Funnily enough I always feel drunk whenever I watch anything after T2.
But I actually applaud Salvation for trying something different and Bale was great in it.
What do you think of the Terminator movies?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
But I actually applaud Salvation for trying something different and Bale was great in it.
I didn't like the fourth, the others are at least OK with the first two as the best of the lot. I like what they did with the sixth. much better than the fifth... If only they could have not done the fourth. What were they thinking?
Salvation was good.... I think they had a different ending in mind though to what we got.
Much like Alien and Aliens, trying to choose between Terminator and T2 is difficult, and frankly which one I pick might depend what mood I'm in. If pushed the low budget nature of the original gets it bonus points. Frankly there are few films as well put together as that, a lean coherent story that still finds time to make even peripheral characters interesting (who wouldn't watch a Winfield/Henriksen tv show?). Plus the most plot relevant sex scene in history and a moment at the end which blows 99% of love stories away for romantic impact.
As for the rest I've only ever seen each once when they came out so time may have mellowed my view if I watched them now but:
T3- An inoffensively bland by the numbers sequel, until the end. Blimey that deserved to be in a way better Terminator film! Oh and the "give me your clothes" bit was funny. I remember when I was at Uni we had a running joke about the T800 turning up and getting inappropriate clothing (a nerdy train spotter was the favourite)
Salvation- Dear lord. So dull! I had to go to the loo midway through and gave serious consideration to not going back. My least favourite of the bunch. The only redeeming feature was Yelchin
Genisys - What an absolute mess, a train wreck of a film, Clarke does the best she can despite being way tinier than Hamilton (joint strangest casting with Ehrenreich trying to play the way taller Ford). Yet despite it all it's an enjoyable mess.
Dark Fate - wasn't sure about this but as the film went on I got into the groove and wound up enjoying it far more than I expected. A better Terminator film than it has any right to be, still flawed of course, and killing John is a WTF moment, but still good.
And you have to mention the Sarah Connor chronicles. Heady may not look as much like Hamilton as Clarke, but she embodied the character infinitely better. Messes with the timeline the way later films will but does it better.
In order, right now, I'd go
Terminator
T2
TSCC
Dark Fate
T3
Genisys
Salvation
As for the rest I've only ever seen each once when they came out so time may have mellowed my view if I watched them now but:
T3- An inoffensively bland by the numbers sequel, until the end. Blimey that deserved to be in a way better Terminator film! Oh and the "give me your clothes" bit was funny. I remember when I was at Uni we had a running joke about the T800 turning up and getting inappropriate clothing (a nerdy train spotter was the favourite)
Salvation- Dear lord. So dull! I had to go to the loo midway through and gave serious consideration to not going back. My least favourite of the bunch. The only redeeming feature was Yelchin
Genisys - What an absolute mess, a train wreck of a film, Clarke does the best she can despite being way tinier than Hamilton (joint strangest casting with Ehrenreich trying to play the way taller Ford). Yet despite it all it's an enjoyable mess.
Dark Fate - wasn't sure about this but as the film went on I got into the groove and wound up enjoying it far more than I expected. A better Terminator film than it has any right to be, still flawed of course, and killing John is a WTF moment, but still good.
And you have to mention the Sarah Connor chronicles. Heady may not look as much like Hamilton as Clarke, but she embodied the character infinitely better. Messes with the timeline the way later films will but does it better.
In order, right now, I'd go
Terminator
T2
TSCC
Dark Fate
T3
Genisys
Salvation
Yeah, I think I read Connor died and was to be replaced by Marcus as leader of the resistance as some kind of twist, the sort they tried to rely on in the, ahem, future films. Like a lot of franchises, the feeling appeared to be 'fans are bored of the same old stuff, lets go in a new direction' which is the kind of brave thinking we know fans hate
Yeah, I think I read Connor died and was to be replaced by Marcus as leader of the resistance as some kind of twist, the sort they tried to rely on in the, ahem, future films. Like a lot of franchises, the feeling appeared to be 'fans are bored of the same old stuff, lets go in a new direction' which is the kind of brave thinking we know fans hate
I'll have a look.
https://screenrant.com/terminator-salvation-original-ending-save-franchise/
good old Screenrant.... Found it
I like the whole franchise as a whole, and am looking forward to any new film/series/etc.
I'm with most of you in saying T1 and T2 are the best, and are interchangeable depending on mood on which is the best. I usually lean to T2.
