Terminator: Dark Fate*

But it keeps on rising from the ashes again and again. "It will not stop. Ever!".

 

If James Cameron is directing the movie you know it’s gonna be worth seeing.

 

He's not, no time for that with 4 Avatar movies starting principal filming on Monday. I would suspect his Terminator input will be limited to something like weekly 1/2 hour progress report meetings.

 

The chassis was definitely crushed, but if the post-apocalyptic future is removed from existence and 'all ends well', like James Cameron suggested in that 1992 interview and his deleted, original T2 ending, then a litany of logic issues are raised, unless T2 simply branches off into another timeline. Cameron's script for T2 confusingly included a lengthy future sequence which showed that the events of T2 still very much took place in the original future: In this sequence, the 2029 events which led to the time-displacement of the two films are depicted. Connor and the Human Tech-Com storms the time displacement lab. Michael Biehn was to appear in this scene as Kyle Reese, showing his displacement back in time, with it being revealed that Kyle was informed he was always meant to go back in time, despite having volunteered. Connor's soldiers prepare to destroy the facility, but Connor claims there's 'one last thing' for him to do, and grabs an unactivated T-800 Terminator (the second Arnie, 'Uncle Bob' Terminator from T2) from a rack of units. John fondly looks upon the machine which briefly provided a friend and father-figure to him in his youth.

So what happens? Is there a T2-timeline that both leads to Skynet and the 'original' future along with a reality in which there is no Judgment Day?

Either way, I never cared for the notion of undoing Skynet and Judgment Day for an idylic ending where everyone lives and 'all is good'. The events of T2 become almost inconsequential and the predestination-theme of the original film is then completely ret-conned out, and the series devolves from a dark, apocalyptic sci-fi into a Narnian-fairy-tale where the horrors all exist in a separate, fantastic world which has no bearing on the characters in their main realm of existence, and 'everyone lived happily thereafter. The End.'

I'm not sure Cameron honestly fully knew what he was doing with the time-travelling aspect while writing T2. Cameron wisely concentrated more on the film's themes, characters, ground-breaking effects, and narrative than dialing out its myriad time-travel consequences for the small handful of scrutinizing, sci-fi obsessives in the audience. T2 was hastily written in a crunch of just under 8 weeks, as it took from 1984 to 1990 due to internal conflicts within Hemdale, the producers, and Cameron, involving who held the rights to make the sequel. When the issue was settled with the purchase of the franchise rights from Hemdale by Mario Kassar of Carolco Pictures' in 1990, Cameron was given only 8 weeks to write the movie, and less than 8 months to film it to completion for a Summer 1991 theatrical debut.
Considering this, it's pretty spectacular that the film came out as exceptional as it did, time-travelling plot incongruities notwithstanding!

Cameron does need to rectify this. If none of the illegitimate (as I see it) sequels to T2 had been made, I would then be inclined to agree with you that the story should 'end' there, with the permutations that result from T2 left to the imagination of the discerning viewer. However, we instead received three mediocre-to-dreadful sequels, the first two of which purporting to follow Cameron's narrative following T2. Killing Sarah off-screen was atrocious, the additional time-travelling from a future greatly worsened from what was presented in the first two films, and generally convoluting the entire series just about destroyed the original story.

Cameron has the right, if not responsibility, to expunge the content which tarnished his creation and intent. He can complete Sarah Connor's saga, with more respect than an off-hand mentioned, off-screen cancer death. We can see John Connor properly evolve as a character into the saviour-of-humanity we see in 2029 (which were absent in Nick Stahl and Christian Bale's lacking portrayals, not to mention the absurdity of the Terminator John Connor of Genisys), which we've never seen (only John as a wayward 10-year old, the victorious, weathered military hero of 2029...and the slacker young adult of T3, et al.).
Time-travel should be avoided, altogether, to avoid any more timeline/logic/paradox issues.

What concerns me, other than the dissapointment in James Cameron not returning in the director's chair, is their announced intent to not just make one final film that carries out Cameron's story and expunges the post-1991 films out of canon, but to develop the new movie as the first in a new trilogy, in which the torch will be passed down to a new female lead for the sequels. We've seen this lazy style for a soft-reboot (i.e. $$$£££) in The Force Awakens, and that model should in no way be replicated here. Only further complicating what should be a Sarah and John Connor centric plot for The Terminator series utterly defeats the purpose of coming back to give the series some long-sought justice.

 

Why? It worked for me back in August 1991 when I first saw it (and was utterly blown away) at the cinema... it still works for me now, no matter how many times I've seen it. And it's not complicated; after the first film, the timeline leading to Skynet and Judgement Day was intact, after T2 it's been erased out of existence and Sarah can look forward to a brighter future, free from her Cassandra-like dark portents that had driven her near madness... I wouldn't call that inconsequential, quite the opposite actually.

And just a last word of advice to stop your poor brain being tied in knots over the ever-shifting Terminator timeline... IGNORE EVERYTHING AFTER T2!!! I have and it works just fine for me... I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in these upcoming new films, none at all, anyone expecting another genre masterpiece or a substantial addition to what came before is likely going to be disappointed, there's no more story left to explore in that saga... 26 years of failed attempts to do so have proven that fact.

