Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation discussion refugee camp

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Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

I like the Terminator franchise. Like, a lot.

You guys know me as the uber-nerd when it comes to Aliens/Predator stuff, but I'm almost equally as much of a nerd when it comes to Terminator stuff. I've got next to no standards, and can find genuine enjoyment in just about anything Terminator related.

I really need to re-watch T3 and Salvation, it's been years since I watched them. I liked them both for the things they did right, even if they both felt really flawed (T3 less so than Salvation) and couldn't hold a candle to the first two.

I'm halfway optimistic about this new one. loving with the timeline and "rebooting" stuff similar to the Star Trek reboot is a halfway novel idea given the whole time travel concept, and it's an interesting reversal where Kyle Reese is the clueless audience surrogate this time around, whereas it was Sarah Connor in the original.

Full disclosure: I was the moderator on the official Terminator3.com forums way back in the day. If any of you frequented that forum and remember the moderator, that was me. It was actually a pretty entertaining gig, all things considered, and at the end of it the studio sent me two stupidly-gigantic hanging posters made of fabric that were meant to be suspended from the very tall ceiling of appropriate movie theatre lobbies. I still have them in a box, and I can't actually hang them up because they're literally taller than my house.

There's a lot of wacky and interesting Terminator poo poo out there, mostly comic books and occasionally novels. Did you know there's two novelizations of 'The Terminator'? There's the better-known one by Randall Frakes, who is a personal friend of James Cameron (and who later novelized T2), but there's a lesser-known one by Shaun Hutson, who was originally contracted to write the novelization. Hutson wrote his, then Cameron decided he'd rather have his friend write it, and tried to get all copies of the Hutson version recalled as Frakes published his version. It didn't really work out - the Hutson version is less common, but I got myself a copy fairly easily. It's been several years since I read either, but I remember them reading pretty differently - I recall the Hutson one being much gorier and darker in tone.
As I recall, the T2 novelization opens with John sending Kyle back in time, and points out that the time machine is very literally time displacement equipment - when they send Kyle back, that "sphere" he arrives in literally "swaps time" with wherever his destination was, and John knows the time machine worked because fragments of a newspaper from 1984 get transported back to where Kyle had just been standing in 2029.

There's a lot of interesting comics that don't feature John, Sarah, or Arnold in any capacity. Dark Horse did a whole string of story arcs starting with a parallel mission sent back to 1984 to assassinate/protect Sarah Connor, which gets derailed from its main objective early on and goes in some interesting directions.
There was a series by Malibu Comics in the mid-90s based on James Cameron's original planned opening scenes for T2, chronicling the Resistance breaching Skynet, sending Kyle back in time, and then sending the reprogrammed T-800 back in time. The gist of it was that Skynet sent both the "Terminator 1" T-800 and the T-1000 back in time back to back, and then the Resistance breached the facility and captured the time machine. Kyle volunteers and John sends him back without telling him about the reprogrammed T-800, because he needs Kyle to believe he's the last hope for protecting humanity's savior so that he's at the top of his game when protecting Sarah.

The Terminator franchise is a legal clusterfuck because James Cameron sold the rights to it before 'The Terminator' was even made - it's how he financed the movie's production. Certain details of the franchise have been retained by certain owners, while others have been sold or passed around. The term "T-800", "endoskeleton", and the actual classic design of the endoskeleton from the first movie is actually owned by a specific group (Canal+, if I remember right), so any time anyone wants to use them, they have to license it from them - that's why the Terminators in T3 were "T-850s" (and they're technically cosmetically different from old-school T-800s, albeit slightly). It's also why the ones in the TV series were "T-888s" (and were also cosmetically different). Likewise, the term "T-1000" is owned by someone different.
Salvation did license the T-800 likeness and name, and a handful of comics and videogames have done so as well. Incidentally there's only one T-800 in Salvation, all of the grey, sort of mottled ones on the production line near the end of the movie were in the script and production notes as T-700s.

