Terminator Reboot

[Sumac]

July 3, 2003, I was in the cinema watching Terminator 3. Fast forward 12 years and its once again July 3 and I once again in the cinema watching new Terminator movie.

TG feels like it took parts from all previous movies and series and mixed them into some crazy cocktail of which I can't make head or tails.

On one had, its plot looks like a crazy fanfiction, which make stuff from T4 development sound like a mere child play. Actors were not really good, though, Clarke sometimes looked like Linda Hamilton in certain shots. Reese was a prominent as a sofa. Arnie was cool as well as the guy who played T3000. He was deliciously evil.

While plot, kind of make sense, it's still far from being coherent or at least from being nicely explained. It's just some things appear out of nowhere and people must take as is. World building sucks.
Episodes where characters talk to each other were kind of boring, due to not very convincing actors.

On the other hand I can't say that movie felt like it was lacking scale. On contrary: it felt even more epic than Salvation, which should have been a war movie set in the Terminator universe and thus EPIC beyond measure.

Now about what I liked: actions scenes were awesome. The best in Terminator series (after T2). Everything related to T3000 was cool. T1000 was also awesome (I liked couple of his new tricks). Pops was cool.

Beginning of the movie made me scream internally: "YES!! That's what Salvation should have been, instead of boring desert with boring Bale and 1/2 Terminators".

Just as I thought, TG is not better than T1 / T2, but it's a good action movie. While not groundbreaking it's rather pretty and fun, which is all I care, when I go to see action movie like this. So, I feel like time and money were spent wisely.

Though, TG definitely lacks in wholenes and plot, why theoretically, interesting, presented in a way that can confuse the hell out of people with its pseudotechnobabble, overall I liked this move a lot more than T3 and especially T4.

[LeotheLateBloomer]

I just saw it yesterday before work and while I liked the film, I thought there were a lot of plot points that made the story confusing and convoluted. It took me near the end of the film to sink in what was going on. Time travel has almost always been an issue with me in movies because it usually causes so many plotholes and contradictions. The pacing of the film felt rushed to me and I felt that it did little to further the series' plot.

The action was great though, much better than what we got before. There's a lot of fight scenes in this movie where I can actually see what's going on! I miss that in a lot of movies today where they instead focus more on shaky cams for the suspense.

[Sumac]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

Trying to explain the whole mess to me will likely make my head explode.

There is no mess really. TG just ignores everything after beginning of T1.

[QUOTE=chrisdude;1479265]

Spoiler:

Genysis opens with Reese narrating. He says that Judgment Day was in 1997, which is the original year Judgment Day, from the first film. But in T2, they blew up Cyberdyne in 1995. Even without T3 to tell us that the new JD is in 2003, we have to assume destroying Cyberdyne set it back some, don't we?

TG happens before events of T2. And apparently Skynet (from one timeline or the other) sent T1000 into 1973 and not into 1992.

Originally Posted by Leo656

The story is what made the whole premise "different"... now it's just one more "Robots shoot at each other and bust each other through walls, plus car chases" movie when we're over-saturated with them. It just happens to be called "Terminator". It always had those elements, sure, but the story itself was the hook, because it was a good story that stayed within its own "Rules" and was entertaining on its own even without all the flashy effects. Having a built-in excuse to explain any contradictions in the story is just a way to have Maximum Explosions with minimal reasoning. I mean, part of the fun of each new Terminator flick used to be, "How are they gonna expand the story without just plain breaking it?" Now it's like, "Eh, screw it. Just do whatever." I totally get it, it just seems kind of lazy, to me.

I'unno.

You are a bit too late...like 23 years late.

[chrisdude]

Well, that was my point. I was arguing that this film ignored T2. And that T2 is when the franchise jumped the shark the way Leo describes.

[MikeandRaph87]

Reports suggest the box office was a disappointment with Genisys making 44.2 million in five days quite a bit below the others with inflation. Yet viewers tend to enjoy it. Being a non-Terminator fan and going on a whim I thought it was a really good action/sci-fi film and delivers to the casual audience.