T3 wasn't bad, i liked it in the theatres. bit to campy at times, but in all not to bad.
T4 was okay, I liked the actors, they done good with what they had, but the script was meh, what you wanted was a future war, what we got was... not that.
Genysis was good in my mind, I enjoyed it, with a Death Star sized caviat.. I LOTHE Jai Courtney.. He's just so Meh in everything I see him in. and was miscast in that.. Jai is a big guy, Kyle Reese as played by Beign is a wirey skinny guy.. miscast in that as well. But, enjoyed it, was sad to see it not continue, because I wanted to see who was behind the good guys, and see more of Matt Smith Skynet.
DF.. Ugh.. I liked seeing Linda and Arnold again, and Mackenzie was okay, but it was a COMPLETE rehash of T1 with a worse script and worse actors. and no Skynet? that point alone ruined it for me. Legion? REALLY?
So.. List:
T2
T1
Genysis
T3
T4
Dark Fate
I'm with most of you in saying T1 and T2 are the best, and are interchangeable depending on mood on which is the best. I usually lean to T2.
T3 wasn't bad, i liked it in the theatres. bit to campy at times, but in all not to bad.
T4 was okay, I liked the actors, they done good with what they had, but the script was meh, what you wanted was a future war, what we got was... not that.
Genysis was good in my mind, I enjoyed it, with a Death Star sized caviat.. I LOTHE Jai Courtney.. He's just so Meh in everything I see him in. and was miscast in that.. Jai is a big guy, Kyle Reese as played by Beign is a wirey skinny guy.. miscast in that as well. But, enjoyed it, was sad to see it not continue, because I wanted to see who was behind the good guys, and see more of Matt Smith Skynet.
DF.. Ugh.. I liked seeing Linda and Arnold again, and Mackenzie was okay, but it was a COMPLETE rehash of T1 with a worse script and worse actors. and no Skynet? that point alone ruined it for me. Legion? REALLY?
So.. List:
T2
T1
Genysis
T3
T4
Dark Fate
The original is a classic and rightly so, but boy is it looking dated these days, but I can't really hold that against it too much. 9/10
The second I would say is a masterpiece of action sci fi cinema (alongside Cameron's Aliens, The Matrix, Die Hard and a few others), and still holds up very well indeed for it's age. 10/10
T3 I think gets a bit of a bum rap. I found it to be mostly solid and entertaining with great FX and quite a daring ending. 7/10
Salvation has some good stuff in it but I mostly found it to be a bit... bland. I wanted to see the dark nightmarish future that was alluded to in the first two, so I found the setting a bit jarring. It almost came across like it was a lower budget film, which it wasn't. 6/10
Genysis is where the wheels fall off for me. Overwrought storyline trying to stretch a limited concept too much. A few ok scenes but the casting was way off. Emilia Clarke I thought was 'meh' as Sarah Connor and Jai Courtney was just awful. 4/10
Dark Fate was slightly better - had some great action scenes but there was just this feeling that you'd seen all this before by this point, in superior movies too. 6.5/10
For me the franchise needs to die now. I could maybe stomach a clean slate reboot at a push in a 5-10 years but even that's a stretch. Same goes for the Alien movies.
The second I would say is a masterpiece of action sci fi cinema (alongside Cameron's Aliens, The Matrix, Die Hard and a few others), and still holds up very well indeed for it's age. 10/10
T3 I think gets a bit of a bum rap. I found it to be mostly solid and entertaining with great FX and quite a daring ending. 7/10
Salvation has some good stuff in it but I mostly found it to be a bit... bland. I wanted to see the dark nightmarish future that was alluded to in the first two, so I found the setting a bit jarring. It almost came across like it was a lower budget film, which it wasn't. 6/10
Genysis is where the wheels fall off for me. Overwrought storyline trying to stretch a limited concept too much. A few ok scenes but the casting was way off. Emilia Clarke I thought was 'meh' as Sarah Connor and Jai Courtney was just awful. 4/10
Dark Fate was slightly better - had some great action scenes but there was just this feeling that you'd seen all this before by this point, in superior movies too. 6.5/10
For me the franchise needs to die now. I could maybe stomach a clean slate reboot at a push in a 5-10 years but even that's a stretch. Same goes for the Alien movies.
