Revisiting the Terminator Series

Remembering that I'd never seen Genisys or Dark Fate, and realising that both were available on streaming services I had access to, I decided to marathon the entire Terminator Franchise (other than the TV show, which I've never had access to).

Here are my thoughts on the first three.  (spoilers)

The Terminator
Originally, I first saw Terminator 2, so in my memories of youth, when I went back and saw this one, I viewed it more as an inferior prequel. After all, it didn't have that cool liquid metal guy.
Revisting it now, I realise that I have always under-appreciated this classic. The story would have been especially effective, had you not known which time traveller was the terminator, and which was the protector. It was especially interesting to see Sarah Connor as a happy normal girl, before she became ultra-solider-woman. With great tension, this one still holds up after 36 years as a science fiction action movie well worth watching.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day
It's hard to say a single bad thing about one. What a movie! It twists the premise in a fascinating way, making the Terminator John's protector. The T-1000 was terrifying. If you thought the original Terminator was relentless, wait till you face this guy. The effects were revolutionary. A couple of them came across as a little dated during this re-watch, but honestly, most of them still wowed me in the almost the same way as they did 31 years ago. The dark sombre tone and hopeful ending somehow blend perfectly together. If I have one complaint, it is possibly that 13-year-old John Connor is kind of annoying at times near the start. But that's probably believable of a teenage boy.

Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines
I remember this one not being received well by most people, but also remembered quite liking it myself. Having re-watched it now, I realise it's the premise I fell in love with, but the execution was somewhat lacking. I really like the idea of seeing the rise of the machines, and the fall of humanity, play out. It's a perfect transition between the first trilogy, and what would have followed. The start of this movie feels like part of the first trilogy, the ending, feels much more connected to Salvation.

I loved seeing those clunky robots - the very first terminators. And a smaller version of the flying machine we saw in both 1 and 2. The real problem with all of this is that the rise of Skynet and the fall of humanity happened too much in the background. It wasn't given near enough time. It didn't feel as big and epic as it had been described. I think part of this is that the movie wanted to play it too safe, sticking with the traditional trope of having two time-travellers battling in the present over the safety of a member of the Connor family, so most of the movie was devoted to that. But it just didn't have the grittiness and tension of the first two somehow.

If I were to improve this movie, I would minimise or maybe almost eject the familiar trope. Focus the story much more on the people who created Skynet. Show a logical progression of how and why it was made, why it seemed like a good idea at first, and why it even seemed like our salvation. Give reasons and bigger stakes to it all. See how it affects people. I wante to see the horror on the faces of everyday people as they see the world end around them. (The flash-forward in T2 made me feel it much more than the ending of T3 did). Still have John and Kate in it. They'd still need to get embroiled in the danger of it all, and maybe keep them hopelessly trying to prevent it.

Another change I'd make is the name. While I love the name "Rise of the Machines" and it was good marketing to get me to watch, just imagine the emotional impact of seeing the world end at the end of the movie, not knowing it was coming! That would be AMAZING, especially if it was portrayed with the weight and gravitas it deserved.

But I'll say this for the movie, the scene where John and Kate realise they've been sent to a fallout shelter was great. And that moment when John speaks into the microphone, finally stepping into his destiny, and he and Kate hold hands, that hit me emotionally. Loved that scene. It's tough to make a believable romance begin between these two just hours after Kate's fiance was killed. But something about that closeup of the hand-holding sold me on it. It was the birth of something. It wasn't necessarily romantic, but I could see the beginning of a deep love relationship. These two are gonna stick by each other's side forever, working together to save humanity. And I can well believe that it would lead to them being lovers of a very romantic nature in the future.


I'll be back with more thoughts after I watch the next 3.

AdamCollings wrote:

But I'll say this for the movie, the scene where John and Kate realise they've been sent to a fallout shelter was great. And that moment when John speaks into the microphone, finally stepping into his destiny, and he and Kate hold hands, that hit me emotionally. Loved that scene. It's tough to make a believable romance begin between these two just hours after Kate's fiance was killed. But something about that closeup of the hand-holding sold me on it. It was the birth of something. It wasn't necessarily romantic, but I could see the beginning of a deep love relationship. These two are gonna stick by each other's side forever, working together to save humanity. And I can well believe that it would lead to them being lovers of a very romantic nature in the future.

Adam quit copying pages from my diary! Dangit I have to replace the lock again!

Adam quit copying pages from my diary! Dangit I have to replace the lock again!

Oh, don't do that. I just had backup copies of my key made!

AdamCollings wrote:

Oh, don't do that. I just had backup copies of my key made!

LOL!

A good laugh in a very tired part of my work day. Thank you for that.

Terminator: Salvation
Another one I think I heard wasn't well received but that I remembered liking. So moving on to tell the story of the resistance against the machines under the leadership of John Connor was absolutely the logical and correct thing to do from here. Maybe people didn't like the change from the established tropes of the franchise?