[THGhost]

Saw Terminator Genisys on Thursday night. I thought it was (obviously) better than Salvation and a lot better than T3. Nowhere near as good as the first 2 movies but still very good in its own right. I loved Arnie and Emilia Clarke's chemistry. Thank God the trailers didn't spoil every twist. The story was fun too, not over-complicated enough to melt your brain over.

[ProactiveMan]

You know one thing that annoyed me about Genisys and Salvation was...

Spoiler:

...the idea that Skynet can be destroyed by taking out a central compound, like it's a program running on a server somewhere. Skynet is a network, so you would assume that if it had a sense of self preservation, it would have employed pretty robust and widely distributed data redundancy.

I really don't like the anthropomorphism either. Simplifying the idea of a networked intelligence down to a ranting hologram takes some of the novelty and threat out of the idea. Skynet is frightening because its not like us, and it doesn't perceive the world emotionally like a human being. The way it thinks is probably totally unrelatable to a human, and the idea of fighting an enemy that you can't relate to in any way is pretty terrifying, so when Skynet gets all chatty and personable, it wrecks that tension.

[Leo656]

"Superman/Terminator: Death to the Future" is my official headcanon.

[Purse Grabbin Puke]

I just got back from the movie. I want to state that TMNT, Terminator/T2, Rocky(all of them), Big Lebowski, they're all "My favorite movie" depending on the day you ask me. But when it comes to Terminator...I was OBSESSED with the first two movies pretty much up until T3 came out. Once that piece of trash was added to the canon I rarely watched Terminator or T2.

So before I went today, I started last night watching all the movies again, I've seen each one no less than a dozen times, even T3. I am just going to say this, Terminator Salvation was a great Terminator movie. I don't give a crap what anyone says. I love it. It was never going to succeed the second McG was attached to it and Arnold wasn't in it. Also the Christian Bale rant I believe also had a bit part in it's failure because people were disinterested in seeing Bale after hearing his rant. Also it not being rated R. Anyway, Salvation is great. Terminator and T2 are the best movies in the series by far. T3 is a complete joke. Literally. They mock the Terminator the ENTIRE movie. He's a goofy sidekick. Every location looks like a set piece. Nothing looks realistic. John Connor is a whiny crybaby. The only thing they got right was having Skynet destroy the world.

Now after that diatribe...Terminator Genysis. There will be spoilers. I liked the explanation of why the T-800 is old. It's totally conceivable that they would try and send ANOTHER terminator back to kill Sarah as a child. This is where I would have been all in if this was the movie. Grown up Sarah Connor...the actress is SO cute, that I cannot for ONE second believe she's been preparing for the Terminators. What is so great about Linda Hamilton, is that she completely turned herself into a warrior for T2. She knew what was coming and you believed the character because she LOOKED like a soldier. This Sarah, she's got cute puffy cheeks, she's 5'2, not in any athletic shape what so ever, and now she acts like John Connor from T2. Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese...I didn't have a problem of how he played Reese because his character looks the part of a soldier, but I preferred Michael Biehn's take on his character. Aside from having some scars, Jai's Reese doesn't seem all that messed up from being in war. He doesn't seem to have the sense of urgency that Biehn's Reese did. This new Sarah and Reese came off like one of the scify romance movies we see every year now with Hunger Games, and Divergent etc...Like some scify rom-com.

John Connor...ugh...The actor Jason Clarke...first of all he rules... If you haven't seen him in the unfortunately canceled show "Chicago Code" do yourself a favor and watch him in that. He was a good villain. I just did not like that he was John Connor. I did not like the idea of Skynet being a physical being who can basically "hack" humans. I just didn't like it...no other reasoning. It just screamed "What can we do to make our Terminator movie stand out...oh I know we'll make JOHN the Terminator!" UGH..VOMIT.

Arnie was pretty good...I just hate that they have to make him a joke. He's a protector, a guardian, a killer, not a comedy act.

Few other things I disliked...the fact they just threw T2 out the window. The T1000 sucked compared to T2's T1000.

