Terminator Megathread: Time Traveling to Prevent/Confirm Your Own Birth

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BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Lil Swamp Booger Baby posted:

The ending scene of Alien is imo just some of the best poo poo ever. Insanely intense, the presence of the Alien coiled up in the wall like some freaky rear end animal crawled into your woodwork and you're trying not to provoke it - that rules hard. The lighting, her trying to stay calm by singing - all just perfect poo poo. That movie is straight up perfect imo.

I saw it in the theater as a kid - my first r-rated movie - and remember immediately noticing the creature's head within the walls before The Big Reveal. Was it supposed to be obvious or a surprise?

Also, I saw T2 without knowing the good guy twist since I hadn't seen any ads for it. Me and a couple of friends had just dropped some acid and got a call from another person who had free tickets and went, so seeing that film on LSD was quite the ride.

..

Something that's always bugged me in T2 though as that, in the first film, Kyle is alarmed by dogs barking because he says they use them to sniff out terminators. Yet in the second film, they show up at the militia camp and there's several dogs running around totally chill. None of them alert to Arnold.

BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Mar 23, 2024

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 12:42

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 01:49

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

steinrokkan posted:

Dogs of the future resistance were presumably trained to respond to terminators, dogs of pre-terminator era wouldn't be. Though I believe there are scenes where the family dog barks at the terminator in the background as a foreshadowing of the twist, so it's not consistent.

I had the same thought that you did about the dogs maybe being trained but, yeah. "Wolfie" is barking at the t1000 during the phone call scene.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 13:36

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Good points.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 14:06

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

steinrokkan posted:

Salvation must be one of the movies with the most wasted potential. Everybody always talked about how cool the war segments in the original movies were, thanks to their unique atmosphere and cyberpunk aesthetic... So they shot a movie that takes place in the future war, and made it look like a generic modern military film with generic soldier characters firing generic AR15s in a generic brown wasteland???

Agreed.

Terminator (and ALien) franchises are both saddled with the challenge of sticking with something that works and delivers the fundamental concept to fans while also needing to do something new. I'm happy that the new Alien trailer seems to be getting back to what I like about the first two movies.

I still think that the only real way to freshen up the Terminator franchise is the simple approach to just making it a period piece and setting poo poo in the old west, WW2, the civil war or some poo poo and play off the "not with these weapons" aspect of T1. It worked out really well for Prey. Dicking around with conflicting timelines and tangled continuity is not only not very interesting, but really hard to pull off without creating more questions than it answers. BttF pulled it off but it's tough.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a franchise, as the MCU, Rocky, F&F, Rambo and even low rent poo poo like Police Academy have shown us. loving Kung Fu Panda 4 is the #1 movie in the US right now while the last Terminator sunk like a stone.

The creators overthink what makes these movies really work, I believe.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 15:25

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Icon Of Sin posted:

Absolutely loving unstoppable killing machines. Nothing* you can do, nowhere you can hide, it will cross both time and space to find you and end you. No time or place is safe once Skynet decides you�re on the target list.

That's the real essence of it and the thing they should focus on if they want to make sequels. The basic element of "and it absolutely will...not...stop...EVER, until you are DEAD". T1 is definitely a horror movie. A slasher film with a loving indestructible robot instead of a Jason or Michael Myers.

egon_beeblebrox posted:

TRUE STORY: I had a battle-damaged T2 Arnold figure in the early nineties. You pressed a button and it said "HASTA LA VISTA, BABY," while its eyes glowed red. When the battery started dying, it started repeated "HASTA LA VISTA BABY" with its red eyes over and over and over. My little brother, who shared my room, was so horrified that night that we threw the toy out.

This is loving hilarious

Revins posted:

Terminator 2 is the most overrated movie in existence, the acting is so bad but it gets a pass because a lot of money was thrown at it for the SFX. The concept is cool but it's painful to watch for most of its runtime

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 16:20

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

redshirt posted:

I saw T2 opening night at a theater in Lawrence MA, right off 495. On a double date, and I was with this woman that was my everything....

