Terminator 6 aka the real Terminator 3 or something oh god when will it end

So here's the deal with this one:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/linda-hamilton-set-return-terminator-franchise-1040948

After waving hasta la vista, baby, more than 25 years ago, Linda Hamilton is returning to the world of Terminator, reuniting with James Cameron, the creator of the sci-fi franchise, for the new installment being made by Skydance and Paramount.

...

Tim Miller, the filmmaker who made his breakout feature debut with Deadpool, is directing the sequel, which is returning to its roots by having the involvement of Cameron for the first time since 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Cameron is producing along with Skydance. And the new film, which will be distributed by Paramount with Fox handling it internationally, is based on a story crafted by Cameron. Cameron and Miller created a writers room to hammer out what is planned to be a trilogy that can stand as single movies or form an overarching story. David Goyer, whose credits include the Blade and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, Charles Eglee, who created Dark Angel with Cameron, and Josh Friedman, who created the Terminator TV spinoff, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, were part of that room.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has starred as both a bad guy and good guy portraying the cool killer robot sent from the future, is already set to return and with Cameron and now Hamilton on board, the new Terminator film will once again have its original creative team.

Cameron and Miller are treating the new movie as a direct sequel to Cameron's Judgment Day. And the themes of the potential evils of technology will once again be at the fore.

But the new movie will also be seen as a passing of the baton to a new generation of characters.

"We’re starting a search for an 18-something woman to be the new centerpiece of the new story," Cameron said. "We still fold time. We will have characters from the future and the present. There will be mostly new characters but we'll have Arnold and Linda’s characters to anchor it."

Etc. etc. whatever fine can I go now

i wish they would stop doing this

Please

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlKao_Pox5A

isn't he busy making 2 Ava 2 Tar

Please let "franchises" die.

David Goyer, whose credits include the Blade and Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, Charles Eglee, who created Dark Angel with Cameron, and Josh Friedman, who created the Terminator TV spinoff, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, were part of that room.

As two columns and a table?

i for one am excited about the prospect of a sixth movie featuring a killer robot from the future intent on murdering sarah and/or john connor

sick burn from the hollywood reporter in the final paragraph of that story btw

Hamilton is represented by Innovative Artists.

"18-something?"

lol @ 2 Ava 2 Tar

I wish the Terminator would travel back in time and prevent some Terminator sequels. They are our Skynet.

Can they make one with literally all of characters from all the other ones in it, like a massive comic book multiverse crossover? Even Claire Danes and old Ed Furlong.

It's more than a little disingenuous to claim that the original team has returned, when the visionary behind that original team, James Cameron, is not directing, and the guy who directed Deadpool is.

oh no my vizh

Have they reintroduced Terminator as a kids cartoon yet?

if this delays or even prevents the thousand avatar sequels then i'm seeing it as a net good

the live-action parts of the next three or four avatar movies are in the process of being filmed now, iirc

my hype-o-meter remains unmoved either way

also it's been so long since cameron directed like... a regular movie

oh wait i'm sorry my eyes for some reason completely scanned over "directed by deadpool guy" ugh

Have they reintroduced Terminator as a kids cartoon yet?

kinda surprising that there were robocop and rambo cartoons (and a planned aliens cartoon!) but there was never a terminator one

They should make a cartoon about a Terminator who goes back to the past to convince somebody to make a Terminator cartoon.

there was one in development in the early '90s. Never made it beyond the concept stage though iirc

the avatar sequels begin filming next week, apparently

obv it took a billion at the box office but nonetheless i find it hard to imagine anyone being super-excited to see three sequels to what was basically a lavish tech demo

I finally watched that last Terminator movie on Hulu, and it was just godawful stupid. The TV show wasn't bad. But this franchise is dead, just lower it into the molten steel already.

bring it on. i loved the last Terminator

Hollywood Reporter is now basically just the Fangoria magazine rumours column circa 1992

Who would win in a fight, Terminator or Predator?

PREDINATOR

bring it on. i loved the last Terminator

wtf adam this is insane

this has a better chance if being good than any of them post T2 at least.

i think Deadpool is an embarrassing character with an embarrassing fanbase but i caught the movie on TV and it wasn't half bad.

i'd watch a movie where a facehugger attacks a predinator and then an army of predinataliens descend on detroit where robocop must fight them off with the grudging support of the railway children

this has a better chance if being good than any of them post T2 at least.

t3 was largely garbage but i did like the bummer ending, where the world-saving plan they've been following the whole movie turns out to be a ruse to force john into safety inside cheyenne mountain just as armageddon arrives.

genisys is one of the worst movies i've ever seen

once you get over that they will never top T1/T2 and just want to watch a time travelling robot movie it's not that hard to enjoy T5.

T4 was a slug, just visually a chore to watch. too many earth tones, too much daylight, instead of scary skeleton-looking robots it had amorphous Transformers.

T5 brings back the night time, the red 80s lasers, etc. the leads weren't amazing but who cares.

i loved the CGI young Arnold. yes its cheesy. not sure what people want from these dumb movies about time traveling robots.

For them to travel back to when there were dinosaurs, duh.

Termisaurus=Big Bux! no one has DONE time traveling cyborg dinosaurs, we'll make a million!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lor_uUkJkkw

gildaradnernevermind.gif

genisys is one of the worst movies i've ever seen

― Mr. Eulon Mask, urging the UN to ban the "homicide robot" (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, September 20, 2017 6:26 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

also find it strange to think that anyone might have purchased tickets to a movie called "terminator genisys" expecting it would match terminator 1 or 2

i hope the new one returns the series a bit to its brutal cold dead tech industrial horror roots but i suspect not.

Hope this one is called Terminator: Revylashynz. In a heavy metal script, in front of a pentagram made out of Terminators.

