Terminator: Dark Fate*

First half the best.

 

I have no interest in seeing this movie and I own all the Terminator movies. Once I seen the trailer, I knew Hollywood was on a mission again.

Problem with Hollywood is if you want females to be tough, make it believable and don't over do it. I seen the trailer and 3 skinny women killing terminators made me laugh.

Another trailer that made me laugh recently was ANNA. No one is going to believe an 80lb woman can destroy a room full of men. Some women pull it off, like Scarlett Johansson. Sasha Luss not so much.

Problem with letting your imagination run away is, you have to want to believe it and an skinny old woman and two skinny teenage looking girls won't do it for me. The male hero and tough guy is out of fashion in hollywood. There has to be balance and Hollywood has decided to stray from that. It kills movies.

I have met many boys my girls hang out with or go out with. They are more feminine than my girls are. Boys today grew up on this stuff and their favorite movie growing up was High School Musical and they are all afraid of horror movies. Every single one of them.

This review summed up why I believed it would flop. The girls in my house have no interest in this movie and they liked Terminator, especially my wife.

Get Woke, Go Broke: ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Bombs At The Box Office

Wake up hollywood, the old basic ideas that make a great movie still work, stop trying to change it to meet your ideas and agendas.

 

Saw it last night. Not nearly as involving as the first, or as riveting as the second, it's still a very good action picture. Truth be told it's best in the beginning, and that made me wonder whether it might have been even better without Arnold and Linda Hamilton (whose entrance is terrific but who spends much of the rest of the movie complaining). Arnold is great though. He still has this hard-to-describe charisma (the accent, the stare) which comes through with very little effort. Nowadays it's less his physical presence, though there's still some of that. And he's extremely funny.

I don't know whether the movie will lose a lot or not. I saw it in a theater which was nearly empty (which made for a distraction-free experience, but undercuts the thrill a bit). But it doesn't deserve to bomb, not at all.

Regarding the budget: This film had without a doubt the longest credits sequence I've ever sat through.

About the complaints: The alternative-future premise is somewhat confusing, but it doesn't undermine the main story. As best I can tell: The future of Skynet did not come to pass, as Sarah Connor saved the world (this is the part that's hard to understand, as my recollection was that John Connor did not prevent Skynet, but rather led the rebellion against it -- moreover in this film, John Connor has been killed). But the human race is too dumb to be saved: A later generation created another set of AI robots, and that led to Legion, the world which sends Grace back. This part is easy to understand, and so the film is perfectly watchable: It is a different future that is interested in the present.

And the fight on the plane? Is it unrealistic? Well, sure, but bear in mind it's largely being carried out by robots and an augmented human, so whatever; they're probably immune to concussions and nausea. It's pretty fun.

No kidding, extremely well done.

Thank you!​

 

I want to go see it but I feel like I'm not going to like it at all.

 

Saw it last night. Not happy to say, but think it pretty much sucked. I wanted to like it. The opening sequence was really cool but sets up a useless premise i.e., so a Terminator DID kill John, but that’s ok Skynet was foiled anyway, but guess what anyway DO-OVER! same thing happens anyway 30 years later! Not very interesting.

I do like the new female leads and did enjoy most of the film, the action sequences, the characters, but thought the writing and acting out of the reactionary emotional aspects of what’s happening to Dani by both female leads was lazy and unconvincing. I was willing to forgive all that - it’s an action film whatever - and was thinking for the most part “decent, not bad, glad to have as a third installment, will probably buy blu-Ray.” But the last half-hour/45 min action sequence kind of bored me and I was falling asleep (though parts of it were cool) and the end made no impact on me. So I ended up NOT wanting to add it to my collection or probably ever re-watch. Oh well.

edit to add: I think the bit about it not being about Dani’s son but rather her, herself, as the future leader was a fine idea but there was no need to make such a big point of it as some big reveal and the speech about that was pretty lame (connected my earlier point about some of both the writing and acting). Some real eye-rolling moments that could be ignored but without a decent payoff conclusion there’s no reason to sit through this again.

 

If in T2 when they stopped Skynet by destroying the Cyberdine research building ....... how did they manage to send another Arnold Terminator back a few years later to kill John?

 

I hope this does not negatively impacts Linda Hamilton. It's good to see her back.

 

If her deal includes incentives for hitting certain box office milestones it might. For her sake I hope she got a satisfactory payday upfront.

 

I'm not concerned about the money; she's got a nice nest egg. It's more about future roles to be offered. If she wants them.