Speaking of Salvation, a comic series continuing from that movie has been coming out for the past year or so. I haven't read it yet, but volume 1 just shipped from Amazon and I'll be getting my copy tomorrow.

One discarded Future War robot from T2 that I hope at least cameos in the new movie is the Centurion:

That's concept art drawn by James Cameron.
It was supposed to show up in the opening future war battle, but got dropped for budget reasons. Since then it's cameoed in a few of the comics, a few of the video games, and even in the viral marketing for the Sarah Connor TV series.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 04:40

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 14:20

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Gatts posted:

I hope the climax of Terminator Genysis involves the Protoss vs the Terminators.

Then again, maybe we could get a found footage horror film set in the Terminator universe future war. Like monstrous, nightmarish technology hunting humans down filmed in that way.

Maybe it's just because I'm a sucker for found-footage movies and they tend to scare me more than most, but I got the idea in my head a while back that a lot of old-school horror franchises could end up being legit terrifying for me if done as found-footage movies. The Alien, pretty much any slasher villain, etc.

Young Freud posted:

The one I liked was the little rolling trilobite/cockroach "cruise missile" that would drive through the rubble and seek out human positions to explode. It showed up in the T2 shooter game, at least.

Yeah, you're thinking of the Silverfish, another robot intended to be in the T2 future war scene that was left on the cutting room floor:

(again, concept art by James Cameron).

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 08:47

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

INH5 posted:

I don't understand why anyone ever gets mad at SMG. He is by far the most entertaining poster at SA.

Lots of Hollywood legal rights situations are weird, but the Terminator franchise is truly something else.

I remember that, about a year after Salvation opened, some company announced plans to make an animated Terminator movie, claiming that they had obtained the animated movie rights many years ago, I believe before T2 had even been made. Apparently this was disputed and even led to threats of legal action by either Halcyon or Pacificor; I can't remember which of them owned the rights at that point. I don't know if anything more ever came of that.

Also, at one point during Halcyon's bankruptcy, some media outlets reported that there was a possibility that the Terminator rights could have ended up being split up among everyone that Halcyon owed money to, which as I've already talked about was a lot of people, and would have effectively killed the franchise.

And finally, the rights are going to revert to the ownership of James Cameron in 2019 anyway, and he's repeatedly stated that he has no further interest in the franchise, so who knows what he'll do with them at that point. As such, don't expect this madness to end even if the new movie is a success.

Actually I recall reading a pretty recent interview where Cameron mentioned entertaining the idea of a straight up reboot that would reimagine the Terminator story in some way. I'll have to dig around and find the quote again.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 09:35

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Groovelord Neato posted:

He makes valuable posts sometimes, like the ones in the comic book thread. He'd probably be my fave if he stuck to that.

I think the major problem with discussing the minutiae of time travel is that you devolve into the people that made the TV show or 3 or Salvation or Genisys (they were so close to making an interesting echo of Judgment Day and just fumbled it on the one yard line). The Terminator films aren't interesting because oh wow this is the new SUPER DUPER model Terminator or well if you send this guy back to the 1900s he gets walled up in a building haha isn't that funny or we get to see the future war! The story is about a very specific time frame with very specific people. These sequels and prequels or what have you bring to mind the same issues I have with the Star Wars prequels (on a storytelling level rather than all the issues I have on a cinematic level). The creators are stuck on how "cool" the superficial elements of the lore or universe and not on what actually makes people go back and rewatch the first two films (gently caress I've probably seen T2 100 times in my life). I mean I'll admit it was fun seeing Arnold as the Terminator again in T3 but you realize it isn't the same character and the movie lacked any kind of teeth. The creators missed that there was an important arc to the Terminator realizing the value of human life when it's stated directly at the end of the film in one of the best shots of the films. Nevermind that they destroy the excellent and uplifting message that there's no fate but what we make for ourselves and we aren't beholden to destiny. None of these other productions have a message or theme, it's just stringing some action scenes together with robot skeletons.

I don't know how much I agree with this.