I hope they bring back the T-1000000

Have they made one where we see the Terminator as a kid, if not can this one be the one where the Terminator is a kid because I want to see that.

https://i.pinimg.com/600x315/2e/e5/1d/2ee51deb9757dfeeaec3d4dbf0a5dc57.jpg

genisys is one of the worst movies i've ever seen

― Mr. Eulon Mask, urging the UN to ban the "homicide robot" (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, September 20, 2017 6:26 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, September 20, 2017 4:35 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the dude playing john connor was one of the worst performances i've even seen

they should do cgi to have edward furlong play the terminator as a kid and have him fight the dead kid who played darth vader as a kid. in the future.

wait, does everyone hate Avatar? i don't hate avatar. i've only watched it at home on the couch though. so the fact that its 4 hours long doesn't bother me.

also, the terminator as a kid could go into a space bar looking for young darth vader and humphrey bogart could be the bartender! they can totally do that kind of thing now.

ready terminator one

I don't hate Avatar, but it's a disposable movie that I don't ever want to think about again. I see no reason why it needs sequels.

It's a service to the future. If it doesn't have sequels then people will always wonder why there were no sequels.

Never watched captain planet and the smurfeteers cause of how incredibly bad and dumb it looked

i thought it was pretty good sci-fi. the story certainly resembled a lot of sci-fi i've read and enjoyed.

Avatar is a fine film, probably the best 3D I've seen until Valerian, but culturally it sunk like a stone - pretty much the only interesting thing to say about it is that it seems odd (and odder by the minutes) that the biggest US film ever had us cheering on the Viet Cong analogies.

hey so did Return Of The Jedi

c'mon, no one was cheering for the Ewoks

We were totally cheering for the Ewoks...to die.

your hate only makes them stronger

i really did like that new star wars movie that ends with the princess leaving the video in the robot. i would watch that again. so, i guess there are some exceptions when it comes to beating dead horses.

Avatar is one of the best-plotted tech demos I've ever seen.

Summer 2019

https://io9.gizmodo.com/its-official-the-next-terminator-movie-will-be-out-in-1818847609

Plus, interview with Cameron and Miller

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/james-cameron-sounds-alarm-artificial-intelligence-unveils-a-terminator-21st-century-1043027

Ellison, 34, has for the past year worked secretly with Cameron and Deadpool's Tim Miller, who will direct the untitled sequel for a July 26, 2019, release. They assembled a writers room with scribes David Goyer, Charles Eglee, Josh Friedman and Justin Rhodes as well as Ellison, a lifelong Terminator fan (Cameron himself shows up once a week), and have crafted what they want to be a trilogy with Schwarzenegger, 70, and original star Linda Hamilton, 62, passing the torch to a young female lead. The team hopes it's launching the equivalent of the new Star Wars trilogy — but with the most successful filmmaker of all time pulling the strings.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong.

Elsewhere at The Hollywood Reporter, Cameron said the following about his ridiculous film-making schedule: “The way I look at it is, I’m doing Avatar by day, Battle Angel by night and Terminator on the weekend.”

best-case scenario is none of them gets off the ground

when will james cameron stop doing battle angel

this weekend

jim cameron has a battle angel alita film in production, wtf?

i think he's had one in production for like a decade?

shit, even longer!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alita:_Battle_Angel

In February 2010, producer Jon Landau commented during an interview that he was trying to convince Cameron to change the film's title to Alita: Battle Angel, stating, "I'm telling people that we have to call it Alita: Battle Angel, because Jim only does T&A movies," he said.

Christoph Waltz as Ido is good casting I have to admit.

when will james cameron stop doing battle angel

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, September 27, 2017 1:02 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The names of street drugs get stranger all the time, but I wish Jim well on his road to recovery.

dropping my plot ruminations here since it's the newest thread

The dramatic tension and actual horror aspect of the Terminator series is linked to how strongly the main characters are threatened and the relative stakes

Terminator: A young woman, Sarah Connor, is personally threatened by this mysterious future cyborg. She's relatable, the world is relatively good if kind of seedy and threatening in an 80s Los Angeles way. They're trying to kill her because the world will conceivably end if she dies. Fear.

Terminator 2: Our main character is a kid. He's joined by an ally which -- clever twist! -- is the antagonist from the first film, but the threat is still impending judgment day and there's a much worse cyborg threat from even further down the line. Entire sideplot featuring a threatened family with kids, ramping up the tension.

Terminator 3: This existed. Same Arnold terminator/new terminator threat as the last one and it's mostly a retread. We get Claire Danes as our threatened person, but as viewers we know she's abducted by the good guys so the stakes are low. We already know the Arnold terminator can outwit the newer models because he has heart. The twist is that judgment day is inevitable, it's still a nuclear war triggered by machines. The real threat is apparently inevitability

Terminator Salvation: Everyone's a soldier. I guess the stakes are now that all of humanity are now the underdogs, but we've lost the threat of humanity's weapons ending the human race. It's whether the cyborgs and their big AI will finish us off. The real threat is the threat within, human/terminator hybrids! Which could be interesting, but even more than the last, jettisons the idea that it's a horror film and it ends up being not about whether a machine can have humanity, but whether a man that becomes a machine retains humanity. He does, and the ending is pretty much bait for a sequel that never happens.

Terminator Genisys: Not well-executed, but the threat is no longer nuclear apocalypse (or at least not that alone) but the idea that AI, the singularity, will eat us at some point. Threatened people? A young woman who already is battle-hardened, a newcomer from the future with all this baggage from the previous films, humanity will die and so on. Time travel is no longer a linear progression, which could be cool, but it's used in service of the idea that each Terminator chapter affects the time and place of the singularity but not the possibility of it happening. The idea of human/machine convergence is in play as in the last, but instead of a human with an Arnold terminator body, we get a human with the liquid terminator body. Overall, the main cast is threatened but we're completely out of the threat of violence. These people are contemporary but everyone's a soldier, basically.

