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conanurdevilish's Replies
I know what you mean, but the future being uncertain if humanity gets exterminated or not basically made John really not much more important than any of the other military people we saw or even his own wife in Salvation trying to stop Skynet. Clearly there was always going to be people in the futue who survive who was going to try and organize the survivors against the machines as we saw. It was a case of "Is this guy even important anymore? I can't think of much special things he can come up with that others we saw can't, and he's destined to die from Skynet to boot."
<blockquote>I think you are muddying the waters here. T3 is now considered 'not canon'.</blockquote>
I'm referring about John as a whole. I'm aware there's like four alternate universes for the Terminator franchise now. The original timeline which goes from T1-T2-T3-TS, then that terrible Sarah Connor Chronicles timeline which was some fanfic version of T1 and T2 when time travelled forward in time. Then that other bizarro timeline from Genysis which pretty much more or less does the same thing as TSCC. Then we have the current timeline where Cameron obviously just went "I'm not going to even try and keep track of all these timelines that I didn't create" and just went like T1-T2-TDF.
John Connor as a whole however just didn't work with all his outings. He stopped being important both in story and out of story, and people are surprised when Cameron decides to abandon the character? That's like being shocked that a car from that same company breakdowns down for the 4th time. I'm just left with a "this isn't new, so I'm not surprised" feeling from what happened in Dark Fate. It was hard to grow an attachment with that character since this would be the 4th time writers would have to try and write for the character of John in a more grown up role, and he wasn't connecting very well in all prior instalments if they didn't kill him off. Do you really think 4th time was going to be the charm?
<blockquote>During those years, he would have amassed and passed on to his followers information critical to defeating Skynet.</blockquote>
You got one part wrong here. Nothing was established in either T3 or Salvation that humanity ever defeated Skynet. You're mixing up the original T1 and T2 timeline which only establishes Skynet was losing, not fully defeated with the new more powerful Skynet from T3 and Salvation. It was totally left ambiguous what was humanity's fate in the new future which the attempted failed Salvation trilogy was building up on.
<blockquote>Apparently it was Cameron's idea. Considering how the opening of Alien 3 eviscerated the events of Aliens in its opening scene, you would have thought he'd have more sense.</blockquote>
I heard about that bit too and wouldn't that tell you something about John's importance to the franchise? That even his own creator thought the best route to take with John was to have John fulfill his new destiny and die from Skynet? Judging by Cameron's comments of the movies that came after T2, it sounds like Cameron at least saw those movies. Which leads me to believe even Cameron didn't know what to do with the character and saw how much of a inconsistent mess it is trying to write that character.
<blockquote>I'd fine tune that answer to say that it was John's destiny to save humanity against Skynet, or any other 'Skynet in everything but name' AI. </blockquote>
Except this stop being the case from T3 and onwards. The only reason humanity was winning the war in the first 2 movies was because Skynet had a power core/defense system that controlled all of it's machines and the humans were able to destroy that which rendered most of Skynet's defenses inactive. T3 completely established Skynet has no such weakness anymore, and that it managed to kill John. Salvation showed the rest of the human resistance wasn't even taking John seriously and he almost died prematurely, and we know what happened in Genysis.
John Connor was out of a destiny way before Dark Fate came out.
<blockquote>Yes, he was the heart and soul of the series. Hicks spends a good deal of the first movie idolizing this character we only see off screen. He was Hick's motivation. Otherwise, Cameron could have just written a script about any grunt who comes from the future. Knowing the stakes for the future raised the entire emotional pull of the movie.
The whole damn second movie is built up around Sarah's need to protect him, and the relationship that builds up between Connor and this father figure who "would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him."</blockquote>
Okay first his name is Kyle Reese, not Hicks. You're getting that mixed up with that other James Cameron movie. Secondly you realize everything you wrote just confirmed my statement of "The dude was just a plot device to get the characters people actually care about something to do."
On top of my other point that "The Terminator films are as much about John as they are about future war and purple lasers. The Terminator films are mainly in my opinion about the every complex relationship between humans and machines and the destinies the two of them are locked into."
That whole quote you made was about the complex relationship between humans and machines and their destiny together.