I like the minutiae, and time travel theories are fun to think about (although I try to stay out of hardcore heated debates about them nowadays.
I find the lore fascinating, because it can explore other themes and ideas outside the scope of the movies' arguably narrow focus. The comics look at stuff like the ramifications of crazy cyborgs smashing through the joint on random bystanders that don't have anything to do with what's going on, or characters contemplating time-travel when on their own, those specific characters aren't the literal savior of mankind, and are otherwise unimportant to the grand scheme of the war. Characters from the future adapting to and accepting life in the past in different ways, etc. I think that poo poo is cool and interesting.
There's a comic series from NOW Comics that's about the "end" of the war, with Skynet ramping up extermination efforts and using chemical bombs and more nukes, as John Connor contemplates suicide over his apparent failure to protect humanity. It's a great story and really interesting, and obviously outside the scope of the first two movies.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 17:07

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Groovelord Neato posted:

This is terribly uninteresting because the horror of the future as told by Reese were the Holocaust parallels.

We'll have to agree to disagree I guess. It's almost like different people latch onto different aspects of a media experience for different reasons.

To go back to another part of that earlier post, about only T2 and T1 having a theme or message while the other movies are just excuses to have explosions while robots fight, I definitely disagree.

T3 is about John Connor coming to grips with his destiny, and (posthumously) forgiving his mother for seemingly ruining his life without reason. While both T1 and T3 deal with determinism, T1 only briefly pays it lip service a handful of times - T3 confronts the issue in more depth.

Salvation is about Marcus confronting the apparent removal of his humanity, and reasserting control over his own fate. In that way it's more like T2's message of "no fate but what we make", but it approaches it in a much more literal way.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 22:24

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

gently caress trophy 2k14 posted:

If I recall correctly he was the sole guy in the aliens colonial marine thread defending that game.

I won't defend that game's problems (and don't get me wrong, it's not a good game and it's chock-full of problems) but there are details I liked. It's a horribly squandered opportunity and I wish it was better, but I don't hate it and I don't see it as the 0/10 totally unplayable abortion that a lot of reviewers and critics seemed to think it was.

But that's a discussion for another thread.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 03:45

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Groovelord Neato posted:

This is pretty much the lamest defense of liking a less interesting thing I've ever heard.

I'm well aware people latch on to the surface aspects of Terminator or any other property - it's why people can enjoy mediocre to bad entries that don't really "get" the franchise such as the TV show. I think time travel and Arnold and robotic endoskeletons are rad. But they're not rad when not put in the proper story. I actually feel an emotional connection to the characters in say T2. Even though Arnold is kind of a lovely actor I feel genuine emotion when the Terminator learns the value of human life and how that speaks to the human condition. T2 is an action movie but it actually has several strong messages - I don't keep watching the film just because the action is great and Arnold is the man. It's not particularly subtle but SMG touched upon it, when Sarah goes on her rant to Dyson. John asks the Terminator, "We're not gonna make it, are we? People I mean." It's uplifting in the end that humanity is no longer fated to create Skynet, that perhaps we can learn the same values the Terminator does (Sarah of course states this outright in the final scene).

One of the more important aspects of the imagery of the future is the resonance with the Holocaust. Plus the whole chemical weapons and nuclear bombs doesn't really work since they're all living underground hidden from Skynet which was kind of the point of building the Terminators to begin with.

Maybe the story makes more sense to those that have read it, I dunno.

I'm not saying I disagree that what you brought up is good or interesting, I'm just saying it's possible for things outside the scope of the particular movie to be interesting, too. That's what motivates people to make sequels, to tell further stories and look at other ideas within the basic framework of the original.
Is every sequel a good idea? No, but I'd rather that people try and fail than not try at all. Even "bad" sequels tend to at least give me food for thought about better ways to execute their ideas.

I'm not a big fan of the Star Wars prequels in execution, but I won't deny that they bring interesting ideas to the table (that I wish were executed competently) for me to think about.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 20:41

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Pycckuu posted:

Average was probably the wrong word. Robert Patrick obviously owns and he did a ton of work to make T1000 look really drat good.

