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

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.