Terminator Genisys - Discussion and Grading Thread (Spoilers)

[Dick Whitman]

I think the thing that annoyed me the most is the writers were counting on the sequels to explain the convoluted plot and time travel mysteries. But later felt the need to do an interview to explain that Matt Smith's Skynet is from an alternate timeline not the same as the one John Conner featured in the movie. That is a huge sign of bad storytelling.
Its very likely those sequels will never happen now.

There is nothing wrong with setting up ideas for sequels. With some small mysteries. But a film has to work on its on too.

 

[Trekker4747]

T:G fell hard this week and the upcoming weeks are only going to be harder vs competition as it continues to lose screens.

It's not even going to make $100m domestic now.
It'll be a struggle to make anything over $95m at this point. Most likely landing between $92-94m I'm reading at box office sites.

It'll be surprising if WW manages to salvage it financially and convince Skydance/Paramount to do another installment.

World-Wide total is just north of $275m, which should more than cover the production and advertising budgets. It may not be a stellar hit world-wide but it'll probably end up doing decently, sorta. Studios look at far more than domestic box-office anymore, usually the domestic box office tends to be the weakest. Not to mention home-video/streaming sales.

Will it make enough to warrant a sequel? Eh, maybe. Enough "Hollywood accounting" and the movie could make a tidy profit but it's certainly going to be a struggle. It probably was released at a bad time during the summer. Fourth of July weekend? Pretty poor time to release a movie given all of the BBQs and such people are going to have over the weekend and then a week or two before one of the bigger releases of the summer, Ant Man.

A movie like this should have probably been released in August towards the end of the summer movie season which is fairly dry this year. But before a huge holiday that happens to fall on the weekend where people are all out having BBQs and blowing shit up and two weeks before the next release in a mega-franchise? Pretty much dealing the deck against yourself.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Wasn't one of the other street punks played by Brian Thompson (who has played many Trek roles, mostly Klingons)?

Indeed. He was one of the Klingons in Star Trek: Generations. He was also a Romulan during the final season of Enterprise. He was an alien in a bar in Alien Nation.

He also played a couple of major guest villains during the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was Luc, the Master's main henchman in "Welcome to the Hellmouth"/"The Harvest" and the Judge in "Surprise"/"Innocence."

 

[Magellan]

T:G fell hard this week and the upcoming weeks are only going to be harder vs competition as it continues to lose screens.

It's not even going to make $100m domestic now.
It'll be a struggle to make anything over $95m at this point. Most likely landing between $92-94m I'm reading at box office sites.

It'll be surprising if WW manages to salvage it financially and convince Skydance/Paramount to do another installment.

I think I've said this in other threads but everybody has to remember that the US box office is still critical for movies. Here's a quote from WSJ
"The actual revenue value for Hollywood studios of a box office dollar—the only financial data point typically reported publicly—varies widely. In China, where practically no one buys DVDs—at least not legitimately—and digital and TV distribution businesses are minimal, studios receive only about 27 cents on the box office dollar, according to internal studio analyses viewed by The Wall Street Journal. In the U.S., with its comparatively robust post-theatrical businesses, $1 of box office translates into about $1.75 of total revenue over a decade."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-hollywood-not-all-box-office-dollars-are-equal-1409241925

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Wasn't one of the other street punks played by Brian Thompson (who has played many Trek roles, mostly Klingons)?

Indeed. He was one of the Klingons in Star Trek: Generations. He was also a Romulan during the final season of Enterprise. He was an alien in a bar in Alien Nation.

He also played a couple of major guest villains during the early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was Luc, the Master's main henchman in "Welcome to the Hellmouth"/"The Harvest" and the Judge in "Surprise"/"Innocence."

And the shape-shifting alien 'Terminator' in the X-Files. I can't recall if he and Robert Patrick had any scenes together. They always seemed on the verge of Terminator references when Robert Patrick joined the X Files, and the supersoldiers arc began...

 

[Gil T.Azell]

If I missed it shame on me but did they Answer who sent "Pops" back in time?

 

[Guy Gardener]

No.

Pops doesn't know so that no one can stop anyone from sending him back, even time doesn't work like that.

Notice How John is still walking around even though Kyle and Sarah didn't bone?

What's really been done is, if pops fails, whoever sent back Pops last time will probably send back another Pops.

It's not about protecting himself, it's about protecting the next round in the chamber.

Although from this level of writing, it was probably Timenet.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

For me, this movie works. The "weakest" part might be Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese but, feh.

He did an okay job, but is no Michael Biehn. Which I didn't mind, but it seems like they tried finding a female actress who at least somewhat resembles Linda Hamilton, but Kyle in this film was way, way, way too buff! I know Hollywood wants to give women their eye candy, but nobody living in a time where life is a struggle and food is scarce would have the physique of a body builder.

 

[Trekker4747]

I can deal with physical differences. I don't think Clarke looked that much like 1984 Linda Hamilton, I guess we couldn't give her ridiculous-looking 1980s hair for the whole movie. But even that aside the similarities between the two are thin.

But that's okay, I wouldn't expect them to cast roles based on appearances but more on their talent and/or BO draw. But Courtney just didn't act or behave like Reese from the original film. Now, was this Courtney or the direction? Hard to say, but I'd suspect a combination of both.

Reese in the original movie is a tough-talking, hard-edged, often yelling typical "army brat" you'd expect from a man living his entire life in the post-apocalyptic wasteland we see and spent much of that time fighting in an army. TG's Reese is a little too goofy or relaxed or just generally doesn't have that edge to him.

I think of the scene in the original movie with Reese in the interrogation room with the cops and how he's sternly talking, shouting off his serial number and how the Terminator is going to come after Sarah, how he's not capable of answering the questions about the time machine, etc.