I get what you meant, he's certainly more average looking than Arnold.
I can't remember if it was James Cameron himself who made the comparison, but Arnold's terminator is more of a Sherman tank, whereas Robert Patrick is a Ferrari.

On that note, the new T-1000 in the new movie seems to be a pretty good fit from what little you see of him in the trailer.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 21:51

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Groovelord Neato posted:

He prefers artificial human.

Artificial person. :colbert:

Lance Henriksen is seriously the coolest dude. I met him at a showing of Aliens and he was awesome.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 00:09

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

mr. stefan posted:

This is probably one of the few cuts I disagree with, since there's enough left to imply it in the movie (the way it flickers once or twice and how its not acting normally, e.g. how it can't seal the deal both times it fights the t-800) but not enough to explain why circumstances have changed.

As a kid I didn't mind it, but watching T2 in recent years it always seemed weird that the T-1000 would mimic Sarah Connor but wouldn't, you know, terminate her when it had the chance.
I mean yeah it's probably James Cameron coasting on the "Rule of Cool" because goddamn is it badass having the real Sarah ambush the T-1000 from behind and then fire that shotgun until it runs dry.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 06:03

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Senor Tron posted:

Rewatched T2 today it it makes a sort of sense that the T-1000 leaves Sarah alive. Initially it is trying to use her to lure John back, I assume it figures it's a better strategy since from its perspective John saw through his imitation once already when they had the phone call, and that was when he was fully functional and not malfunctioning. Then the T-800 arrives and the T-1000 turns its attention away from Sarah.

I totally forgot that the T1000 gets interrupted while interrogating her, and then she has an opportunity to escape. Good catch.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 23:28

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

I'm going to stray into the realm of "lol fanfiction" a little bit and post this website. It's been around for years and it's got some neat ideas and stuff, but by far the coolest is the birth of Skynet. Written well before T3, it characterizes Skynet as a largely sympathetic entity in its attempted destruction of humanity on Judgment Day. T3's depiction portrays Skynet as a clever and malicious entity pretty much right from the start, but that link's depiction shows Judgment Day as basically being an extreme form of self-defense. It's a pretty neat idea.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 13:43

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Groovelord Neato posted:

But Skynet's actions were always self-defensive, that isn't a new idea.

Not in t3, Skynet is shown as maliciously manipulating humanity in order to wipe them out.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 23:41

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

I watched T1 and T2 on bluray for the first time last night, T1 looked great and the stop-motion endoskeleton didn't bother me as much as it used to. I don't know if it just looks "better" on bluray or what, but it didn't look like something out of 'Jason and the Argonauts' this time around for some reason.

T2 is still a fantastic action movie, but re-watching it made a lot of the 90s action sensibilities stand out for me. Anytime there was a carchase, the T-1000 would always hit debris with his truck "for dramatic effect" even if it wasn't in the way or he could have gone around it, and there were always fraction-of-a-second establishing shots showing the debris just before he hits it.

I'll fire up T3 and Salvation in bluray later on today.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 20:44

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Speaking of his driving, when Robert Patrick is driving that first semi in the canal, in every close-up he's just wagging the steering wheel left and right with no rhyme or reason, and you can see that the truck is still going straight despite what he's doing. It's a little wacky and made extra-cartoony since the steering wheel is so huge.

Edit-- the scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifkh12R8Wts

Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Dec 13, 2014

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 21:07

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Well yeah I get that, it just felt like it was handled more fluidly and naturally in other movies. T1's car chases felt equally intense, but didn't have telegraphed debris-smashing every 20 seconds. T1's chases made T2's canal chase seem amateurish by comparison.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 02:43

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

oohhboy posted:

In T1 the more you see Arnold, the more he looks like he is starting to rot like the flesh isn't quite perfected.

That's because in the original concept, the skin was supposed to be rotting off as it takes damage over the course of the movie. A remnant of that concept still in the movie is the landlord asking Arnold if he's got a dead cat in his room because it smells so bad - he's referring to the rotting flesh.