Television sidebar of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Terminator of the week episodes! This predates the last movie (last two maybe, I forget) but the threats became more about fighting the human influence of machines posing as men. Main terminator unit is a young woman, the dynamic is different. Completely variable in quality between episodes. I kind of want to rewatch it just to see Shirley Manson as the terminator that is secretly on our side, a plot thread that never gets flushed out because the series ends.

I think the only way a new movie could work is either as a biological extrapolation, maybe Skynet comes online but fucks with genetically modified embryos (I thought I was editing diabetes out of my genome, it turns out the computer made my baby into a sleeper soldier) or does something where it 3d prints its own humans. Or they go with even grittier back to basics, or some dumb "what is a soldier, really?" thing with self-aware terminators in the far future wandering off to start their own agrarian society

in other news, I think I'm going to start blogging instead of thread polluting, and seem to have had two beers and ordered the tv show on blu-ray last night (vmic)

that was a great post. i haven't seen anything past T2 but your post inspired me to read the wikipedia plot summaries of the last four.

also too bad you didn't have twelve beers and didn't order this

https://www.amazon.com/Terminator-Six-Disc-Limited-Endoskull-Blu-ray/dp/B001RIY49C

the three or four lonely posters who watched the tv show had a nice little thread about it, iirc

oh, I was there

I think the several of the different science fiction/horror franchises have gone through the same pattern:
The horror of the other (monster) -> Acceptance, or a Cyclical, repetitive struggle against what was the other -> A merging with the other

Both the Terminator and Alien series did this over four chapters, although Ridley Scott is trying to create some overarching cycle (Prometheus/Alien Covenant) where man's creation nurtured the initial horror, and Terminator has always had the subtext that the horror is a creation of humanity that becomes the other

There's also the internal subtext in Alien with androids and The Company, so its subtext there is... Terminator's text?

Then you have Blade Runner that kicks off with The Other is Us and in a somewhat uninspired fashion returns decades later to drive the point home further

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyEX6u-Yhs

Schwarzenegger did some brief AMA-style posting over on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/bs2n3o/were_back_heres_your_terminator_dark_fate_trailer/

was it really necessary to have someone record a moody piano cover of björk's "hunter"

regardless this looks way less horrible and idea-bankrupt than genysis but uh low bar

i'm excited for the part where we see the terminator finally try to kill sarah connor

The secret surprise in this one is that not only does the Terminator's skin get ripped off to reveal a robotic endoskeleton but that skeleton is itself peeled away to reveal a miniature version of Arnold Schwarzenegger feverishly working a complex system of levers and pulleys.

Thank god the guy who made Avatar is bsck in the saddle this time

the guy who made deadpool is in the saddle, the guy who made avatar is the guy providing the horse

or perhaps more accurately, flogging a horse that looks distinctly unwell

"director of deadpool" really does make this DOA, even with my extremely positive experience watching another cameron-produced film this year

the CGI looks ghastly, i thought people had gotten better at this sort of thing

terminator is basically a franchise for people who like leather jackets and automobile stunts, this sort of thing should be easy

definite plus points to whoever was like, "oh yeah, remember linda hamilton"

there are no bad terminator projects, only bad alternative timelines explored by terminator projects

I also have no idea what I was smoking when I revived this thread in January '18 but I want some of it

and holy shit, Brad wasn't kidding. why would you do this to a Bjork song?

terminator is the worst franchise somehow.

Well, the first two are ace, but that was before they morphed into franchise mode, I guess.

I hope the entire new movie is slow-mo and ramping.

I think part of it is that they hint at the rich narrative promise of a dystopian future controlled by time-travelling robots seeking to destroy humanity but then chain each installment to the notion that the only stories worth following are those that involve an increasingly-aged Arniebot and his adventures with the Connor family.

constant slow moody piano covers of women empowerment pop songs performed by men
"Nasty.... Nasty Boys... Don't Mean... A Thing..." *plinka plinka plinka*

where’s john connor

Furlong's 1991 facial likeness from Terminator 2: Judgment Day will be used in flashback scenes through the use of CGI in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

Something along these lines I imagine

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rXjKhcrad5oqGXRHhbYnaZmKFyU=/0x0:1280x720/1200x800/filters:focal(398x143:602x347)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52827505/lawnmower-man-original.0.0.jpg

I like the idea of the Terminator series being like a sci-fi "Up" series, with the aging cast gathering every 7 years to reboot the movie again.

pretty weak

the CGI looks ghastly, i thought people had gotten better at this sort of thing

Yeah the CGI looks bad. I'll be glad when we're past the thing of having CGI-assisted fight scenes where it's obvious that it's just two little CGI sprites jumping around each other.

Its weird how CGI in action & sci fi movies can still suck in 2019. Its like the quality of it stays the same but the amount per film just increases.