Every time I drive by that theater, I think of that night, of T2. One of my most cherished movie memories. And so as I was traveling 495 the last few years I was saddened to see that theater closed. I haven't driven by in a while, it may be gone by now. I have all these Terminator memories intertwined with that place in Lawrence.

Don't leave us hanging. What happened to the woman? Did she go back in time?

Revins posted:

Its mostly this scene/child actor that spoil it for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njS1__eM5U0

Movie has its flaws and is not perfect but nothing in it comes remotely close to ruining the entire thing for me.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 16:53

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

redshirt posted:

She was Skynet

poo poo.

Been there, brother

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 17:34

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Revins posted:

Yeah I wasn't hating exactly I just really hate the "have the child actor teach arnold 90's slang for some reason" scene and needed to vent that

To be fair, that is a low point and Furlong overall is not great.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 19:20

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

redshirt posted:

T2 also has the whole "Arnie the Terminator is good now and learning how to love arc" which is a whole thing. Compare that to any arcs in the original movie.

I agree that there's a lot of corny poo poo in T2 but none of it is really terrible enough to ruin the experience for me.

I genuinely dislike bad acting and forced dialogue (like you cited) in movies that are trying to be serious but this movie gets so much right that I can genuinely overlook its rather minor flaws. It's been said to death but Aliens is to Alien as Terminator 2 is to Terminator and that's hard to argue against. Flaws aside, I absolutely LOVE all four films and consider them among my all time classics.

I think that Terminator is the better overall film than T2 simply because it's tighter and more basic but, depending on my mood, sometimes I want to ramp that poo poo up and T2 is just always such a loving blast to watch. I mentioned I was on LSD the first time I saw it and I definitely recall being the only one laughing during certain scenes that were supposed to be taken dead serious but I still left the theater thinking it was incredible.

TrashMammal posted:

what was robocop�s beef with the terminator? been wondering what that was about for a few decades now

robo jealousy

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 21:12

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

RE: Terminator games

I think that the Alien: Isolation template would make a good framework for a game. Make use of the hiding, stealth, delay and crafting mechanics where you're trying to cobble together enough poo poo just to slow it down. Perhaps add some chase scenes and maybe a co-op mode.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2024 13:10

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Bonzo posted:

Did they ever explain why Skynet just didn't go back to the 1885 Wild West and assassinate the Sarah Conner's great (x4) grand mother?

Something something it's not able to travel back that far probably.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2024 15:27

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Gaz2k21 posted:

�Isolation� should have been a franchise using different IP�s similar to what is happening with those small online multiplayer games (Friday the 13th,chainsaw massacre,ghostbusters etc etc)

Agree. I'd throw Predator, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween in that mix. My understanding is that A:I didn't sell all that well despite being awesome and garnering a lot of critical acclaim so they just kind of said gently caress it. I think a NoES survival horror video game is a no brainier and I'm surprised its never been done. Or has it?

You can have different levels or maybe even an open world but also a "sleep meter" where, when you run out of stamina, wherever you are starts going into dream mode, much like SIlent Hill, and poo poo begins to get weird. You can find items like caffeine pills and poo poo to extend your "awake" sequences and do the Home Alone thing to the environments like in the original. Your "awake" meter would be invisible so there's be tension about whether to pop a No-Doz pill or chug some coffee vs. saving it for later. Replays would trigger "Freddy Time" in different areas so you'd get to experience new strange poo poo each play through with different set pieces and you'd need to go through the game several times to get the true ending.

Picturing something like Evil Within, Silent Hill and even Soul Reaver (for those that remember that game). Bonus points if they add the Bagpipe Freddy from The SImpsons.

Along similar lines, relating to a Terminator: Isolation, I like the idea of buying time and collecting poo poo to craft weapons, molotovs and traps in each area so, if you do a good job, by the time you get to the final factory level or whatever, you're able to set up the industrial magnet, a smelting pit, nitrogen tanks, crushing gears, etc.

Each playthrough, you'd learn a little bit more and apply your knowledge of the game towards increasing your efficiency trying to slow Arnold down.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2024 16:59