Another abandoned subplot concept from the first movie was that as the Terminator killed the wrong Sarah Connors, it would cut open her leg and check for a pin in her leg as a method to verify that it had killed the correct Sarah Connor, per medical data Skynet had provided before sending it back in time.
What the Terminator didn't know was that Sarah Connor didn't have the pin in her leg yet - she got it as a result of her leg injury when Kyle blows the endoskeleton in half at the end of the movie.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2014 14:03

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

I'm a pretty big Terminator nerd. I don't really openly advertise it like I do with AvP, but I'm pretty close to as big a fan of the Terminator franchise as I am with AvP. Fun fact: I moderated the official Terminator3 movie messageboards, back in the day.
And like with AvP, my standards are pretty similar (reads: low). I've got all the comics, all the spin-off books, a lot of the video games, all kinds of poo poo.

I'm pretty stoked about this new movie, mostly because of how it's choosing to gently caress with the timeline. It's taking the Terminator premise and straight up going balls-out with the "no fate" idea, and I think that's interesting. Granted it's not the first time this has happened in the Terminator franchise, but it's still cool to see them trying it in a movie.

I don't like that the new trailer has enormous mega-spoilers, but it's sort of par for the course in Terminator trailers so I'm not surprised they did it - T2's trailers spoiled the poo poo out of Arnold being the good guy (yes, that was meant to be a twist), and Terminator Salvation spoiled the poo poo out of Marcus being a cyborg.

Speaking of Salvation, I just got done reading "Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle" volumes one and two, and it ended up being really surprisingly cool. It managed to "end" the war in a satisfying and interesting way, and even managed to tie up some of the hanging plot points introduced in Terminator 3 (such as John Connor's death). It had a couple hokey parts along the way, but it hopped between storylines happening in the "past" and "future" in effective ways.

Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Apr 14, 2015

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 05:10

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Also the t-1000 isn't shown as being lethal until the hallway showdown, and only once you see that he can turn his arms into knives and poo poo do you realize that he probably didn't just sucker-punch that cop at the beginning. :ohdear:

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 17:19

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Parachute posted:

Hasn't James Cameron answered this question in the past?

What question?

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 18:43

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Even the Cameron-directed teaser trailer for T2 frames Arnold as the bad guy. I don't think that was by accident.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 18:50

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Not gonna lie, the first time I saw T2 as a kid I expected the T-1000 to somehow "assimilate" all that molten metal and rise back up as some kind of giant metal monster.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 21:47

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

The "only living tissue" thing was just a plot device so Kyle and the Terminator couldn't have rayguns and poo poo to instakill each other with.

Funnily enough, one of the early Dark Horse Comics 'Terminator' series has a bunch of bad guy Terminators capture a resistance fighter, cut him open, stick a raygun in his belly and stitch him up, and then take him with them when they go back in time. Not bad for thinking on the fly. v :shobon:

v

I always wrote off the T-1000 as being a nanomachine, and would be able to mimic "flesh" on some level that would fool the time machine.

Speaking of the time machine, in the script and novelizations and whatnot it's referred to as "time displacement equipment", and in the original 'Terminator' and T2 scripts, it was literally exactly that - it would create a sphere and then literally swap whatever was in that sphere with the material in the exact same location at the particular destination time you set it for. The T2 novelization has a scripted but un-filmed scene at the very beginning of the movie of John Connor sending Kyle Reese back in time, and John knows the time machine sent Kyle to the right time because the time displacement happens to bring back a newspaper with the date "May 12, 1984".
The way the script/novelization explains Kyle and the Terminator arriving at different locations is that there were two time machines, and each one sent objects back in time to the exact same location in the past - Skynet deployed the Terminator and then locked out the time machine once it realized the Resistance had broken in and compromised it, so John and co. learned there was a backup time machine in an adjacent facility and went over and used that one.

