Terminator saga look back - Page 2

Yeah you're right, ha ha! But just remember this: machines ARE humans to a degree - they're not a seperate life-form, we made them to help us out. Most babies are born with some form of medical machinery involved (hmm, not sure about that statement!), and without machines we would have a much less comfortable life. But we MADE them for that - so they really are just extensions of our own intelligence and ingenuity, not some rival species in competition with us. But it makes for good cinema.

Yes, but the fate that hung over humanity at the end of The Terminator has been replaced with the more obscure 'black highway at night'. There is scope for an amount of hopefulness after everything they've been through. Sarah comments on it at the end, and Cameron wrote about it rather well on the 2nd DVD.

And I think Cameron being happy about Terminator 3 was really about politics than anything else.

A more apt metaphor I couldn't possibly imagine ...

Brave attempt? What's brave about taking characters like Hicks and Newt and pissing all over them and making sure no ALIEN film can be made with those characters in the lead? Yeah, let's give FOX a Medal of Honor for that one! T3 is a bit comedic, but that is a plus. It does seem like a humorous sci-fi action flick, with a great chase and bathroom brawl, and then they go ahead and blow up the world. That's brave. But if you want another case of a franchise sucking all the energy out of itself in outing #3 then look no further than REVOLUTIONS.

I don't think Cameron needs to say he likes T3 for any political reason. He's got F.U. money coming out his butt and any studio in town would kill to have him as a director. He probably just likes the film.

Given the raison d'être of the Alien franchise and blockbuster movies in general, I think you've answered your own question.

Brave: The above, plus a film where there are barely any guns, rapists and murderers that you are asked to root for and even identify with, an alien that can't kill Ripley thus removing the danger to the main character, near-all English cast, a very dark and grimy approach (even more so than the previous two) and Brian Glover.

Oh, and having the heroine of the franchise COMMIT SUICIDE at the end.

Alien 3 has some good points, I like the gloomy atmosphere, and I think despite the problems inherent in its plot, it still at least succeeds as a curiosity.

Resurrection, on the other hand, has no redeeming features whatsoever. Generic, with dull characters and Weaver phoning in her performance. Not even Ron Perlman could save that one.

Oh, and Fett, I don't think we're supposed to root for anybody in Alien 3, except perhaps the alien

There are a fair number of good points there. But I don't see how the lack of guns makes ALIEN 3 anything special, it just puts it on the level of the original but without that film's ability to scare the audience. The folks in ALIENS were armed to the teeth but it didn't put them in any position of power over the creature. In fact, it probably had the opposite effect because a lot of gung-ho Marines felt they were invincibile with all of their weaponry when they were not.

If you're from England I can see where the British cast is a plus, but I guess the Yank in me has a hard time getting behind an ALIEN cast that has to follow Paxton, Biehn, and (God help me but it's the truth) Reiser. ALIEN 3 did throw me a bone with Dutton, props for that.

The end of ALIEN 3 is the best part for me. That was brave, but was rendered less brave by the events in the 4th film. That's not the fault of the creative minds behind ALIEN 3 but, fair or not, it's how I view the ending to that film.

Now if a 4th TERMINATOR is done and they clone Sarah Connor to help the human resistance I'll look less favorably at T3.

But that's the bravery of making Alien3 in the first place. As a follow up to a gung-ho alien war movie that was wildly popular around the world, it could hardly be any less like what the public were expecting for a sequel. And kudos to them for doing that, and doing service to the trilogy. Contrast that with Terminator 3.

But one of the main negatives about ALIEN 3 now is that the series is no longer a trilogy. T3 did service to it's trilogy (so far) by keeping a similar action packed tone to T2 and then boldly hitting uncharted territory in the last 20 minutes which set up a great story for a possible 4th film. In a better world, the perfect world being where at least Hicks is still alive, the storylines (especially the end) of ALIEN 3 and ALIEN 4 would be switched around. You would not have had to do a horrible cash in by cloning Ripley and the progression from the action of ALIENS to the gloomy feel of ALIEN 3 would have had a buffer in between with RESURRECTION.