Things I and everyone in the audience loved, the shot for shot remakes of scenes from the original movie...so much to the point where I would have been ok to see some Back to the Future 2 type trickery where they see the original timeline happening in front of them. OR...Just remade the first movie...I really enjoyed the opening of the movie, we FINALLY got to see them get sent back. Should have just remade it, and added some extra story telling in it.

Overall it's not the worst Terminator, that gets saved for T3...I'd say its 4th behind the first 2 and Salvation.

[Leo656]

Pretty much confirmed all my worst fears I had from reading about it. Still gonna see it on DVD or whatever, but man, I'm so not down with any of that.

[TigerClaw]

I'm fine with the direction they took in Genisys, You wouldn't want the movie to rehash things, we already seen happen in the other movies before.

[Leo656]

Some of us think that things were Perfectly Fine with two movies, one good one and one Great one, and Zero Mixed-To-Sh*tty ones.

[Purse Grabbin Puke]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Some of us think that things were Perfectly Fine with two movies, one good one and one Great one, and Zero Mixed-To-Sh*tty ones.

Hell doth frozen over...I agree with Leo...although again, I LOVE Terminator Salvation...Genysis basically says, "here is everything you love, and drops it in the toilet, then pulls two or three things out of said toilet, but now they're covered in toilet water. Then they flushed the toilet.

And I would have been OK with the plot of this movie being the T-800 goes back to protect Sarah when she's a child. You could even include Reese going back in 84. But Sarah HAS to be in shape, and looking like a soldier. Don't get it twisted either, the actress who plays Sarah is very attractive and she's physically fit. She just doesn't look like she's been training.

[Leo656]

I know what you mean! I almost used the fact that you and I never agree as proof of my objectivity, but I thought it was kind of catty. But yeah!

And I like Salvation just fine also. I'm probably never gonna drop my stance of, "Two movies is all you need," and that "No Fate but what we make for ourselves" is a helluva line to go out on. But I also agree that T3 was too comical and I'm much more interested in seeing the Future War than I am endless rounds of Time Travel Retcons, and if you HAVE to do more movies in the Terminator universe, I'd rather go Farward than Backward, or endlessly in circles.

I'm as uncomfortable with these recent developments as you are. If you and I are to be what's left of The Resistance, humanity is f*cked.

[Purse Grabbin Puke]

I liked the direction of Salvation, and someone else said they hated the fact in Salvation there was a central hub that needed to be destroyed. That was not the case in Salvation. In Salvation they tricked the humans. The plant they destroy in the end was only a manufacturing plant, and cattle farm. The movie ends with John Connor talking about how the war is only beginning. UGH I wish this would have been a success because I would love to know where it was going. I hate when movies just get buried before anyone sees them, and then everyone jumps on the bandwagon of hate because they're incapable of forming their own opinions.

And to add to my Terminator Salvation love, lets not forget it had maybe the greatest trailer of all time. MAYBE...it's in the running for sure. It's definitely right there with The Watchmen trailer with the Smashing Pumpkins song.



One more thing, there were rumors much like White Shredder...of John Connor dying and being fitted with Marcus' machine body and the internet exploded with hate...so what do they do with the next installment? Make John Connor a terminator...just DUMB.

[Leo656]

Well if there's anything you can always count on Hollywood to do, it's throw out the good and original ideas and endlessly recycle the bad ones. I knew they weren't going to let that one go to waste.

[DarkFell]

Genisys got pushed to third place by Jurassic World this past weekend. https://www.yahoo.com/movies/s/juras...183238393.html

[chrisdude]

Pixar is a force to be reckoned with, burnt kinda feel sorry for Genysis, because no one could've known Jurrassic World would be that big.

[THGhost]

Originally Posted by chrisdude

no one could've known Jurrassic World would be that big.

Wanna bet?

[MikeandRaph87]

Here is an interesting write up I thought you all might be interested in reading and commenting on. http://m.hitfix.com/harpy/4-baffling...erand-3-it-did