Also originally the Terminator was meant to confirm that he'd killed the correct Sarah Connor by cutting into each Sarah's leg and looking for a pin in her thigh that she'd gotten after an injury.
The "catch" is, the injury she got the pin for was when the Terminator endoskeleton blew in half at the end of the movie and she got the shard of metal in her thigh.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 04:03

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

I still think spoiling that twist in the trailer is retarded, but here's an idea:

What if it's not John Connor, and it just looks like him and this "spoiler" is one big fake-out? I mean yeah we've got stuff in the trailer with Sarah and Kyle saying "we gotta fix John!!!" But what if they didn't stop to ask if it's really him?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 04:08

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Milky Moor posted:

The leaks say it's definitely him though. And they've been spot on about everything else.

Well it was worth a shot I guess. :shobon:

It would have been an interesting twist-within-a-twist if they'd done it.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 04:55

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Parachute posted:

This is pretty awesome.

This goes for everyone, but have you watched the Syfy show "12 Monkeys"? If not, I think you should definitely check it out, it's far and beyond the best show I have seen on that network.

How does that show compare to the Bruce Willis movie?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2015 17:31

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Der Luftwaffle posted:

I want to hope so badly that this is going to turn out like Dredd where some people thought it would be a lovely ripoff of The Raid and ended up being awesome...but even James Cameron's blessing can't undo the plot spoilers.

To be fair we don't know too much, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Cameron is right in his endorsement/interview: openly outright loving with the timeline is a legitimately novel and interesting direction to take a time travel movie, and the last noteworthy one I can think of that did something remotely similar is Back to the Future 2 (and to a lesser degree, the Star Trek reboot).
Like Cameron said, upending audience expectations in a genre/franchise movie makes for interesting storytelling, it's part of what made Cabin In The Woods work so well.

On paper, the new Terminator movie's premise is really interesting. We'll see how it works in execution though.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 02:49

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

WarLocke posted:

This is a combination of two things:

1) Cameron likes checks
2) Someone gave him a check to say that

He probably doesn't give a gently caress about Terminator anymore, he made two kickass movies of it and then every one since has poo poo the bed.

The rights to Terminator actually revert back to him in 2019.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 06:54

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Rhyno posted:

Does that still happen if the current owners are still making films?

Yes, and it's why the current owners have apparently greenlit 2 sequels to Genisys regardless of whether Genisys does well. They want to milk the poo poo out of Terminator before they lose the rights back to Cameron.

http://www.slashfilm.com/james-cameron-regains-terminator-rights-in-2019/

http://screenrant.com/terminator-genisys-5-6-7-release-dates-2017-2018/

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 08:08

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Helsing posted:

The new movie will almost certainly be terrible for the same reason all these movies are terrible: it's being sold on weightless CGI action set pieces and super meta nostalgia fan service.

Are you kidding? The movie's premise is that it subverts and upends the nostalgia and set pieces of the first movie. There could be fault to be found with the execution or acting or effects or whatever, but the movie's problem is not "fan service nostalgia".

quote:

It's practically a guarantee that any movie franchise that goes beyond a couple films is going to be terrible. The growth of Internet fandome ruined blockbuster movies by creating a pool of idiots who will pay to see objectively terrible films purely because of their branding.

There have been a bunch of franchises where later movies were better than earlier ones. Saw 6, the entire Fast & Furious franchise, Final Destination 5, Freddy vs Jason, Mission Impossible series, ostensibly Jurassic World, Star Trek reboot, Transformers 4, Casino Royale and Skyfall, that's just off the top of my head.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 00:28

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Helsing posted:

I find this about as plausible as when somebody claims that an rear end kicking woman in a 34DD chainmail bikini is an example of subversive female empowerment. That trailer is a long list of callback lines. Maybe the screen writer tells himself he's writing a brilliant post modern deconstruction of Terminator but I'm pretty sure the producers behind this movie, i.e. the people who actually pull the strings, are banking on people seeing this turd because they have fond memories of growing up watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

lol

You might not be aware of it, but neither of those comments actually refuted anything I said.

