I know why the new "Terminator" movie isn't very good!

The Series 800 could rip the head off of a human in 1.8 seconds.

 

This is one of those catch 22 scenarios.

If you have an adversary with very little personality, the audience won't become emotionally invested in the plot. But if you add some personality, then the adversary weakens and become yet another moustache twirler designed to make the hero look heroic (the Borg is a perfect example of this kind of de-fanging).

It's a tricky tightrope to walk and the only 'verse, to my knowledge that was able to do it right was Babylon 5 with the Shadows. They had no main or lead Shadow (just a creepy spokesman in Mr. Morden) and yet they were compelling adversary. I honestly don't know how they are going to resolve it in the Terminator movies without turning them into moustache twirlers.

 

But I think that the reason that it's not very good is that there is no human theme throughout the movie that a non-geek audience can become emotionally invested in. For example, the first Terminator movie was essentially a love story once the 'splosions are taken away. T2's theme was the reconnection of parents and children. I haven't seen T3 so I can't comment on that, but TS had all the trappings and plot of a FPS video game. The 'splosions were the theme. And I'm sorry, until Bale ditches the cowl and period pieces and challenges himself and his abilities in a project like Ford did in Witness, there still isn't a comparision between the two actors.

 

I have to disagree, considering there are countless films where there is either no adversary identified, or where it is man vs. nature (diseases, natural disasters, ect.) There is absolutely no reason why someone has to jump out and scream "hey! I'm the villain!"

Besides, wasn't there a scene where Skynet adopted a face and talked to someone? Haven't seen the film yet, but heard that through the grape vine.

 

From the director of Charlie's Angels 2 and the writers of Catwoman. There is your problem right there.

 

You're right there have been countless films without an overt adversary, but how many of them have been franchise films with sequels? Without having an identifiable/interactive nemesis in Terminator, eventually you run into the same old, same old. Big guns like the Borg are best when used sparingly or else it gets old hat or there are diminishing returns. But the Terminator franchise keeps going back to the well to some extent. So far they've been lucky because TPTB have created some pretty interesting and intense human drama and some unique Terminator adversaries, but eventually that creative, or well worn well will dry up.

The human resistance fighters need someone to play off against. Skynet is too indistinct a threat. And you can only do so many variations on Terminators. That doesn't mean that you can't bring other humans into the mix. Competing factions, traitors or collaborators.

 

I think this movie would have worked better they didn't have 3 stories going on. You got the stuff with John and the stuff with the criminal/Terminator and the stuff with Kyle Reese. To me they should have made the drama come from conflict between John and Kyle over what to do with the Terminator.

The villian of the movie should have been human scientists that work for skynet. Instead of trying to bring down skynet, have the human resitance wanting to kills these humans who are basically traitors and skynet is protecting them from the resitance, since they are working on a secret project that ends up beign the liguid Terminator series we see in T2. That are they are building the time machine. The idea is that if the resitance can stop the time machine from being built then the events of the first movie can't happen, in which case the Terminator won't get his arm stuck in the machine which means Cyberdyine is never able to create Skynet. I kind of like the idea that John connor is basically trying to do somethign that will erase him from exsitence, because it will save humanity from what has happened to them.

Jason

 

This film reminded me of the "couldn't score in a brothel with a £50 note tied to his cock" gag.

"Skynet couldn't kill John connor in a terminator factory".

 

skynet is stupid. it's too human to think logically and efficiently. if you want to kill humans, destroy their habitat. they're machines they don't need the environment to exist. polute and infect the entire world with a deadly disease.

 

While I agree that Skynet is best without being personified, I think the Borg Queen worked, mostly because of Alice Krige's very sensuous performance.

Kyle Reese in the first film, and I quote-- "Most of the records were lost in the war. Skynet knew almost nothing about Connor's mother; her full name, where she lived. They only knew the city."

By "a good director/writer," I think we mean James Cameron. Oh, I miss him so...

I think you've hit it on the head here. Future war stories are really man vs. nature stories. Skynet has no human motivations. It's a force of nature that just destroys indescriminately.

 

That was attempted in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Somehow humanity found a cure (because there was a kid who was immune and they used her antibodies to make a cure).

 

You know what I've always thought about Terminator, or any "big evil machine out to destroy humanity" story? Exactly what is their plan after they destroy the human race? Does Skynet all of the sudden stop and go, "Oh... um... well, now what guys?" Do they all go out for orange mocha frappachinos afterwards or something?

 

Officially it has never been seen what Skynet plans to do after taking over the Earth.

Unofficially we have seen this in a few computer games. After humanity is destroyed Skynet will Terraform the Earth into a world that cannot support any kind of life other than artificial. It would then expand into taking over other planets.

 

This is like the 4th time-line or at least a time-line that was heavily altered by the changes made in the last 3 movies. Kyle was from the prime time-line that didn't involve any time travel in the formation of SkyNet or the birth of John.

Essentially they need to think of these movies as a "Man vs. Nature" plot. It is much trickier, but it has been done before.

 

IMHO the Borg Queen did not work in the movie. All you hear about them is that they are a collective, everything supports that - and then suddenly there is a queen bee.

 

Plus, from Terminator 3, we've learned that Skynet has taken over the civilian internet. It may've been able to keep the records or 'googled' itself or things related to it.

 

I don't think Skynet necessarily even thinks at all about what it will do if/when humanity is completely exterminated. It's a machine that has been programmed to protect its own existence but it hasn't been programmed to justify its own existence.

Firstly, if you're assuming a prior timeline in which John Connor's father was not Kyle Reese, then the Kyle Reese that we saw in the first movie was not from the "prime" timeline. He would be from at least the 2nd timeline, because it seems clear that John Connor knew that Kyle Reese was his father and Sarah Connor knew about Judgment Day. According to Reese in the first movie, Sarah & John "were in hiding before the war," which indicates that they knew about Judgment Day from Reese-Prime and were preparing for it. And if Kyle Reese was not John Connor's father, then why did John give him a photo of his mother?

Also, while there has been timeline manipulation, I prefer to take at face value most of the information given in the previous films. So far, the only outright contradiction has been the different dates for Judgment Day. T2 put it in 1997 while T3 said 2004. (And like I've said, we'd still have a perfect closed loop with no need for timeline alteration if only T2 hadn't given us that 1997 date.)

 

I'm fine with it. Just like First Contact (before the Borg Queen showed up and changed everything), it's basically a high-tech zombie movie. Zombies don't need personality, the hive mind is scary enough. My only problem while watching it was that, unlike a good zombie flick, there didn't seem to be a huge mass of terminators searching for the surviving humans; but then later in the film they explained that Skynet was up to something else, so I was ok with that.

It didn't blow me away, but I thought it was a pretty good continuation, and I got a kick out of seeing something that Kyle briefly referenced in T1 unfold as the climax of this film.