I liked how this one followed on nicely from Terminator 3. Anton Yelchin turned out to be great casting for a young Kyle Reesce. I thought I'd only see Checkov, but I saw a believable younger version of the actor from The Terminator.

At first I wasn't sure why we were giving all this time to the character of Marcus instead of focusing on John Connor as a clear protagonist (it turns out Marcus is the protagonise). And the visual similarity between this actor and Christian Bale had me confused at several points early in the movie about who I was watching. But Marcus's story turned out to be great. I was moved by his sacrifice at the end, which reminded me of Christ's sacrifice for us.

My biggest issue with this movie is the whole concept of the thing they find to block the signal from the "Skynet Central Core" to the individual machines. When that signal is blocked, they fall over like a dumb terminal with no ability to operate independently. This is utter nonsense. It was clearly established in Terminator 3 that Skynet is software. It migrated to computers all over the world. There is no central hub. This was the very point of the climax. From a computer science perspective, this makes good sense. I found myself nodding along with a smile when that line was spoken in T3.

Now, apparently, all the machines, all the terminators, are completely cloud-based devices with no processing on board whatsoever. This is beyond silly. Even now, there are cloud-based applications that can "fall back" to running locally when disconnected from the internet. There is simply no reason not to install the Skynet software (or at least enough of it that is necessary for the task) into each individual machine. This is the same problem we saw in Star Wars Episode 1 with the battle droids, and it's rediculous.

That gripe aside, I really enjoyed this movie. I love how "The Terminator" through "Terminator Salvation" all form one cohesive 4-part story with lots of interconnectedness between them.

I really wish they would have continued on with more of this. I would have liked to have seen the invention of time-travel and those laser guns we were promised in T1 and T2, over two more films. I'd have liked to see John and Kate Connor take centre stage as protagonists. I'd have liked to see Kyle Reesce age into the war-weary solider we eventually see in T1.

But it seems the studio had other ideas. Let's see where things go as I watch Terminator Genesys for the very first time...

Enjoying reading your thoughts, Adam! Looking forward to your next post here!

Glad you're enjoying my thoughts, Paeter.

Terminator Genisys
I have such mixed feelings about this one.
I remember when I first saw the trailer. I thought it was cool that they were revisiting the original, and that we'd see old Arnie plus Young Arnie sharing the screen together. I looked forward to seeing it but somehow, I just never got around to it.

Within minutes of starting this movie, it became abundantly clear that they were disregarding Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation. And I'm not okay with that!
This movie re-interpreted the origin of Skynet, and the nature of Judgement Day, and it also re-interpreted the first meeting of John Conner with Kyle Reesce.
Honestly, I probably would have enjoyed this one more if I'd just watched the first two and then skipped to this. But having marathoned the entire 4-part saga, I was invested in the story so far as a whole, so this felt like a kick in the teeth (despite any shortcomings of those movies).

There were some plot ideas that were interesting. I thought it was clever how they tied Skynet into our ultra "connected" world with social media and smart devices. Although they could have done a lot more with it.  It was very cool seeing a T-1000 done with modern effects, especially the scene where it died. That was some impressive eye candy.

But the whole thing just felt a bit convoluted. Maybe a little too "timey whimey" (to use a Doctor Who reference). I wasn't at all keen on the whole John-becomes-a-terminator idea. For one thing, I don't think they did a very good job of explaining the true nature of what he was. In my estimation, it was really just a new more advanced terminator (beyond the T-1000) that happened to look like him. There was nothing left of John's body. Perhaps they somehow sampled his brain patterns but I don't think I can really consider that thing to be John in any meaningful way.
Now you could milk a lot of powerful gut-wrenching drama out of the idea that to save the world, you must kill your son. What parent could even consider such a thing? Except they didn't. They did nothing with it. The tone was significantly lighter than any Terminator movie before it. Dare I say, it almost felt Marvel-ish? I like the MCU, but that tone doesn't belong in a Terminator movie, in my opinion

But allow me to gush a little over the actress that played Sarah Connor, Emilia Clarke. She was a fantastic fit. When I first saw her, and she uttered the line "come with me if you want to live," I really thought it was a de-aged Linda Hamilton. It wasn't long, however, before I realised it was a new younger actor. Not only does she look a great deal like Hamilton, but there's something in her voice, that slightly scratchy quality, that every so often just hits you and you swear it's Hamilton. I enjoyed her performance a lot. In fact, I think she's the only actor in the film that really made me feel anything. She expressed some genuine emotion thought-out. she was the only one.

I wasn't a fan of the casting of John Connor. It just didn't feel right. Even Aussie Jai Courtney didn't really work for me as Kyle.
It was kinda fun to see Matt Smith as the personification of Skynet, but again, they didn't really do anything with him.