Timby posted:

Every one of the movies I listed is a "franchise" movie, and is outright better than earlier movies in the franchise. Saying "every franchise inevitably nosedives and never recovers" is objectively false, not to mention it's a meaningless logical fallacy anyway.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 03:26

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Rhyno posted:

Except for TF4. It was hard but they managed to take the franchise to a new low with that film.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, I felt TF4 was a huge step up from 2 and 3. Non-repulsive protagonist, Autobots with distinct personalities and actual screen time and dialogue, easy to follow action, three distinct villains each with their own easy to follow, interesting agendas... I absolutely thought the 4th movie was a major improvement, and I'd go as far as to say it's the best Transformers movie to date.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 06:40

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Grendels Dad posted:

I think the response was to things like you picking Freddy vs Jason as better than the first movie instead of, you know, Dream Warriors. I like Freddy vs Jason quite a bit, but no way in hell is it better than Dream Warriors.

I didn't mean that any of the movies I listed are better than the first movies in their franchises, just that they're better than the middle entries.

Vintersorg posted:

It shouldn't surprise anyone here that you loved TF4 which was loving terrible trash. A spastic mess of action and jumping around the world.

And I'm sure you don't have any guilty pleasure bad movies that you enjoy. :jerkbag:

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 15:31

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Helsing posted:

I'm sorry but the idea that Terminator is "subversive" of anything is laughable

Why?

ImpAtom posted:

There is absolutely nothing subversive about a Terminator film retconning 'canon.' That has been a part of the series since the very beginning where Skynet intended to do so and failed and where everyone has been attempting to do it in every film since. Terminator 2 already presents a theoretical diversion from the expected timeline it is just that we didn't SEE the original timeline except in brief flashbacks.

I wouldn't even call it "retconning canon" since we're talking about time travel and the ramifications of it. Right from the first movie, it's not clear how time travel actually objectively works for an outside observer, and every movie since has sort of hosed with things to certain degrees, but this new movie is the first time we're full on seeing the consequences of the fuckery and I find that really interesting. Does the Sarah Connor from Genisys know that Kyle is "supposed" to be John's father? If so, how does that change things? Do they have sex because that's what's "supposed" to happen, even if perhaps she doesn't actually love him since she's been literally raised since childhood by a Terminator? Maybe the "endgame" of all this is that in this timeline, Kyle isn't John's father, and this ends up looping around to become the "original" timeline you're referring to, becoming a huge meta-loop for the series. Maybe it's just a timeline branch that dead-ends, or maybe something else entirely, who knows?

We don't know how it'll play out, and frankly that makes me excited to see what they do with it. Much more excited than I was with the plots of T3 or Salvation, for sure.

vainman posted:

No one can possibly defend Saw 6

Saw 6 is clever because it thematically tied all the victims/traps together under the umbrella of "universal healthcare", and it's also the only movie in the series where you really feel like the person being "tested" learns something from the whole ordeal and then he gets brutally murdered anyway.
And yeah, it's a colossal step up from 4 and 5.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2015 02:22

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Yeah, for the sixth sequel in a horror franchise that had been sharply declining since the third one, Saw 6 is way, way more competent than it has any right to be.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2015 21:16

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Helsing posted:

I think the big difference here is that the franchises you listed (with the exception of the Hammer era Dracula) started out movies that were intended to succeed on their own terms. After their initial successes they degenerated more or less quickly into tired old franchsies that relaibly cranked out sequels until they became unprofitable but the initial movies that started these genres were written and directed on their own terms.

It feels as though in contemporary Hollywood there's much more pressure to have every intellectual property be or immediately turn into a major franchise that accomplishes a checklist of elements. It feels as though movies of the past, while still very derivative, tended to provide more space for directors and writers to experiment or try new things. Ironically it would be much harder to greenlight the original Terminator in today's Hollywood universe because it wouldn't be plugging into a pre-existing franchise.

It's fair of you to point out that most of what I'm complaining about predates the internet or modern fan culture so I guess I should revise my claim to say that these things really haven't helped the quality of movies (which, if you were a naive observer, you might think that they would) even if they can't specifically be blamed for causing movies to be so lovely much of the time.

