I was rolling with the trailer right up until the ridiculous scene with the jets crashing into each other, which was a jumbled mess of bad CGI and bad action choreography that took you out of the moment. You can improve the CGI in post-production, but nothing is going to change the fact that there was too much nonsense happening all at once. I know Cameron is only an executive producer, but he was supposed to be keeping a firm hand on this, so I was surprised he would let such bad and muddled CGI slide, since that's usually his bread and butter.
Speaking of Camerons, I have to resist calling Mackenzie Davis Cameron based on her
Halt and Catch Fire character, because between her, James Cameron, and Summer Glau's Cameron from
Sarah Connor Chronicles, there are too many damn Camerons. I guess her character's name is Grace, and she supposed to be some kind of enhanced human Terminator, perhaps an upgrade of the early experiments with Sam Worthington in
Salvation to create Terminators from existing humans.
Speaking of which, I like the continuity with the continuous progression of Terminator models even though the movies involve changing timelines and this is supposedly a follow-on to
T2 that bypasses the subsequent three films and
Sarah Connor Chronicles. Gabriel Luna's (who played Ghostrider in
Agents of SHIELD) Terminator consists of a conventional metal chassis endoskeleton covered by a shapeshifting "skin", much like the female Terminator from
T3. But where the T3 model was liquid metal over the endoskeleton and had to remain attached to function, this consists of nanites which can detach to form their own separate shapeshifting entity and thus create two distinct Terminators, which is a cool and logical improvement. The nanites might not have the same weaknesses as the liquid metal T-1000 did as well.
The film also borrows elements from the other films like Arnold's T-800 having lived in the past as a protector for decades to account for his aging skin. On the one hand it's nice that even though they overwriting previously established films, they're still incorporating elements of them that worked or are worth adapting. Although, did we really need another truck chase? There's one in every Terminator movie (even Salvation had the tow truck chase with the Moto-Terminators)
The choice of music for the trailer was superb and really set an ominous tone. It's an adaptation of Bjork's
Hunter:
It was great seeing Linda Hamilton back again looking like a badass. I wonder if they'll simply ignore her cancer diagnosis from
T3 and
Sarah Connor Chronicles and
Salvation or say she detected it early enough to treat it in this timeline. Looking forward to seeing her and Arnold in action together again.
Sarah said the young woman Mackenzie Davis' Terminator is protecting (played by Natalia Reyes) "was her" once, so I'm guessing that she must be either the new mother of the future Resistance leader (for a direct comparison to Sarah's role), or will eventually become that future leader herself after being mentored and trained by Sarah in Mexico again, much like she did with her son John. I like the idea that the future savior of humanity doesn't just have to be John Connor but can be anyone, and how that also plays off the previous film's development of Connor being possessed by SkyNet as a nano-terminator while still overwriting the events of that film.
All in all, despite some misgivings, I'm cautiously optimistic with the excellent cast, the return of Linda Hamilton and Arnold, the involvement of Cameron and the direction of
Deadpool's Tim Miller.
I know a lot (most?) people just wanna hear that dun-dun dun dun-dun, but I dread it. (Opening and closing credits excepted though, I as I say.)