Also, the constant re-use of catch-phrases is really starting to get on the nose. Do we REALLY need to hear "I'll be back" said in every single movie?

Ultimately, I just didn't buy the goal of the whole film, which was to prevent Judgement Day. I suspected they were going to appear to have succeeded, but of course, they'll leave a loophole in case they want to make another sequel. I think Terminator works best when Judgement Day happens. It gives humanity something to struggle through, and eventually overcome.

Only one left. Really curious to see what they're gonna do with this one.

I really relate to your feelings about them disregarding Salvation. If I shut my eyes and plug my ears a few times I can still make them work together, but it's a shame they almost went out of their way to treat Salvation like it never happened.

And no spoilers, but I'd suggest you go into Dark Fate with a readiness to ignore every Terminator movie except the first two. A bummer they did it again, but it still ended up being a good experience for me.

Finally getting around to sharing about Dark Phoenix.

So...the tone is fixed. This once again feels like a Terminator movie. So that's good. I wouldn't say it's as good as the first two, but much closer to the mark than Genisys.

the main issue I have with this one is plot contrivances.

All right, so we're to believe that in the future of Terminator 2, not only did they send back that first T-1000, but they also send back another T-800 programmed to kill John, but it never showed up until after they'd prevented judgement day. And then it killed John. Okay..... I guess I can accept that. Feels a little contrived though.

Now I can accept that in a future where Skynet's creation never happened, there still might arise problems with AI. But I'm expected to accept that
* Legion, just like Skynet, created killer robots called terminators.
* Legion, just like Skynet, created morphing liquid terminators like the T-1000
* Legion, just like Skynet, invented time travel and sent terminators back through time to prevent the rise of human leaders.
* And that in that future, there was one heroic leader, just like John Connor, who was essential to the succesful human resistance against the new machines.

I'm sorry, but that's way too contrived for me.
This contrivance made it difficult for me to really get on board with the movie, despite some really good points. (That and the hard feelings I still have about removing previous stories from canon)

Also, I'm not sure I by the whole T-800 becomes a nice guy thing. I mean, the redemption of an AI is an interesting concept, but then we never saw it happen. I accepted the T-800 in Terminator 2 as a sympathetic character because it was re-programmed by John in the future. But for a standard T-800 to kill John and then go on a journey of self-discovery and become a good bloke? That's a lot harder to accept. Now if you want to tell a story about an AI slowly realising that his programing is wrong, and overcoming it, that can work as a story, but you need to actually tell that story. Here, that's all just backstory. So it doesn't work for me. Also, the T-800's relationship with his ..... whatever she is .... is really weird. They act like they are in love, but they don't have a physical relationship. This struck me as weird and a very poor excuse for why she never noticed he was a machine.

But enough negatives. It was cool to see Linda Hamilton back as an older tough-as-nails Sarah Connor. I liked her performance. The other two main actresses were also pretty good.
I thought the setting in Mexico was a nice touch, just to make things feel a little different.
The de-aging of Sarah and John Connor at the start was phenomenal. I could have sworn this was left-over footage from Terminator 2 that they never used. (I gotta say I was sad to see John cut down like that)
The new terminator was pretty cool. The internal robot skeleton covered with the liquid stuff was an interesting new take. But the black sludge didn't look anywhere near as cool as the liquid metal of the T-1000.
There were some very genuine emotional moments in the climax that I appreciated.

All in all, a good solid movie, and a stronger Terminator movie than Terminator 3, but my enjoyment is hampered by the things I've mentioned above.

Now I'm curious to go back to your reviews, Paeter.

AdamCollings wrote: But for a standard T-800 to kill John and then go on a journey of self-discovery and become a good bloke? That's a lot harder to accept. Now if you want to tell a story about an AI slowly realising that his programing is wrong, and overcoming it, that can work as a story, but you need to actually tell that story. Here, that's all just backstory. So it doesn't work for me. Also, the T-800's relationship with his ..... whatever she is .... is really weird. They act like they are in love, but they don't have a physical relationship. This struck me as weird and a very poor excuse for why she never noticed he was a machine.

I would LOVE to discover there is some four hour cut that told these stories. I think you could tell a fascinating story about an AI developing morality on a logical/deductive level. But like you said that's a whole story that should have been told.

I also felt the "relationship" was a little odd, but that was less a stretch for me. Some people, I think women more than men, are content not to have sexual relationships. And this can be even more common after a very difficult relationship. So I quickly assumed here that this woman had a terrible relationship that she perhaps barely survived with her kids (did she have more than one, I don't remember?) and basically wanted nothing to do with men or sex after that. Then along comes this strange man who is content to be a tirelessly helpful companion without any demands or expectations, physically. I can see that being appealing to someone who has been hurt badly enough. And yes, I would LOVE to see that story told, too!