Spoilers Terminator: Dark Fate Review and Discussion

That is answered in the first film. Most records were lost in the war. Skynet only knew the name of John's mother, and the city she lived in.

 

Once again, the only Terminator movies that I care about are still Terminator(1984) and T2(1991). I really wanted this one to be great.

 

Experiment in what?

Such as?

Democracy?
Truth?
Justice?

These things had been around for a very long time indeed, long before Jefferson or Lincoln were born, so yes, I'm denying here.

Prove me wrong.

Nope, not a new idea in the slightest, in fact it's been around for millennia. The US system is entirely based on aspects of previous democratic systems, including the British Parliament which oversaw the colonies (note - NOT the monarchy as a system or George in particular, his involvement once hostilities became likely was another matter), not to mention much of her European peers and the Romans. Hell, there's clear Viking influence in all of our legal and political systems, not to mention the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Celts/Gauls and thousands of other cultures and people.

The Founding Fathers did not invent modern society, not by a long shot.

Which revolutionary concepts?

How did "human culture" exist in monolithic form for "thousands of years"? How did America change it?

I'm suspecting you haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about here to be perfectly honest.

It does the opposite....glad you noticed

It takes what you expected and turned it on its' head, forcing you out of your comfort zone. It's all well and good when you can identify a message in a film, entirely another when it requires you to step back and rethink it in the sequel.

Exactly, we don't know, so your claim that certain people shaped or were the catalyst for historical change is every bit as unsupported as the alternative.

You believe it to be the case, but you can't prove it. Nor can I.

We can only speculate.

And that is bad because? Do new and different ideas upset you for some reason?

You've just ranted for several paragraphs about the new conceptual underpinnings. That's new ground, it's exploring questions from a new angle. You just don't like that angle.

 

Thank you.

 

D.

Just plain dull from beginning to end. Expected better from Tim Miller.

 

Why Terminator: Dark Fate Delivered That John Connor Twist, According To Tim Miller

http://www.cinemablend.com/news/248...hat-john-connor-twist-according-to-tim-miller

 

The movie was dead, Conner's death was the defibrillator to try to shock the audience into being interested. Didn't work for me. T-800 shot him and I shrugged.

 

I don't think that's exactly the point. From the original Terminator it seemed that Skynet had limited information to try to defeat humanity. If Connor is removed, then another leader has the potential to step up in to his place. Which, I personally find more interesting to see how people rise up when it is demanded of them. In that way they become meaningful.

 

What they were going for and whether or not they succeeded are two distinct questions. I knew watching what they were trying to achieve, they just did an incredibly poor job of it. The death of John Conner was essentially a twist that didn't mean a thing.

If they were going to go through the effort of bringing back Arnie and Linda Hamilton, John Conner should've been the "bad guy" of the whole thing. Trying to use his knowledge to stop the future and maybe creating something a lot worse. This time the machines send back a Terminator to work with the good guys to stop what is coming. And Sarah Conner is the one that has to pull the trigger.

 

Of course. I didn't argue it was done well. Only my engagement with the idea.

 

They changed it. John Connor is no longer the savior because he got his head blown off from a terminator as a kid after the timeline was changed.

 

Well said my friend.

 

Just got back from seeing it.

Well, having gone in spoiler free, I was genuinely shocked at the beginning!

It was a damn sight better than Genesys. That’s not exactly a lofty achievement, though. I thought the first 3rd of the movie was encouraging, but as the film took a dip in the middle and we careened towards the end from one explosive set piece to another, my interest started to wane. Skynet rebranded Legion. John swapped out for Dani. Another couple of terminators on the scrap heap. Judgement Day still inevitable. Not exactly breaking any new ground...

The third best Terminator film – but it doesn’t come close to the first two. It’s a shame with Hamilton and Schwarzenegger back they didn’t have the courage to wrap the story up once and for all. Might have made for a better movie. I won’t lose any sleep if this is the final nail in the coffin of the Terminator franchise.

 

That never happened.

He was shot in the chest.

 

Fair point, but they have time travel. Terminators are also smart and methodical. And as we see, there are many of them. In Genisys, a terminator found Sarah as a child. How? Sent back by humans, but he still found her. If a terminator is in an era where those records still exist, no matter what decade, they can't store the data, go somewhere that is safe from the upcoming war, and upload it?

A representative republic--there was nothing like our Constitution before it was made.

Sounds like you never took an American history or philosophy course.