Because it's a branded product created to deliver a predictable amount of profit to it's investors. It's like saying that Vanilla Coke is "subversive" because it breaks with the old assumptions about Coca Cola's brand as a universal expression of American values that would be equally enjoyed by all without any variations in flavor. I mean yeah, in some very trite and irrelevant way you could claim that T2 is "subversive" toward T1 because the villain returns as the hero, but once you've used that maneuvere once that's it - repeating it again and again is not subverting anything, it's just a way for the producer/director/script writer to stimulate the audience in the pursuit of a proper return on investment.

That's a really cynical and myopic way to view modern cinema.

I mean yeah the corporate executives are going to make calculated business decisions to maximize profits, but that doesn't mean the filmmakers making the movie aren't going to try and have message in their movie along the way.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2015 02:41

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

your evil twin posted:

Personally, I'm seriously hyped about Terminator Genisys. The whole thing looks like someone sent in some fan-fiction to a movie producer and it got greenlit and given a big budget. I AM FINE WITH THIS.

Xenomrph... come clean... you wrote Genisys.

It's going to give the fans a whole 20 minutes of Future War stuff, with the classic pink/purple plasma bolts, scarred adult John Connor, and the designs for the new HKs and the time machine are based on James Cameron's own concept art (and have shown up in numerous comics and games)

It's doing a "greatest hits of Terminator" thing... not by simply recreating similar-looking fights and chases, but by using time travel to actually set the plot during the events of the first films. Extreme fan-service.

Like the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series, it's using time travel to erase the events of Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation. Fans can therefore choose whether to include them in the canon (as an alternate timeline) or pretend that those movies never happened.

Hahaha no, I didn't write it.

Although a pretty big chunk of Jurassic World is really similar to a Jurassic Park sequel idea I posted on a bunch of forums (including this one, I think?) several years ago, so it was pretty entertaining seeing that movie shape up.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2015 15:36

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Rhyno posted:

You don't get to bring this up without posting the gif dude.

Edit: Arnold continues to be loving awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w81g199L8YA

Holy poo poo, just when Dwayne Johnson convinces me that he's the most chill guy ever, Arnold has to pull something like that.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2015 02:28

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Sasquatch! posted:

Hopefully I'm not just being naive here, but does James Cameron need a paycheck that badly that he'd endorse a movie that he didn't like?? I mean yeah - never underestimate the power of selling out, but I can't believe that he would need to do such a thing.

Cameron openly praised the first AvP movie, and his praise was really out of left field, years after both AvP movies came out, and not linked in any way to the release of anything else AvP related. I'm willing to guess he was being genuine with AvP (especially given how hard he publicly slammed it leading up to its release), and I'm thinking he's being genuine about the new Terminator movie, too.

Whether his opinion has any merit is a different topic altogether.

Phylodox posted:

I have no problem with the ending except that it was an ending. I'd much rather have seen two or three more seasons of autistic robots and Lena Headey stink eye than yet another lovely sequel that doesn't do anything new or interesting.

I'm of the opinion that this is the first Terminator sequel to try something new and interesting, by openly loving with the timeline Star Trek reboot/BTTF2 style.

Say what you will about the casting, acting, etc, the movie's premise is a pretty novel idea for a Terminator story.

Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Jun 20, 2015

# ¿ Jun 20, 2015 02:13

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 14:20

Xenomrph: Dec 9, 2005; AvP Nerd/Fanboy/Shill

Darko posted:

As I said pages ago, it's most likely professional courtesy. He used to slam moves when they were still in the public eye when he was younger, he matured some (and understood that running off too much at the mouth can affect business and careers), and decided to be nice about movies initially, and revisit with his actual opinion later. It's like blasting a business peer in public for not being as awesome as you - it's not really something you do. Spielberg pretty much does the same thing.

To be fair, as I mentioned he did the opposite with AvP.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2015 03:56

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation discussion refugee camp

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