How have the Terminator 2 FX held up? I know the practical stunts are still great.

t2 still looks astonishing imo

but it's hard for me to be objective about it

it's been a while since i listened to the cameron commentary track (which is really, really great, and gives you a sense of how they made a great story out of all these different moving parts, and how even though the theatrical release is 2+ hours long all of the editing choices they made were perfect, and how the original ending was so, so terrible) but iirc he points out a lot of the instances of cgi and it's really the way the computer graphics interact with the practical effects that keeps them looking good and natural

yeah, t2 still looks great because cameron made very, very smart choices about how and when to use cgi, and as sparingly as possible

T2 remains absurdly good -- the months leading up to its release were full of such anticipation amongst myself and my dirtbag friends that anything short of a masterpiece would have disappointed, and it didn't. it was sold heavily on the CGI but its pace and directing is what keeps it a classic to this day. Cameron is a genuinely amazing filmmaker in terms of plot structure and action and character types and getting memorable performances from his cast. his dialogue can often be a hard sell (increasingly so over time) but the films are top notch because all the parts are calibrated precisely. we can joke about Avatar and Titanic but those films as ridiculous as they can be are also shockingly non-boring.

i think his weakest film is True Lies in all respects.

also re: t2, they flew a real fuckin helicopter under a bridge in the highway chase scene

never fails to blow my mind

yeah, there’s so much gross gender and race stuff in true lies

true lies was a rough rewatch scriptwise but as a collection of action setpieces it is still pretty hot shit

but the misogyny kinda feels like a betrayal

knowing now that eliza dushku was molested by true lies’ stunt coordinator is also very much not in its favour

oh god i forgot about that

the Jamie Lee Curtis striptease scene is extremely creepy, i mean it's a nightmare for her character.

i remember feeling really uncomfortable during that scene as a kid and the discomfort did not wane

that scene and Arnold bringing down the full power of the CIA so he could make Bill Paxton pee his pants or w/e was going on there.

it’s a very weird midlife crisis of a movie - it’s so specific in its strangeness that it feels in some ways like cameron’s most personal film, and if that is the case it doesn’t reflect well on him at all

movie could be a polemic about how men are all just shit but it is not that

just remembered that a nuke is detonated in the florida keys in true lies

what a weird fuckin’ movie

lmao

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NhakUzw52Cw/V0h7J5jowlI/AAAAAAAA5Qs/DRV5iZdgzFEPQsIHJ734uDhQjLXfCc5wACKgB/s1600/true%2Blies40.jpg

this got brought up in another ilx thread just a few months ago, possibly a cameron-related one

GnR gonna have a Taco Bell cassingle giveaway promotion for “You Could Be Mine 2”

Yeah the CGI looks bad. I'll be glad when we're past the thing of having CGI-assisted fight scenes where it's obvious that it's just two little CGI sprites jumping around each other.

weird that one John Wick director stayed on Wick to shoot fights and stunts and choreo in-camera as much as possible (with comedy digital squibs), and the other one has headed off to do 50%-CGI films all the time

One the one hand, great to have a 62yo woman as lead in an action film. On the other hand, everything else.

whoops, it's the Deadpool director, not the Deadpool 2 director

at least it is unlikely this one will have a mugshot scene set to "bad boys"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_5pQtzRT8

Hoping this is good but low expectations.

Will probably be there opening night.

I am in the middle of a run of Shakespeare's Terminator the Second so it is ordained my cast has to see it

Seeing this now. Robotic fingers crossed

Omg. I enjoyed the fuck out of this.

It's imperfect. Not 100% sold on the nu-Sarah Connor.

Mackenzie Davis was great though. Arnold's cameo largely worked.

They did a nice butterfly effect storyline without getting too expositiony.

There was actual tension!

I mean...did it need to exist? No. But this was way better than I expected. Even if the first 20 minutes felt clunky.

They accidentally showed 8 minutes of Jesus is King first tho

I was very confused as to why there was gospel music

This was certainly a Terminator movie

I don't think it counts as a "cameo" when he's in half the darn movie!

the pre-show reel included a Terminator 2 trivia bit and had some bits that I'd known and forgotten

like the fact the Robert Patrick terminator scenes where he's taken the form of someone who is also in the scene? they used twins for several of those. including Linda Hamilton's twin!

So is this the entry that's supposed to finally get the franchise back on track? Or is that the one coming out a few years from now? I can never keep track of these things!

each entry in the series gets it back on track for a different alternative future iirc

Ed Furlong's, uh, cameo in appearance-only form is tragic in the plot but kind of funny as a viewer

Lol yeah

I am good with this being the last one.

But it won't be.

I've got to admit that one of the things that stood out is that they gave Arnold actual lines and he absolutely nailed it

Yeah i was pleasantly surprised

This did kinda feel like a Force Awakens

oof

As of November 1, 2019, Terminator: Dark Fate has grossed $10.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $12.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $23.2 million.[5] It is estimated the film will need to gross around $470 million worldwide in order to break-even.[4]

wowwwwwwww. could this finally be the death knell for mega-budget remakes of 80s properties?

almost certainly not unfortch

What does that portend, if anything, for the Avatar sequels?

They will use existing footage from other movies

jim cameron has abandoned production in favour of living in a bathysphere in the marianas trench for the rest of his days

i'm hoping Avatar 4 turns out to just be the battle angel alita sequel, released under the name "Avatar 4"

Checking out the box office results for Dark Fate led me to this:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1477150209/?ref_=bo_hm_rs

It's a new film that will be released on 08 November 2019 called Mr. Toilet: The World's #2 Man. According to Wikipedia it's "a 2019 documentary film about Singaporean activist Jack Sim, who uses humour to publicize the issue of improving bathroom sanitation". Jack Sim was Asian of the Year in 2009 and 2011. Part of me wonders if he is famous in the United States, or if he's been on a chat show, or if there was a Youtube video about him. But global culture is pivoting Eastwards so perhaps his fame in Singapore is bleeding into the Western world. I'm out of touch.

New Terminator will probably ultimately make money via foreign sales.

The problem with this Terminator is it just seems like another one of the endless increasingly unloved post-T2 sequels despite the efforts to distance it from the other films. It has been almost 30(!) years since anyone was excited for one of these and the property has just been thoroughly diminished. Also the title of this makes it sound like a shitty video game.

