screen, so I can't see how one is better than the other in terms of action, writing etc.

I prefer to pretend those two movies don't exist, rewatching first three and sometimes Salvation as a bonus - that movie at least doesn't destroy the whole story, shame it never got a sequel.

I think that there was no movie that pissed me off (and disappointed) more than DF. I have even AVP-R and Black's Predator on my shelf (I consider both to be epic failures), but will never buy Dark Fate. I would say that there was no franchise killed and raped more brutally than Terminator.
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I guess I can see that. Mostly, I feel the way you feel about Dark Fate, but about Genisys. I guess it's dealer's choice on which is worse, though at least DF has Linda Hamilton.

Also, "Miscast Reese" is the understatement of the century. He could not have been worse for that role.
 
Jrzag42 said:
Bonus- Universal Soldier: Shitty Terminator ripoff, I really can't help but compare them. Obviously the premise is different, but the core plot and character dynamics are the same. The premise is still interesting though, and the more recent entries in the series are neat and do something different.
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Day Of Reckoning is way too damn good for a DTV action film.
 
Editzilla said:
Day Of Reckoning is way too damn good for a DTV action film.
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I really loved both of those DTV sequels. Regeneration is a great little action flick, and then Day of Reckoning is... considerably more than that.
 
spence said:
I really loved both of those DTV sequels. Regeneration is a great little action flick, and then Day of Reckoning is... considerably more than that.
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I really enjoyed Regeneration. I kinda fell asleep during Day of Reckoning (not a sign of it being boring, I just fall asleep to a lot of movies) so I need to revisit it sometime.

Why am I so much more interested in talking about Universal Soldier than Terminator?
 
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