- It's nice and violent. Salvation (even in its unrated cut, probably) and Genisys pretty well disqualify themselves on their PG-13 ratings alone.
That's not such a dealbreaker for me. While the
Alien &
Die Hard franchises absolutely demand their R-rating, I've never felt that
Terminator did. Hell, trim out the f-bombs and I'm pretty sure
T2 would get a PG-13 if you released it today.
T:G started off quite well but couldn’t overcome the horrible miscasting of Emilia Clarke and, especially, the always-awful Jai Courtney and it ended up just a tired series of homages.
OK, I feel like I need to stand-up for Jai Courtney at least a little bit here. While he's nowhere near as good as Michael Biehn in the role, he acquitted himself decently, even if the overall movie was a mess. And I absolutely loved him in
Suicide Squad. He just needs the right niche. (He also looks much better with facial hair. Something about his mouth doesn't look right without it.)
I was always a fan of the original film being an absolutely closed loop. Once they messed with that, IMHO the whole thing fell apart.
In my head-canon, the first 4 films are all part of a closed loop. Without the future coda ending,
T2 is ambiguous enough that you don't really know if they changed the future or not.
T3 fits if you just ignore the 1997 date for Judgment Day that they only mentioned a couple of times in
T2. Terminator Salvation is deliberately agnostic. It was clearly written as a sequel to
T3 but they were vague enough to make sure that it didn't outright contradict
The Sarah Connor Chronicles either.
Well, but that's a key problem with really showing the Future War, isn't it? (Apart from where does the Resistance get their food and water, that is). Nighttime battle scenes are far more atmospheric and cinematic, but don't make much sense, because infrared vision would give the machines a huge tactical advantage after dark. Defensive action is one thing, but humans should only attack in daylight. So, as much as fans might think they want a whole Future War movie, it's really a lose-lose situation.
It's not about what's tactically realistic. It's about what looks & feels right. The Future War flashbacks had always been dark and nightmarish, which is fitting since James Cameron first came up with the idea for
The Terminator while in the midst of a fever dream. Maybe they had planned to start with a brighter apocalypse and then gradually bring us to something more familiar in the sequels but that obviously never happened, so it's a missed opportunity.
Strictly speaking, Genysis isn't a sequel; it's a reboot.
I suspect that it's actually a prequel from an alternate timeline.
That was a good ass show and a damn shame it got cancelled. That cliffhanger they left it on still brings my piss to a boil to this day!
Seriously? That doesn't sound right. For god's sake, see a doctor!!!!!
(Although, actually, depending on how hot your piss gets, we might have found a substitute for nuclear fuel. Eureka!)
Oh, it may have its flaws, but what then is perfect?
OWAIN TAGGART: "But what then is perfect?"
THE ORIGINAL TERMINATOR MOVIE: "Am I a joke to you?"
TDF was OK, but it rebooted the reboot just to kill off John Connor after about one or two minutes of screen time. I like the movie, I just wish they'd have done John Connor's death differently.
What if he'd survived to the present day only to be killed by the Rev9 to protect Danni? That would have been a better death, no?
If John Connor has to die because plot, do like T3 or TG. Either kill him off via dialogue, he died after the war amidst people being sent back in time, or kill him off as a major plot point.
I don't mind John Connor dying or even how he died. But I feel like it's kinda tasteless to open your action blockbuster with the brutal murder of a 12-year-old, no matter who it is. It's very difficult for a movie to recover from that.
I have to agree with the majority here that
Rise of the Machines is my favorite of the sequels. It doesn't have whatever magic pixie dust James Cameron is able to give to his films but it's otherwise a very solid execution of the
Terminator formula. I can forgive some of its unoriginality simply because it had been 12 years since the previous film, so it had to work a bit harder to reestablish the franchise. Schwarzenegger is great. Nick Stahl is great. Claire Danes is great. Kristanna Loken is suitably menacing and brings a very different energy to the role. Killing off Sarah Connor offscreen was done in a suitably respectable way. I really like the car chases. Plus it has an Earl Boen cameo! That just makes me unreasonably happy.
Salvation would be my 2nd choice. I'm disappointed with the tepid post-apocalyptic visuals but I appreciate the fact that they were doing something different besides just more time travel. I think that, if the franchise had a viable way forward, this was it. John Connor is, unfortunately, a distraction. But the stuff with Marcus Wright, Kyle Reese, & Blair is solid. There are some dumb moments and clunky dialogue but its heart was in the right place. (Too bad they had to transplant it into that other guy.)
I have a hard time choosing between
Genisys and
Dark Fate. I feel like they make opposite mistakes.
Genisys has a habit of introducing potentially interesting ideas and then clearly not having a plan for what comes next.
MOVIE: "John Connor has been turned into a Terminator!"
ME: "Wow! That's really interesting. Can you tell me more about that?"
MOVIE: "Uhhhhh.... no, that's all I got."
Dark Fate will instead introduce interesting ideas but then bury them in the husk of the stale
Terminator formula.
MOVIE: "What if a T-800 felt remorse over killing, had a family, & grew a conscience?" or "What if a soldier from the future had to sacrifice part of her humanity to become part-machine, taking on the very essence of her hated enemy?"
ME: "Cool. Tell me mor-"
MOVIE: "Look! Car chases! Fight scenes! CGI! Some goddamn nonsense with an airplane!"
In the end, I suppose I have to give a slight edge to
Genisys. Even though it's messier, it's more interesting. And Pops gets more screentime than Karl, although they're both kinda doing the same thing. Thanks to the relationship between Pops & Sarah Connor, there's at least some kind of an emotional core in
Genisys. Dark Fate would have been better if it had been a streaming series focused on Karl or had put more of a focus on Grace. Instead, everyone is trying to protect Dani, who is just super boring! And while it's nice to see Linda Hamilton back, she doesn't really fit in the story. She just takes precious screentime away from Grace & Dani while that needed to be the relationship at the center of this film. (I wish they'd worked more on the idea that, in the future, Dani & Grace have something of a mother/daughter relationship, which perhaps leads to Grace getting frustrated at all of a sudden having to be the one to protect young Dani instead of the other way around.)
Ummmmm..... I work from home right now.