<blockquote>John was still the future resistance leader. Skynet couldn't locate John in our present because he was off grid. So it went after his future wife and his lieutenants instead.</blockquote>
You got that wrong and mixed up dude. I know because I own T3, seen it multiple times and am one of the people who would defend that movie despite certain aspects I hate like the stupid humour.
That's present John Connor, that wasn't what happened to future John Connor. When John was asking Arnold how he is here because they stopped Skynet and the changes to the future, Arnold tells him John tried to send another Model 101 Terminator aka the Arnold model as his protector due to his attachment to it in T2. However this plan backfires and it ends up killing him, so Claire Danes character had to be the one to reprogram it which is why Arnold in the movie listens to her instead of John. This also puts into context why T-X didn't even care to find him at first until she found out he's literally in the area. Because she knows Connor is dead in the future and failed to stop Skynet, so that's why her mission in the film was always to safeguard Skynet and make sure what happened in T2 didn't repeat itself. Killing off the 2nd in commands who are still alive and kicking in the future was just a added bonus.
John being destined to be killed by Skynet literally was John's new recurring storyline from T3 to T5.
LOL at the user who thinks complaining that women are in a Terminator movie of all things isn't the troll here.
No you're being called out and given a dose of reality.
>I think they need to learn some lessons, not just from this mess but from many other messes, Charlie's Angels being another current bomb as well as Ghostbusters 2016. But of course they won't.
By "lessons" you mean not put women in movies as something besides sex objects like Black Widow right? You want all movies to look like the Expendables right? Get the hell out of here. Have you ever even seen a Terminator or James Cameron movie not drunk? Speaking of Expendables, you want to tell me how much did Stallone's last outing Rambo: Last Blood made? Hellboy, Shaft, Child's Play, Angel has Fallen and all those other dudebros franchises that came out this year? How about last year's The Predator? What were their box offices again?
Newsflash, every movie that wasn't either a superhero movie or Disney film struggled this year.
It should also be extremely important to mention unless you're a superhero or Disney movie, 2019 was a brutal year for movies in general. Every movie struggled to even go past the 100 million dollar mark.
Actually it's x1.5 is the general saying. The budget plus an additional 50% for advertisement. Most studios are not crazy enough to spend a movie's budget on advertisement.
<blockquote>It's hard for me to think that the property is actually done for good. The name recognition is just too high. But on the other hand it has proven time and again to be an underperformer at the box office and no one can seem to figure out how to make money with it, so I could see producers just giving up on it entirely.</blockquote>
The Terminator franchise is in a tricky situation like many franchises from the 80s and 90s where it might have been a iconic franchise, but you need to tread carefully on how to approach the franchise. The only iconic franchise from that era I can think of that did it right was the Jurassic Park franchise. Say whatever you want about Jurassic World and the sequel Fallen Kingdom, but it's hard to deny the franchise didn't expand on ideas talked about in previous movies, and both JW and JWFK made over a billion dollars at the box office. Predator franchise is a good example of what not to do. Don't try and rehash a previous movie call it a sequel/soft reboot.
I thought Dark Fate was a good step in the right direction because I recall back when I was watching either TSCC or Genysis, that my main gripe with those outings is that they really need to get this franchise the hell away from the Connors because they're stifling the franchise from being able to go forward the same way making every Predator movie in the jungle/woods is stifling the Predator movies.
<blockquote>You know, I have actually heard more good things than bad about TSCC. It seems a lot of people are fans.</blockquote>
The series has a extremely loyal following, but trust me, many people hated it. I was there back when IMDB still had a message board and that show was on the air. The people on the Terminator movie boards absolutely hated that show. It was two completely different audiences. Where the people who hated it were fans of the Terminator mythos, and lore created by the previous movies. TSCC fans were more along the lines of CW fans who were more interested in the characters banging Summer Glau's terminator and the stupid love triangle between John Baum, real girls and robogirls, and had little regards to the lore and technical aspects of the franchise. The fact that series went from having 18 million viewers to struggling to just keep 3 million viewers just be a good indicator who the general audience was siding with.