T3 didn't do a service to it's trilogy at all (and the possible 4th film was also possible at the end of T2 - T3 hasn't added anything). It's a badly-made film that simply rehashes T2, and then unimaginatively deconstructs the entire fight in the last 10 minutes. Alien3 is its own film, it doesn't rehash Aliens at all, instead it creates its own, unique, mood throughout. The fact that it is somewhat invalidated by Alien4 doesn't detract from what Alien3 stood for, in the same way that the death of Newt and Hicks doesn't detract from their struggles in Aliens.

Other than the change in date of JD, there's no evidence to support alternate timelines or erasing of future events by what is given to us in the films. There's more than enough evidence, however, to support the circular time theory.

Touche. I guess I'm used to American's using the term inappropriately. I never knew redundant was a synonym for superfluous. Thanks for the info. I still disagree with your assessment of T3.

I agree 100%.

In a way the death of Newt and Hicks does detract from ALIENS, at least for me a bit. You spend nearly 2 and a half hours with these characters and then they are swept under the carpet with little respect to how the audience may have grown a fondness for them in the previous film. I can appreciate that ALIEN 3 wanted to go in a opposite direction from ALIENS, but it probably would have gone over better with me if they had made that drastic transition without sacrificing some very memorable characters.

I guess it's a personal choice as to whether you want to ignore ALIEN 4 or not. I wish I could forget about LETHAL WEAPON 4 but it's part of the series so it gets judged along with the rest. The gutsy end to ALIEN 3 just doesn't seem so gutsy when you watch RESURRECTION. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I wish Linda Hamilton could have come back for T3. It would have been great to have that character meet a more cinematic demise. But I think the way her abscence was handled was a bit easier to swallow and not quite as dismissive as the events in ALIEN 3.

Isn't that like saying: other than this alien currently taking a bite out of my foot, there is no evidence that aliens exist? If we accept the JD date change isn't some production gaffe, it must then stand as the test case result that disproves the hypothesis (there only has to be one).

If you can change events in the future, the future is not fixed.

Cool. I guess a lot of my dislike for T3 stems from a general frustration/dismay for the current climate of "lets do a remake/sequel" that seems to have affected (infected?) Hollywood. T2 made a big impression on me, it was one of the first 'blockbuster' films I ever saw at the cinema (I was 12), and it seemed to me a well-made and entertaining film with a few messages sprinkled amongst the stuff blowing up.

The first film never affected me that way, probably because I saw T2 first, but I understand people's appreciation of it, it's quite brilliant.

And T3, well, each his own (or her own), but as a wanky student-type I am expected to dislike such 'pretenders', so I do. Maybe my opinion will change someday (I'm sure it will), but not just yet.

But wouldn’t it have struggled to scare people, no matter how it was presented? Surely Scott and Cameron had pretty much exhausted every method by which the creatures could have been deployed in a terrifying manner (how scary were NoES III and F13th III?)

If removing the guns turned A3 into a pastiche of A, wouldn’t keeping the guns render it a pastiche of Aliens?

In my opinion, given the levels of innovation and creativity seen in the previous movies, the possibilities for taking the franchise in genuinely fresh and exciting directions were limited. I’m with Fett in thinking they made a pretty good attempt.

I don't think the change in date is comparable to an alien chomping on your foot. The circular time theory works well with the rubber band theory (if you click on the link I provided earlier, the rubber band theory is explained in much more detail than I can attmpt to do right now), which postulates that one can affect little changes in time (i.e., the date of JD), but not the fact that it exists. Time is like a rubber band that you can stretch out a little, but at some point it will snap back to its original shape. Dyson basing his technology on the arm and CPU of the first terminator is what lead to the date of Skynet occuring earlier whereas Sarah destroying the arm and CPU in T2 leads to the subsequent date of JD being pushed back. But it is inevitable that JD will happen. On the flip side, I will admit that if one can postpone JD for even a little while, it is quite possible one could postpone it indefinitely (essentially causing it to never occur).