I might catch a matinee, feeling a bit caush-op bc of Neanderthal’s positive review. But I think for the culture at large the second film was the end of the story, and it was a perfect somewhat uncertain ending. But nothing will ever be left alone if they think they can squeeze a bit more from the idea.

yeah i feel like most ppl i have talked to about Terminator have no idea 3-5 exist

friends who've seen this have been positive about it, basically echoing neanderthal. i'm kind of excited to see it now

Omar OTM. The well has been poisoned and any enthusiasm for this franchise has been killed off long ago. No combination of classic names is enough to shake the stink of the legitimately dreadful post T2 sequels. Total reboot or die situation at this point.

And that title really isn’t helping.

I have faith that this is actually decent, relatively, but I totally get why people aren’t lining up.

Part of me wonders if he is famous in the United States, or if he's been on a chat show, or if there was a Youtube video about him. But global culture is pivoting Eastwards so perhaps his fame in Singapore is bleeding into the Western world. I'm out of touch.

do you think that documentaries are only ever made about people who are famous in the USA

I was just reading the Deadline neo post mortem on this, and they drop that it "reportedly cost $185M (some even say it was $196M)." Which I think is supposed to be some sort of OMG! number. But then, in the exact same box office roundup, they casually drop that "The Irishman" "reportedly cost "between $160M-$200M," but they don't give it the same kind of scary portent, even though close to $200 million for a gangster movie is a lot more shocking than less than that for a sci-fi action movie sequel.

Wow that’s pretty crazy for The Irishman. Wonder what percentage was for the CGI work.

What was the nose budget

The Irishman is a Netflix deal so I’m not really sure how to measure it against a standard theatrical release.

Doesn't Netflix do that thing like Amazon does where they buy out the above-the-line talent's residuals in advance, which helps inflate budgets?

as far as reviews go, i feel like this is the only one i need

Saw #TerminatorDarkFate today with @ellouis. Been enjoying remembering it, wishing I could watch various things again, repeatedly. That kind of movie.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) November 2, 2019

the Deadline story may be taking it for granted that readers have been following all the inside-baseball stuff concerning Netflix and The Irishman. as with Roma last year, they want a Best Picture Oscar and more generally to be something people subscribe to because the brand is associated with High-Quality Original Programming, because their third-party content is thin and only going to get thinner as D+ and other services come online. the real value for them is having scorsese tell everyone in hollywood that the big studios won't even take his phone calls anymore because they're only interested in superheroes, but Netflix let him make the movie of his dreams, etc., etc., etc. if it wins them their Oscar that narrative will be everywhere.

if there's any softening of the $160 million blow (which they obviously never expected to make back), it's that there's no way they're spending another $160 million to promote the thing, which is what you'd assume for a Terminator type movie. like, way, way, way less than that. in the markets that it's playing, Scorsese's name and the running time will do that work for them, and then when it hits Netflix, it costs them nothing to push it, til the end of time.

of course there's certainly an argument that it's a dumb marketing strategy - - - Once Upon a Time In Hollywood doing $370 million worldwide does suggest that with the right campaign and big stars, a long-ass movie by a household-name director (or at least, dorm-room name director) can do blockbuster business in 2019. that's close to what Wolf of Wall Street did... so they seem weirdly cautious on that end of things. but maybe they were expecting it to do more like Silence numbers....

How much did Gangs of New York cost? Hugo?

$100m and $150-170m (if Wikipedia is to be trusted). but both were aeons ago in Hollywood time, and Hugo surely lost a fortune after marketing, with a worldwide gross of $185m. it's Silence that probably really scared Paramount, though.

as far as reviews go, i feel like this is the only one i need


🐦[Saw #TerminatorDarkFate🕸 today with @ellouis🕸. Been enjoying remembering it, wishing I could watch various things again, repeatedly. That kind of movie.
— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) November 2, 2019🕸]🐦

Saw this tonight. It wasn’t half-bad for what it was. The plot doesn’t waste any time getting started and is relatively focused and simple compared to the convoluted shenanigans of the last few installments...but still, by the end I still was kinda bored. The action descends into yet another indistinguishable, murky morass of bloodless green screenery.

What made the first two movies work so well on a cinematic level was James Cameron’s innate sense of physicality and rhythm, coupled with the merciless clang-clang of Brad Fiedel’s score. They just grab you on a primordial level that these sequels can’t even touch.

You can’t recapture that just by remixing motifs and lines from the originals in the right combination.

It was definitely better than the last movie though, that’s for sure

james cameron: "acab"

James Cameron, never one to mince words, on why he made the T-1000 in Terminator 2 look like an LAPD officer: pic.twitter.com/H5RkJCctCd

— Zack Stentz (@MuseZack) November 5, 2019

james cameron is good now

it's amazing how good james cameron's politics are and yet true lies exists

james cameron hire the wachowskis to shoot your next script challenge

being involved in james cameron's personal or professional life seems like it would be unbearable

I can't wholeheartedly recommend the show but there's a bit in Hulu's Future Man where they break into Cameron's house and it's an entertaining bit including weird shrines to all his movies and the house has its own siri-like voice

Latebloomer otm

It’s decent but nothing close to the greatness of the first 2 movies. Lots of exposition dialogue & ppl forming lifelong bonds after 2 lines of dialogue
but performances are all pretty great, esp Diego Luna who may actually BE a robot
He def gave a next-gen Robert Patrick-worthy performance imo.

But the action by the end was too long & murky and obligatory give statement of intention to villain before showdown & a no i wont let you do (x) crying scene

gabriel luna not diego
i keep doing that

this was like reasonably diverting for a couple hours, not as dreadful as i picture the last two being, and maybe feeling a little more substantial than T3 but not MUCH better. man the action in this was so hard for me to follow. maybe i'm an old person but it REALLY epitomized the "quick cuts, all closeups, no real sense of where things are and what direction things are moving" school of action. if they have to make these movies, can't they give them to justin lin or somebody?

the arnold stuff was dumb imo, dude has so much screen presence but everything was just jokey fanservice and inversion of expectations. the whole premise of his character made no sense and was just too goofy. reyes and davis barely felt like people.

and god what was this movie even trying to say about the border?