<blockquote>Maybe a(nother) reboot in a few years with little to no links to any previous Arnold terminators .. a complete reboot going back to the low budget dark horror of the first film</blockquote>
A reboot would just make matters worse. Audiences utterly hates reboots now and are sick of it. The TV series, Genysis and Dark Fate all attempted to reboot the franchise and the audiences stopped caring more and more with each outing. If they reboot again, the franchise would be a bigger joke of rebooting itself than the Spiderman franchise.
Only hope I feel is if Dark Fate gets second life in post theatre release, and they decide to continue on the story some years down the road. Best Example I can think of is the Jurassic Park franchise. JP3 wasn't very well received and put the franchise on ice for 14 years. However once the franchise was ready to come back, everyone got past the feeling disappointment JP3 left them and were ready to return back to the franchise. The made the smart decision to make it a sequel instead of reboot, and the franchise been making a billion dollars each now.
<blockquote>Then we get Genisys which decided to go off and do its own thing and be a reboot of sorts, basically giving the middle finger to the first four films.
And now we get Dark Fate, which just ignores the existence of everything after T2 and acts as a sequel to T2 while ALSO being a reboot that takes the story in a whole other direction.</blockquote>
You also forgot the Sarah Connor Chronicales TV which I know put more people off the Terminator franchise with it's fanfic writing and vibe before Salvation came out.
<blockquote>So is there any way to salvage this mess and get the series back on track? Or is it officially dead and buried, now and forever more, never to be heard from again?</blockquote>
At this point there's only a very slim chance of the franchise surviving and that's if the general audience who weren't anxious to check out Dark Fate in theatres decide to peak their curiosity and try out the movie once it hits DVD, blu ray and streaming. Only other thing that can maybe revive it is if Cameron's name is attached to direct it also, but that's a even slim chance then Dark Fate breathing second life in post theatre outings.
I'll argue Terminator 3 and Salvation didn't completely destroy the franchise. May not have been as good as the first 2, but the box office was decent and both had their fair share of fans and defenders. Genysis however was the nail in the coffin. Rise of the Machines and Salvation in general had a lukewarm reception, but after Genysis, many people just gave up and never looked back.
There is none that wasn't already present in past Terminator and James Cameron movies. Just another raging crybaby.
There might be certain parts you might not agree with, but all of it has already been done in past Terminator and Cameron outings.
I know this thread is old, but I was on a TV show Claire was filming last year called Doomsday and regarding height, I would peg her about 5 ft 7. Also Taye Diggs was also on the show and my initial reaction was that the dude was shorter than I thought since he looked around my height. Then I remember Taye is listed as 5 ft 9, then went nevermind, he does look the height he's listed as.
Oh there's so much more points I can get into with the MCU that even my comments in this thread will likely only be scratching the surface. I mentioned to another user how the MCU films evidently exist in a reverse/bizarro universe where it gets praised for things people normally rightfully pan films for, so lets start a list.
1) Overuse of CGI. Funny how so much fan reviewers online can frown upon a film for using excessive CGI, yet the MCU is immune from this. Whole scenes now in MCU films is nothing but CGI clutter. MCU films now use more CGI than Star Wars and Star Trek. At least those films still have characters in physical costumes. RDJ hasn't worn a physical Iron Man suit in ages. Funny how both those Star franchises had people commenting on their use or lack of use on CGI, but no one says anything about the MCU films even when scenes look so cartoonish, I can easily mistake them for a scene from a PS4 video game.
2) No originality. In a age where people are rightfully complaining about Hollywood making so much sequels, reboots, remakes, etc and complaining about lack of originality, it's amazing how the MCU films are getting praised for making non stop films that all look the same, sound the same, feel the same, and basically just a regurgitation of itself with a different reskin. Granted once an a while someone working for these movies would bother to write something that wasn't in the previous movies (which basically just consist of the barebones storyline for a superhero and stopping there) like the whole Hydra controlling the government in Winter Soldier and Guy Pearce's arc from fanboy to arch enemy (huh it's basically Syndrome's storyline) in Iron Man 3, but those are the rarity, not the norm. They're actually so rare, the Terminator franchise don't have enough films to cover how many movies it takes to get this kind of writing.