This is actually my opinion of T3 as well. Mostow was in a damned if you do/damned if you don't position. T2 is a beloved movie, that was highly innovative at the time of its release, and made a huge impact in the sci-fi genre. I think Mostow did a great job of paying homage to its predecessor (and staying true to the original) while giving the third film its own personality and taking it in a new direction. I personally would love to see a T4 (withought Arnold) which focuses solely on the war.

The ONLY way the circular time travel theory works is if Reese was wrong about the date. That's it. The theory requires that all things are as they ever were and as they ever will be at the exact same time. You can't change anything.

Yes and this is just a thought, but wouldn't it become increasingly more difficult to postpone a future event thus going up against the laws of diminishing returns, and thusly JD would still occur.

Exactly, Mostow did an excellent job of giving folks what they have come to expect from a Terminator film and then starting the transition into a different type of film. Whenever a director is asked to take over a franchise it can be a sticky situation. Cameron did a wonderful job of taking the concept of ALIEN and then putting his spin on it without ruining the original's different feel. In fact he plays on some of the plot points of the original and mixes them up a bit (good android instead of bad). If Mostow had started T3 with the future war instead of ending it that way people would be complaining from here to Neptune about such a drastic shift in tone.

I've often wondered whether a good deal of the negativity aimed at T3 can be attributed to it lacking the original score.

I know I find it very difficult to connect with Never Say Never Again for that and a couple of other more obvious reasons.

Not if he had kept the future war going the whole movie.

That may be my biggest gripe with T3. It is very difficult to watch a Terminator film with out the Terminator theme.

Agreed. With a title like "Rise of the Machines," I'm sure I'm not the only person who was expecting to see a full on war at some point in the film.

That was the most intriguing thing. The little snippet in T1 was so good, and the story of them rising up would have worked amazingly well.

I suspect devoting the entire movie to that war would have exhausted not just Mostow's budget, but all of Hollywood's too.

Well, to perhaps get a little philosophical, everyone dies in the end, Molisanti. Even if a beloved character is breathing and vertical at the end of a film does not mean they are to spend eternity without change. Newt and Hicks survive their adventure, and die later on. This, to me, doesn't detract from their moments in Aliens, it just adds even more color to their characters. - It's like watching any movie, like Predator for example, when you know everyone's going to buy it, but you still enjoy the characters regardless.

And I really like Lethal Weapon 4. it just... pops.


Oh no, no way can I agree with that. Sarah Conner was an absolute icon, and they killed her off in such a cheap, derivative way it literally made me angry. Sounds crazy I know but it really did. How dare they get rid of her that way!

I've heard people compare the Terminator saga to the Godfather films in that they consist of two great films and one belated afterthought. What do you guys think of the comparision?

That being said, I adore the first two Terminator flicks. The original, while being a little dated has an inventive storyline and a coldblooded mean spirited feel to it. The scene at the police station is just brutal. Like many, I prefer T2 as I dig it's epic scale. Though it is interesting to hear others (like Fett) debate on it's superiority over the original. Here is a nice review worth checking out. :http://www.dvdbreakdown.com/titles/terminator2_r2.html. It talks about how the film is good but not up to par with part 1.

I didn't hate T3 but I found the film to be too derivitive of T2 and felt the T-X was a lackluster villain. The first two films defined the sci-fi/ action genre. T3 was just like any other big-budget action flick with nothing about it to stand out (save for Arnie's presence and time travel stuff).

Well maybe I should give it another chance.

After watching T2 again last week, I can only think their reasoning was: kill her off before the movie or allow her to eat the movie.

True, but it would have been spectacular.

I'm interested in seeing the Future War play out but if that had started in the first act of T3 I really would have felt like the first 2 films were not relevant. The machines did rise in T3 and thanks to the events in the first 3 films the proper leadership is in place (minus a few fast food workers) to insure the humans can strike back in a 4th film.