New and different does not mean good. If you have something that was successful and worked, doing the exact opposite is not a good idea, even if it's new and different. The real Terminator movies sent a message of hope where this one basically said nothing and no one actually matters.

And then they made the exact same movie.

No. That is not new ground. That's the exact same movie, just with changing the human that needed to be protected.

 

Representative Republic, Representative Democracy or the Constitution, which is it? They aren't one and the same and none of them broke new ground. All of them have abounded throughout history long before Uncle Sam jumped on the bandwagon.

Try checking out the Magna Carta, that was our Constitution so long ago that it's been pretty much entirely superseded in the intervening 800 years. Yup, that's half a millenium prior to the Founding Fathers and no one was pretending the idea was new then.

Sounds like you never took one about anywhere else.

So again, which is it?

New and different or the the exact same?

Why should a message of hope be the only worthy sentiment in a film? Bladerunner has spent decades being considered from different angles because of the implications of a few scene changes. Terminator has presented us with entire films which represent a spectrum of possible interpretations.

You just don't like this one, that's it.

Except a completely different underlying message. If all you want to look at in a film is the plot sure, it's nothing new.

If you want to look deeper and consider it from a remotely cerebral perspective it turned the existing message on its' head. Any reason you believe a pessimistic viewpoint is any less valid or worthwhile than an optimistic one?

 

Guess you didn't realize that Britain was a monarchy in the 18th century. Maybe this can help you understand a little.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution_and_worldwide_influence

Separation of powers was not part of the magna carta. While the Magna Carta influenced the American way of government, it was not a carbon copy by any stretch.

It was the 18th century philosophers that proposed many of the ideals that influenced our Founding Fathers, and these were not concepts that had been tried in practice until America. It was a resistance to a monarchy that led to all the freedoms we have today. I'm sorry if you don't understand, but that is still historically significant, as is the absolute fact that the United States Constitution influenced governments around the world. It wasn't the Magna Carta that did that. It was our Founding Fathers, whether you accept it or not.

This is a very simple concept. I must be saying it wrong if you don't understand it. They made the exact same movie, but changed the name and gender of the person being protected. It's putting lipstick on a pig, if you have ever heard that analogy.

Yes, they changed the name of the person being saved. If that's groundbreaking to you, well, that's you. But it's still the exact same movie.

There is absolutely nothing cerebral about this movie. They just trivialized the first two, and made the same movie. But the story itself is quite mindless and unoriginal.

 

It was and still is a Monarchy, it also had and still has a Parliament, which is a representative democracy. Fun fact, the Monarchy didn't oversee the colonies, Parliament did. Yup, it was a Representative Democracy you revolted against, it was King George who prosecuted the war largely out of Royal funds given that Parliament restricted his funding.

You see, an executive and a legislature with the purse strings. Sounds a little like....

Ta da!

Now, we weren't talking about separation of powers, nor did anyone claim the MC formed the basis of the Constitution. However the Magna Carta was indeed both a constitution and a bill of rights, the very existence of which you claimed marked the Founding Fathers out as world changers.

Like most national constitutions (and there have indeed been a great many) it gradually became an historical artefact as it was overwritten and amended, yours just isn't old enough to have got to that stage yet.

That, of course, was after you tried claiming Representative Democracy was the FFs' preserve despite the fact that the Senate is names literally after the Roman Senate which was.....a Representative Democracy (and one which acted as a legislature to the Emperors' executive to boot) and Congress was named after a political alliance intended to oppose a Representative Democracy.

Look it up. Another new idea which wasn't new at all.

Such as?

What have we in our political system which originated in the US?

I'm waiting for libertarianism to pop up, it commonly does around this point. (Clue, that was around before the US too)

No, it was a resistance to Parliament. The Monarchy didn't really involve itself in the daily affairs of Empire until hostilities became a realistic proposition.

No one has claimed the US isn't an influential nation. It is currently the dominant superpower, the current Pax nation.

That in no way has any bearing on your claim that the Founding Fathers "changed the world". They may have done, the jury is out, but as with any "great figure" we have no way of knowing short of developing a time machine and altering history to test the hypothesis.

Countries influence each other all the time, but we really don't go around modelling our nations on you, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

So it's the being the same you have a problem with, not the being different?

Or maybe there is and you missed it?

 

Really enjoyed this one. A shocking opening sequence and a really enjoyable movie afterwards. Shame the franchise is dead, but since they've never been able to continue any of the trilogies (or series) they start maybe it's for the best. This one is as good an endpoint as you could have with no major dangling threads or questions like Genesys had.

Linda Hamilton was 100% badass.