I dunno, i'm happy enough watching border agents being carved to pieces for however long they want to show it in the movie.

i think one extremely underrated aspect of the first couple Terminator flix is how the plots--despite the time travel aspect--are just so straightforward. there's not a lot of needless complexity, they're just really well-told. i think Cameron is just so good at setting up the story in his films and keeping it very focused, even to the point that films as ridiculous as Avatar or as dumb as True Lies are really watchable, because the singular plot focus and ability to maintain momentum has never deserted him. T2, for all the big-budget flash it possesses vs the first film, is just so stripped-down to the essentials in terms of getting the story told. there's no fucking about with time travel bullshit after the introductory scenes, he just gets everyone in place and lets them do their thing.

also the producers of the previous three films miscalculated in terms of what ppl find appealing about these films. Arnold is obv a large part of it, but Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor was just as crucial to the franchise as Sigourney Weaver was to Alien/Aliens and when she came back all ripped and fucked up in T2, everyone really responded to that role so strongly. Arnold was the badass lumbering comic relief Frankenstein's monster who helped protect them and delivered the killing blow, but she was the hero of that film. and the brand has been wrecked so much by however many reboots and new John Connors and overly complex alternate timelines that this new one's quality and Hamilton's return and Cameron's involvement are beside the point, bc no one cares anymore.

pretty much

after several movies that floundered, they finally figured out what to do with John Connor

Yea i liked that they finally used the answer to the question I kept asking - what if they sent like 30 Terminators back in time, how the fuck would you defeat each one?

omar otm also. Genisys really misunderstood what fans wanted.

A wibbly wobbly timey wimey plot was not it

imo you should never give fans what they want and attempt to make a compelling movie instead

Well that's also true. Should never pander to the fan service crowd

Which is why i loved Last Jedi

The job of creating subsequent entries in almost every franchise with a super-solid first installment is basically 'people like cheese because it's yellow right, so we'll just make this yellow, mission accomplished'.

yeah good comments all. i was trying to explain my gripes with this movie the other night and it really came down to "nobody is trying to make a great action movie, they're trying to make a 'terminator movie.'"

and twenty years of efforts in that vein have led to a situation where nobody gives a shit about a "terminator movie." the things specific to the "brand" - the robot skeletons and liquid metal and spheres of electric arcs marking a time-traveler - have been so worn down through overexposure that they are no longer compelling, sublime nightmare fuel in and of themselves. and the connors' story has been so devalued through alternate takes and timelines.... even with hamilton and that crazy prologue, this movie never feels like it's the "real" conclusion or continuation of T2. like this is just another piece of terminator fanfic, in a world that already has Terminator 3, Terminator 4, Terminator 5, and the TV show giving explicit, contradictory, alternate stories of what happened, with a bunch of different actors. you can feel them struggling to really make the sell with Arnold's final scenes in this movie, but like... we know he's not the same actual robot from T2 so it's a real hail-mary to try and make it feel like a big payoff.

IOW this would still be a mediocre sequel if none of those other movies had existed, but if it really was the first Terminator product since 1991, i think it would have a lot more feeling of integrity and of "mattering."

in a world that already has Terminator 3, Terminator 4, Terminator 5, and the TV show giving explicit, contradictory, alternate stories of what happened

haven't seen a second of anything bar Terminator and T2 and half a trailer for this new one, but: this sounds like an extremely cool and good position for a franchise about rewriting history to take

I heard they all make sense if you watch them all at the same time.

I agree that it's a cool position in sci-fi terms, but imo it's kinda bad in "event film" terms.

we rewatched T1 and T2 and omar super otm
about Cameron’s straightforwardness.

Everything in the movie is there because it’s meant to be, nothing is wasted, but it’s not ~so~ workmanlike that it becomes flat or dull. Plus in these movies the magic trick is also casting actors who can bring more than what’s on the page and really give bang for the buck.

What really struck me this time around in the first movie is the chemistry between Linda Hamilton & Michael Biehn. They really create quite a moving love story that elevates the craziness of how/why they’re falling in love or even meeting. Reese screaming at a terrified Sarah in the car about robots & timetravel is soooo batshit but they just lock in somehow.

they should never have killed off Biehn’s character in Aliens 3. Thinking about a Cameron-directed version where he lives is like...ugh. Soul crushing how far that fkn franchise strayed.

but i digress

I wanted to watch the second one with my daughter, who has never seen either, but I'm not sure it would work as well without seeing the first one, though I worry seeing the first one will make her not want to see the second one. Hmm.

it works without the first one

but i am someone who saw terminator 2 long before i saw the terminator

But don't you miss the reveal that Arnold is not a baddie?

it's true that you totally do miss that and i will never know what it's like lol

it’s still jarring either way imo

Would you say the first is skippable then?

nope

Fuck no.

First Terminator is the best one

Arnold's lethal facial expression when standing on RONG Sarah Connor's lawn is legit terrifying.

Nobody since topped his psychotic machine performance. Tho Patrick did well

Fucker didn't even have to kill all those cops to get to Sarah. He just wanted to.

The Terminator is obv on par with Robocop/Die Hard/Predator in terms of rated R ‘80s action films.

It has its own inimitable cold and unsentimental brutality which Cameron never again accomplished, like the film has zero winking at the audience humor or cute tykes etc.