The first two were great and will always be classics. Terminator 3 wasn't bad, but I really left the franchise after that. I don't even know the order of the movies after 3.
Here's the thing though. I know everyone expects the same future from the first movie, but honestly with all the time-traveling going on, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that 1), it was only one possible future of many, 2) that it was that very specific future the first Arnold came from, 3) that the timeline has been irrevocably harmed due to all the meddling that's been going on in some of these movies. Add up all that and I would find it hard to believe it could be the same future. All the changes and the revisiting have made the that particular future moot, IMHO, and I wouldn't expect it now. I would expect the timeline's technological development to have changed as well, especially given that Judgement Day has constantly shifted as well. The Future isn't a constant and to expect that everything would lead to that very future would just lead to disappointment.
Afterall, we still don't have flying cars do we?
Much like their 80s Franchise Cousins the Predator and the Alien, the poor old Terminator appears to be doomed to be forever resurrected in an attempt to recapture past glories with mixed results (that some will like and some will get inexplicably angry about). Much like Weyland-Yutani wanting their weapon no matter the cost, modern movie studios want another massive hit movie to rival the originals, continuity or common sense be damned.
Let's all agree on one thing: a 2-hour edit of James Cameron watching and commenting on the post-Judgment Day sequels would have been better than any of the actual movies made, and I say that as a big T3 fan. 
There was a vote thread about a year ago on which of the post-T2 sequels were best, and while it narrowly missed achieving a plurality, I'm pleased to say Rise of the Machines won by a landslide.
And this article is the definitive story of Salvation's bonkers behind the scenes shenanigans.
What the what, Danes was awesome!
There was a vote thread about a year ago on which of the post-T2 sequels were best, and while it narrowly missed achieving a plurality, I'm pleased to say Rise of the Machines won by a landslide.
And this article is the definitive story of Salvation's bonkers behind the scenes shenanigans.
The original film was a breakthrough of a kind, and if one does not over-analyze it too much, it remains a strong science-fiction thriller (with borderline horror emotional tones).
The rest I can pass on.
The rest I can pass on.
IMO - The first two are very good.
The rest of them, not so much.
The rest of them, not so much.
Yup.
The main problem with the franchise is that nobody seems to be able to come up with a development that doesn’t involve Judgment Day being postponed and robots returning one more time. Even Dark Fate merely renames and updates the usual post-T2 framework.
The second film ends brilliantly in that it doesn’t make a decision about the future one way or the other. We don’t know what’s coming. Suppose I Promise This is the Final Version of T3 is a story where someone is a Terminator because the film is called that, but we don’t know who and never find out. What if John Connor grows up looking for clues to Skynet’s return, only it never comes in any obvious fashion? How does that have affect him? Who is he at 36?
What if he becomes a metaphorical Terminator, the ultimate infiltrator in his search for actual Terminators? And maybe in Definitive T4 we do start to see clues of something emerging, only now it’s become a lot smarter…
The second film ends brilliantly in that it doesn’t make a decision about the future one way or the other. We don’t know what’s coming. Suppose I Promise This is the Final Version of T3 is a story where someone is a Terminator because the film is called that, but we don’t know who and never find out. What if John Connor grows up looking for clues to Skynet’s return, only it never comes in any obvious fashion? How does that have affect him? Who is he at 36?
What if he becomes a metaphorical Terminator, the ultimate infiltrator in his search for actual Terminators? And maybe in Definitive T4 we do start to see clues of something emerging, only now it’s become a lot smarter…
You realize you just described Nick Stahl's John Connor at the beginning of T3, right? He lives off the grid, and becomes a miserable, paranoid vagabond, always fearing the one very thing that might ever allow him to make something of himself.
That's very interesting, as with Alien, I thought most fans enjoyed the first two and it was the later efforts that they lost interest with.
The Terminatorverse really lost me with this "you can't stop Judgment Day" crap. It's why I liked the Future Coda ending of T2.
Needless to say, I'm not a fan of 12 Monkeys either.
Needless to say, I'm not a fan of 12 Monkeys either.
Last edited:
No, because as noted there’d be no (revealed) robots or a new date for Judgment Day in that version, where Connor would be 36 in the year 2021. Also, I see him more as someone focused on prevention, which ties in somewhat with Cameron’s earlier ending that had him become a senator, except that it’s not a definitive victory since he simply doesn’t know the future, and realizes he must forever remain vigilant.
Similar threads
- Locked