In TG he just doesn't seem to have quite that same personality.

 

[DWF]

I thought Courtney's Reese was just fine, I could understand his confusion after events started to happen that weren't proper. And if anything while I liked Emilia Clarke as Sarah, Pops should not have told her about her relatsionship with Reese, that kind of ruined the magic of their meeting and relationship. Of course having John Connor out of the blue just call Reese "dad" was horribly done. And it still makes no sense that John can kill his parents are still expect to exist.

 

[Trekker4747]

There was no point in telling Sarah about her and Reese parenting John at all since it seems their plan all along was to travel to 1997 right away anyway in order to stop Skynet, at which point John's birth is moot. And, from T3, we know the trip to 1997 to stop the creation of Skynet would have been moot anyway since stopping it then only delays Judgement Day until 2003 and it can only happen with the discover of the CPU from the original T-800 Arnold Terminator, which they've already stopped and captured. So that right there would stop Skynet. Which is probably why the John Terminator (the T-5000 or whatever he is) had to go back in order to do Genisys. The actions have pretty much erased the possibility for Skynet to exist so something needed to happen in order *for* it to exist.

Looking over the movies and trying to "diagram" the timeline, which can only cause more confusion, leads me to believe that Skynet has some mastery or control over the timelines. It likely exists in the fourth or some higher dimension where it can see changes in the timelines occurring and can instantly make the necessary correction to ensure its survival.

It sees the failure of the original Arnold terminator so it sets into motion the T2 events (sending back another Terminator before the humans seize the time machine) the humans notice these two time-travels and send back a reclaimed T-800 from the storage space, reprogram it, and send it back.

T2 changes occur.

Skynet sees this from it's other dimension and sends back another Terminator to a later point, this time the T-X. Because Judgment Day was neutralized and pushed back everything else is shifted around as well, the rebellion winning in 2032 instead of 2029 now. Skynet is also successful in killing Connor in the future (probably similar to how we see it happen in TG) the rebels stop it, capture it, and send it back to protect Connor in 2003. As well as sending back the other Terminators to counter the other Terminators Skynet has sent back.

Now there's a question on what happened between T3 and the events of TG that "reset" the timeline, ignoring TS. Because TG takes place in 2029, the original success of the resistance.

Somewhere something else happened to change things to cause Skynet to send back a T-1000 to the 70s/80s to kill young Sarah and for the rebels to send back a T-800 to help her. This shuffles the dates around again putting J-Day in 1997 and the fall in 2029.

This also ends up changing things quite radically as it not only seems to undo the other movies and also causes a certain failure to necessitate *again* an even more advanced terminator to try and take John out in 2029, send him to 2015, and to ensure the creation of Genisys.

Really, the entire timeline continuity of this franchise is a hugemess and even this attempt at a "reboot" makes things confusing considering every change that is made seems to negate the possibility of anything ever happening. Especially since T2 more-or-less establishes the creation of Skynet to be part of a pre-destination paradox where the sending back of T-800, and its destruction, is the very thing that ensures Skynet's creation.

 

[Ovation]

Time travel stories NEVER withstand scrutiny. Just go with whatever the film makers offer as the rules for their stories. Much better for one's blood pressure and makes for far fewer headaches. (At least, that's how I cope.)

 

[Saul]

Time travel stories NEVER withstand scrutiny. Just go with whatever the film makers offer as the rules for their stories. Much better for one's blood pressure and makes for far fewer headaches. (At least, that's how I cope.)

No....

 

[Ovation]

Time travel stories NEVER withstand scrutiny. Just go with whatever the film makers offer as the rules for their stories. Much better for one's blood pressure and makes for far fewer headaches. (At least, that's how I cope.)

No....

No, it's not better for one's blood pressure, etc. or no, time travel stories do withstand scrutiny or no, don't just go with whatever the film maker/storyteller offers?

If it's the blood pressure, ok--personal reaction.
If it's the scrutiny, I'm afraid that's just a factual statement. Not really a matter of opinion there.
If it's the storyteller's rules, well, no one has to like it but, their story, their rules (of course, if they break their own rules, that's fair game--though, over the years, I've stopped caring unless it truly ruins the story for me. YMMV).

I used to try and figure out every time travel story I read/watched, looking for inconsistencies and flaws. Eventually, I decided it was very rarely worth the effort. I prefer to apply such effort to understanding real things. Once in a while, I'll indulge, for fun. But it's been decades since I took such things as "how time travel works" in a serious manner. Now I just sit back and enjoy the ride (as long as it's entertaining).

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I can deal with physical differences. I don't think Clarke looked that much like 1984 Linda Hamilton, I guess we couldn't give her ridiculous-looking 1980s hair for the whole movie. But even that aside the similarities between the two are thin.

I don't know. I think in this picture, she looks pretty close to Hamilton. At least as close as you are going to get.

I am glad the 80's hair was gone, though. Given that she was raised to fight a war from age 9, it wouldn't make much sense for her to care about such things.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

Time travel stories NEVER withstand scrutiny. Just go with whatever the film makers offer as the rules for their stories. Much better for one's blood pressure and makes for far fewer headaches. (At least, that's how I cope.)

You must not have seen Primer!

 

[USS Firefly]

I do not know primer, is it a good movie?

 

[Ovation]

Time travel stories NEVER withstand scrutiny. Just go with whatever the film makers offer as the rules for their stories. Much better for one's blood pressure and makes for far fewer headaches. (At least, that's how I cope.)

You must not have seen Primer!

I clicked on the link and I'll raise you two and a




I'd have to watch Primer to judge, of course, but a cursory glance at the chart does little to dissuade me from my contention about time travel stories.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I would venture to guess that the IRS tax code is easier to understand than Primer.

 

[hux]

Timecrimes is also a pretty solid time travel story.