Is the first skippable, I’m this close to a FP

i am not saying the first is skippable, it's just possible to get a lot of enjoyment out of watching them in reverse, as i did

Can’t wait to show my kid terminator and then t2 and enjoy the Arnold reveal I never personally enjoyed since it was spoiled almost immediately by other kids.

xpost No, love the first one! I'm OG. I'm talking about watching it with my older daughter, though. To reiterate: she has not seen any of them and likely doesn't even know who Arnold is. My worry is, if I show her the first one, because it is much lower budget and less flashy she is unlikely to want to see the second one. But if she sees the second one first, she is possibly even more unlikely to want to sit through the first one, for the same reason: lower budget, less flashy, etc. The question is, do I pressure her to watch the first one first, with the caveat that it will make the second one better? Or do I just stick with the second one?

Again, I have seen them a million times, I'm in my 40s, I remember watching Siskel & Ebert review the first one at the time, I'm that old. You don't need to convince me. I'm just asking your collective opinion.

I'll prolly show her the first one and explain that it's a really smart, well made b-movie, which will cast the sequel in even more dramatic relief, probably/possibly.

Didn't the trailer give away that Arnie wasn't a baddie?

It was spoiled for me too so i don't recall.

The thing that pissed me off about the 0 fatalities of T2 is that at least if Judgment Day happened you could be like "ah well everybody's gonna die anyway".

Who knows how many people got lifelong disabilities from being winged!?

wait what? didn't the T-1000 kill like a billion people in that movie?

I mean Arnold, with his whole "you can't kill people" edict. Sure, ya didn't kill that poor Cyberdyne cop, but he probably had to go on leave to rehab that knee you shot him in!

He just sent himself back in time from the future to push the cop out of the way before his past self shot him in the knee.

So in one universe, there's possibly a bazillion Terminators running around?

That would be like the most realistic misuse of time travel ever, going back and trying to correct all of your mistakes and also all of the corrections that didn't pan out the way you thought they would etc.

Unraveling the time space continuum via thousands of failed attempts to thwart that traumatic wedgie you got that one time.

Is it ever explained why the robot doesn't just go back and kill baby Sarah Connor?

Smashed data grid, only knew she lived in LA before the war, weren't sure where she was born

Oh, btw, I asked my wife this morning if she thought our older daughter would like "Terminator," and she said something like "maybe, but she'd probably prefer something with a female protagonist," and I was all "!?!?!"

there are a zillion terminator movies and imo it's completely normal to forget the original is exactly that recipe

There was that one 40s-noir Terminator iirc

https://lwlies.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/double-indemnity-barbara-stanwyck-1108x0-c-default.jpg

terminators of endearment

That would be like the most realistic misuse of time travel ever, going back and trying to correct all of your mistakes and also all of the corrections that didn't pan out the way you thought they would etc.

this is Chronocops by Moore & Gibbons and you should read it immediately

Is it ever explained why the robot doesn't just go back and kill baby Sarah Connor?

this basically is attempted amongst all the nonsense in the rubbish 5th film (she's a 5yo or whatever, but near enough)

The Skynet retro abortion strategy was never sound

xxpst bizarro i am stealing that for my new display name

hello

"Emma, I have not had carnal relations with a humanoid female...in almost three years"

"How come?"

"The women to which I am mated has a disc problem. My chassis weighs over 400 pounds alone".

"Termie, I hope you don't mind me asking you this, but, have you ever thought of - of your wife getting on - on top?

"I do not believe she would respond affirmatively to that request."

"She may surprise you."

"I do not think so. My CPU is a neural net processor, a learning computer. Based on my observations, it would be very unlike her."

"Did you ask?"

"I have run approximately 600 simulations. She said no to all but twelve."

Big lol @ 'Termie'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYktYk1K5WA

^ this is an astonishing bit of pathos btw. henson died less than a month later and this was the last televised appearance with him and oz doing kermit/piggy.

https://i.ibb.co/5vBnmJN/reflect-b8153620-79d9-4557-bf0b-463f1bfd05e4.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/Ks4Z7t8/reflect-c31e5647-76e9-4087-a28c-2423d6261142.jpg

omg

D:

So I seem to have too much time on my hands.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJ8DMEcU4AMBa9r?format=jpg&name=small

Hahahajajaja

wow

amazing

if only other people always put this much effort into breathing life into my lazy throwaway posts

Someone needed to.

The inherent absurdity of humankind is occasionally very gratifying.

https://s0.playscdn.tv/img/avatars/large/7a38742a8da86f0b178a9f3951e1ce17.6c538900e8db434b4126eacb121c443f.jpeg

My daughter really enjoyed the first "Terminator," as far as I could tell. She guessed a couple of the beats but still found the concept pretty compelling, I think. I might have been even more impressed, since it's been years since I saw it, and whenever I last saw it must have been a pretty shitty print somewhere (and this is after years watching it in bad cable and pan-and-scan versions). The copy I had was pretty pristine and really looked great, though as well made as the movie may be I'm sure it must really bug Cameron to have those fleeting bits of stop motion in it (as effective as they are). I'm sure Carpenter feels the same way about "The Thing."

Anyway: hopefully T2 this weekend! One of the most iconic '80s movies followed by one of the most iconic '90s movies.

Surprising takeaway from watching the second one with my daughter: she liked the first one better! Another (pleasant) surprise: she thought the effects were great. A bad surprise: I accidentally put on the alternate/extended version, and it is not better than the theatrical version.

it really isn’t. the only really essential scene is sarah trying to destroy the terminator’s cpu and john stopping her

yeah most of the extra stuff is unnecessary - movie is tight af without it

Alternate old age makeup Sarah ending also kind of silly.

so dumb

great to read your happy parenting experiences, Josh :)

(and I can't imagine Carpenter has any regret over the effects in The Thing. apart from anything else, they're better than most of his subsequent films!)

the alternate ending is easily the worst thing about the movie. it’s written so terribly

xpost The only issue Carpenter had, iirc from the commentary track, is the brief bit of stop animation at the end, where the thing drags the dynamite away. Otherwise yeah, "The Thing" effects are impeccable.

re the alternate ending and the bad outtakes, at least we can happily say that Cameron made good choices at the time and is able to tell an effective story pretty succinctly.