 

T3, T4, and T5 are fascinating because each film was a failed attempt to start a new trilogy of films and each of those films were in some way retconned by the next film that followed.

 

I've always seen the other Terminator films as "alternate" futures not tied into the first two films as the embody other people's vision, not Cameron's.

Plus, they are only movies.

 

I've just seen them as sub-par movies.

 

Their entertaining enough certainly but none of them are as bold or innovative visually as Cameron's films. It's the difference between a journeyman and an artist. Both can do the work but the artist transforms rather than just executes.

I don't consider any of them awful as they are competently made. It's like all the sequels to Frank Herbert's Dune novels written by Kevin Anderson and a Frank's son--they seem familiar but the stories play as franchise extensions rather than terrific, visionary stories on their own.

I would have been fine with just the two films and the TV series as that filled in gaps telling us about the formation of John's character. I felt that the TV series was th only worthwhile non Cameron spin off.

 

I'm going to be honest: While I do love T2, I've always viewed it as sort of a big-budget remake of the first film.

 

Yeah, but I think it has enough new elements to it to make it interesting.

 

-Terminator gets clothes from bikers/punks
-Bad Terminator is knocked down by shotgun bullets in a tense slow-motion scene where the good guy and bad guy face off (in a public place) in a race against time to save/kill Connor
-Terminator is knocked on his back out of a glass window
-Terminator chases protagonist through a car garage
-Terminator drives truck, which is destroyed by good guy
-Ending in a factory-like setting where the hero sacrifices himself and the bad Terminator is destroyed

Just some off the top of my head similarities.

 

Where the original film is dark, taut and apocalyptic, the second film is deep and philosophical. That's the main point of separation for me between the two. One is a horror-thriller, the other is action-adventure.

I kind of prefer T1 to be honest, simply because of the darker, creepier atmosphere and I prefer Arnie as the ruthless, creepy killer.

 

I don't care one iota for the post-Cameron films, and I don't even consider them 'canon' (the same 'policy' goes for the Star Wars Prequels, in my head, btw). The only reason I related their events and timeline was to show how utterly convoluted and inane it's all become.

The T2 potentiality of Skynet never coming into existence isn't complicated...it's impossible (if this is all a single, but alterable, timeline, regardless of what Cameron himself might say (which is contradictory, as his script for T2 shows in spades by having the John of the future remember the Arnold T-800 from T2 and intentionally send him back to fulfil his past). The post-apocalyptic future *has* to exist in *some* form (even if it's now a separate timeline/reality/dimension/universe, etc. from that of T2's world). If it doesn't exist whatsoever, then no time-travelling would have ever taken place, John wouldn't have existed in either the future or the past as Kyle Reese would not have ever fathered him, and there would have never been any terminators, let alone time-displaced ones which leave endoskeletons behind for reverse-engineering...

 

For those of you who don't like the post-Cameron films, give Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series a chance. I think it was really creative and compelling television. Well worth checking out. It only ran for two seasons. It's available on DVD/Blu-Ray.

 

doesn't he always? : )

 

Yes.

 

another Arnold treasure!

 

Have the 1st season on DVD...not bad but I stopped there...

 

I could not get enough of them, but the ones with Arnold will always shine brighter...

 

The Terminator franchise is oddly similar to Alien (and not just because of Cameron).

The first entry in each was a surprisingly successful landmark horror/sci-fi flick shot on a relatively low budget that launched a major director's career. The second entry was a bigger, badder action film with an enormous budget that, while still highly entertaining, lacked some of the ingenuity and magic of the original.

And then the rest have just been pathetic attempts to cash in on the original franchises, with convoluted, forced storylines that range from banal to outright ludicrous.

 

In both films, Sarah is rescued from a facility by the protagonist when the Terminator shows up. It's apparent that Cameron essentially used T1 as a template for T2, but rehashing elements, or essentially remaking previously successful films in the same franchise, happens all the time in Hollywood. Some films, like T2, get a pass. Some films, like The Force Awakens, are highly criticized. There is very little difference in the amount of rehashing between T2 and The Force Awakens, but there is a tremendous amount of difference in the amount of criticism both films received for rehashing previous films. That's probably due to expectation levels. T2 is a sequel to a low-budget but successful film, released seven years after that first successful film, while The Force Awakens is a sequel to a legendary franchise, released over thirty years after the first legendary film in that legendary franchise.

 

Also, bad Terminator is disabled by explosive (pipe bomb in T1, grenade in T2), and then subsequently destroyed by an aspect of the factory setting (steel press in T1, lava in T2).

 

T2 at least takes the core elements of the first film and turns many of them on their head: the villain of the first film becomes the hero of the second, and all of the characters undergo a transformation as they come to terms with their role in the future. That's what makes it an outstanding film on its own merit, or as you say, "gets a pass."

The plot copying in Force Awakens, by contrast, felt like an obvious ploy for Disney to link every element from the original trilogy to a bunch of new characters that will fuel the franchise into infinity. To me, TFA didn't feel inspired; it felt extremely corporate.