 

My unsolicited advice: Macho misgivings aside, see the movie. And if you don't dig what Mackenzie Davis does in the opening fight on the shop floor, ask your doctor whether Androgel is right for you.

 

Your getting me all wrong. I like female toughness in movies, but there is no need to overwhelmingly squash the tough male role with 3 leading skinny "tough" women. Hollywood has been pushing this a long time and my guess its your cup of tea.

The movie Elektra was panned, I loved it and one of my favorite female lead "tough girl" movies. I am saying there should be more or a mix and having 3 leading women is not a good balance.

Trailers make or break whether I will be interested in a movie, this one did nothing to make me want to run to the theater to see it.

Watch Aliens and you see a good mix. Watch the first Terminator, another good mix and balance. Good stories that mix the emotion and relationship between a man and woman while both fight together. Thats kind of hard to do when its a multi female lead cast.

Just because I like the way movies use to be done, dont take it as hating on tough women in movies. I actually love it, but it doesnt need to be a femfest.

 

Arnold isn't at all squashed. You might like it. Definitely worth a shot.

 

Maybe when its free on tv.

 

I'll probably see it eventually, but I'm curious about a spoiler point: How is the Arnold Terminator an old "regular" guy in this? Do Terminators age?

 

Spoiler: OLD ARNIE

T-800 kills John and walks away, but finds himself changed by the experience. He now develops a human conscience and wants to help mankind in order to make up for murdering their savior. He starts a family and a carpentry business, and helps out Sarah in his spare time by sending her uplifting text messages.

 

Yes, the flesh ages just like regular humans.

 

Aside .related to another post.

Dr.Sleep was very good. Well worth going to see if your on the fence.

 

Sarah Connor explains that Skynet sent MULTIPLE Terminators after John which I took to mean sent simultaneously but back to different years. One of them got him.

 

That directly contradicts T2 because Skynet was able to send only T-1000 before losing the war and the human resistance forces had full access to its database. This further doesn't make sense because the old John from the T2 timeline had full knowledge of the past events, so there was no way Skynet could send multiple Terminators and kill John when he was alive in the future and knew of only one Terminator sent to kill him. And you can't push this on yet another timeline because if the events from T2 stopped Skynet from being created, there could not be any other timeline with Skynet in it. The writers for this movie suck.

 

This will be the kind of movie that will get a lot of viewers when it ends up on streaming services and TV. Not good for revenue, but it will be enjoyed.

 

The plot hole, if there is one here, is one that has existed in the films from the beginning: If a robot government (which presumably has industrial capacity) has indeed mastered time travel, the perplexing thing is not that they would have sent one or two robots back in time to kill a younger version of its nemesis, whoever it may be, it's that it didn't send back hundreds or thousands of robots back in time to locate the target at virtually every moment of its existence.​

 

Yes, it's becoming beyond silly. But this is a symptom of a wider problem that's pervading all kinds of productions now. The problem is a lack of real talent that can actually write strong female roles. What most of them do now is to actually write a male action hero role and simply cast a woman instead of a man. And that's it. They make no accommodation for the 'femaleness' of the role. No nod to what makes a female character strong (hint, it's not kick-boxing muscly bad men).

These fake female roles also don't appear to have much empathy, emotional connections to male characters or be in any need of assistance from them in any way. Simply, these aren't real characters.

Compare these to characters from the past, such as Ellen Ripley, or original Sarah Connor, Clarice Starling, Erin Brockovich, Leia Organa, etc. All great, strong female characters because they were written as female characters, not as agenda driven stand-ins.

 

can't wait for this on home video!

 

I’m not worried about Linda Hamilton’s acting career - she seems pretty happy with her life in Virginia, out of the spotlight.

This movie reminded me a bit of “Force Awakens” - it was entertaining enough, undid the “happy” ending from a previous installment, and retold the same basic story with new characters. I left both of them saying, “it was ok, but was it really necessary?”

My other issue is that the terminators have become so indestructible that it has removed a lot of the suspense from the story.

Linda’s de-aged scene was pretty cool though. It’s amazing how advanced this has gotten.

And did anyone else notice that Linda, not Arnold, received top billing for this installment?

 

Remember, she got half of Jim Cameron's Titanic money after their divorce, so trust me, she's very comfortable. [Cameron had had an affair with an extra on the set, and that was part of the scandal involved there.]

Because Ms. Hamilton didn't really need to work (with $50M+ in the bank), she asked for a lot of concessions in order to come back. I think billing, a percentage of the gross, and script approval were all part of that. I would not be surprised if she got north of $5 million for this, which is a lot of money for somebody who hasn't worked that much in the last ten years.