I mean, I love Ridley Scott but in contrast I do get kind of irritated by his now self-parodying directors cuts. 'well I made a movie that was 5 hours long that told a beautiful story but the bastards at the studio would only let me release a 2 hour cut and so now it makes no sense'

I still do kind of want to see the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven though, lol

it’s really, really good

Tbf I don't think Cameron has ever called his alternate cuts director's cuts. I believe he stands by his theatrical versions, maybe even in the case of "The Abyss."

The longer Aliens cut is pretty solid even tho I really don’t dig the scene w/the colonists. It’s better to go into that place cold.

agree

For sure. Learning Ripley had a daughter changes the dynamic a bit, though.

hey! dark fate was surprisingly adequate for a sequel that had no reason to exist! a gentleman's 6/10, arnold looked great and was actually genuinely funny, mackenzie davis should be in everything, thanks for yr time

also i'm not gonna lie, watching an evil shapeshifting robot run amok through a border concentration camp and fillet a bunch of ice agents was extremely good

that's the first thing I've read that makes me want to see it. not enough mainstream movie sequences of cops getting owned (e.g. the bridge climax of the first nu-Apes or the wonderful chaingun shootout in the otherwise bleh Hold the Dark)

the heroes beat the shit out of ice agents too, you love to see it tbh

highway and prison camp setpieces were great.

but that plane/underwater sequence at the end was godawful.

thinking I could use some draperies

Yeah, carving through the border patrol agents like a knife was good stuff

This was good, this was bad. This was solid, this was OK. This was fine, this was boring. Maybe even in that order or maybe each at random times.

I was not expecting so much border stuff, I wish this movie had been smart enough to do something more interesting with it.

really enjoyed this!!!! wish literally anyone else had directed it, but as far as terminator sequels that don't need to exist go, this is the best one easy

yeah it starts out a little campy but has some impressive set pieces throughout. I enjoyed it on rewatch too.

I just watched Lady Terminator today and I don't know if I ever need to see another official Terminator entry after that ride.

I recall it fondly. Going to movies was the best.

saw Lady Terminator in a packed house at the Alamo last year, it was an absolute blast, def concur

Wait, which one are you calling Lady Terminator, this most recent one or Rise of the Machines?

I literally remember nothing about the most recent one except that it had some good parts, and some bad parts, and the bad parts were worse than the good parts were good.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Terminator

The Queen of the South Sea, an ancient sex goddess, seduces men before using a serpent that resides in her vagina to devour their penises.The Queen of the South Sea, an ancient sex goddess, seduces men before using a serpent that resides in her vagina to devour their penises.The Queen of the South Sea, an ancient sex goddess, seduces men before using a serpent that resides in her vagina to devour their penises.The Queen of the South Sea, an ancient sex goddess, seduces men before using a serpent that resides in her vagina to devour their penises.The Queen of the South Sea, an ancient sex goddess, seduces men before using a serpent that resides in her vagina to devour their penises.The Queen of the South Sea, an ancient sex goddess, seduces men before using a serpent that resides in her vagina to devour their penises.

Oh shit! Like, literally, "Lady Terminator!" I was in when I read that same first sentence.

lol Just Watch suggests, in order: Terminator, Terminator: Dark Fate, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Terminator Genisys, Terminator Salvation, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Lady Bird. It would be so awesome to program a Terminator series in that exact order with those exact films. You know, the *true* chronology, for the *real* fans.

(this was from searching for Lady Terminator)

Oh double shit, I tried watching the trailer for Lady Terminator, and this is what I got: "This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated."

!!!!

Don't spoil yrself with the trailer (which rehashes way too many quality moments). Just jump right in. It's somehow both LOL terrible and a pretty decent action movie (and the eye-removal scene features better SFX than the one in OG Terminator!).

Based on the landing strip set piece at the end, I'd be very surprised if someone involved with MacGruber hadn't seen and been inspired by this film.

We've been watching all 6 in order over the past few weeks. Despite loving 1 & 2 I had no idea there were actually this many sequels until recently. I think I enjoyed Dark Fate way more than it deserved because of how much we all really needed the og Sarah Connor as a lead - it was really refreshing and invigorating. And kind of funny! If not really having anything novel. Actually the idea of what Arnie would do after objective achieved was kind of interesting. They treated it as a bit of a handwave but an unexpected little idea. What I found odd was that the New Improved Terminator had the trick of splitting body from skeleton but they didn't really outline why/what the limitations were, which usually happens in these kind of films.

3 or 4 were the most boring. 4 was like a good showcase of killy machines but then you start wondering why a super AI killy machine system would bother making a motorbike version and sort of lost interest. 5 was kind of funny but too much of a lightweight reaction to the previous one and I couldn't get my head around the casting for the whole movie. John Connor was like Quentin Tarantino crossed with Chandler Bing.

The one with HBC as a computer head is the only one I try to forget.

all otm

5 was kind of funny but too much of a lightweight reaction to the previous one and I couldn't get my head around the casting for the whole movie.

Just started watching it, certainly a bold choice to cast Will Young as Kyle Reese.

Halfway through this - I have to watch films episodically at the moment. I wasn't expecting Terminator: The Sitcom but I'm all for it. The mild humour and timey wimey stuff was making me think of Doctor Who... and then Matt Smith showed up! Incredible.

do you have a baby or something? :)

Small children, yes. And a wife who doesn't want to waste her precious free time watching garbage SF.

There is a T5 thread, I'll save any further incisive commentary for there.