Or it could have been Matrix Revolutions

I agree with those who say Sarah was written out a bit cheaply, but I also agree that if she had been in T3 she would have completely overshadowed the other characters, and I think the spotlight needed to be on her son. Having said that, I thought too much of T3 was focused on Arnie and his 'funny' stuff ("talk to da hand" etc.).

And those who are talking about whether or not JD can be stopped, well, no, not if you're only a handful of people trying to stop something the whole world seems to be constantly moving towards. What was the name of that Greek woman in mythology who was doomed to see the future but never to be able to change it? Her. Cameron called her 'Sarah Conner'.

Well, she's certainly tougher than anything in T3. Including the nuclear missiles.

I assume every human character in a film will die at some point in there fictional life but when 2 characters make it through all they had to endure in ALIENS, I figure they will get a little more life than just a "They're dead, that's it" statement I got from ALIEN 3. I know that most of the squad in PREDATOR is going to bite it but they get to go out, for the most part, with a bang. I suppose I don't need to see Newt be torn apart like a rag doll but Hicks should have been able to go out ala Carl Weathers in PREDATOR.

Without a doubt if I could change anything in T3 it would be to have Sarah come back. How cool would it have been if Sarah had to take on the T-X and Arnold was in some type of brawl with a bunch of endoskeletons, or if you tweak things some way a bunch of T-1000s. Something along the lines of the Neo/Smiths fight in RELOADED but more brutal than fluid.

Cassandra!!

Cassandra was the name of King Priam of Troy's daughter, who was cursed to see the future but never be believed when she tried to warn others. Kyle is this in T1, Sarah in T2, and John in T3. Except they DO get believed by one or two people.

Now I can be at peace...

Forget the fact that T3 is a Terminator film, it's just a bad movie period. It's got all the slick hollywood production values and all that, but it lacks character. It's like T2 was this awesome original drawing by an artist and T3 was some guy tracing the same drawing but fucking up the edges and shit.

No wonder I like T3, I can't draw worth a damn!

I do a kick-ass stickman!

BTW, I just remembered a plot hole from T2, when Arnie gets his arm fucked up in that machinery, he rips it off - so there is STILL something left behind from the future after the other arm and the chip are destroyed. So, like, whats with that, huh?

I remember a plot hole, too. The human resistance destroyed the time machine after sending Reese through. How'd they send back a Terminator? Did they pretty much send them all at the same time? Okay. So why didn't the machines send the T-1000 to 1984?

Yes, part of the terminator is left in the machine, but those remains may amount to little more than a mass of wires, actuators and super alloys. Beyond the capabilities of the current time - yes, but probably not enough to induce the technological revolution that an intact CPU would.

Well, the prototype Airbus A380 flew yesterday. If it had crashed would Airbus be unable to develop a new one? Don’t forget that a prototype is but the final stage in a [usually] lengthy and well-documented process of research and development.

Answers to such questions are beyond the ken of puny humans.

This isn't a plot hole.

The arm left by Arnie in T2 is simply common metal with a few hydraulic parts; there's no advanced technology in it for scientists or anyone to create the T-800 technology - so it wasn't a threat. If you recall Dyson's comments from the movie, he says that it was the CPU from the first Terminator that taught them how to advance the AI technology. The arm from the first terminator was just a bonus.

A good analogy would be if an alien spaceship crashed on Earth. The extraterrestrials don't want humanity to get their hands on their advance technology, so they remove all the engines, computers, FTL drives, etc. from the crash site - but they accidentally leave a small piece of the hull. Well, even if the U.S. military's top scientists find it, there's no way they'd be able to reverse engineer anything or discover what made the ship fly because there'd be no technology to base it on - just a scrap metal.


BTW, I agree with Colt 45: T3 was horrible. Maybe I'm a bit jaded because I was more aware of the film's development than most people. It was like the filmmakers looked at everything Cameron did in T2 and said "Hey, let's do it but not as well...and with not as consistent a story." Case in point:

The New Terminator TX - Ugh. I wasn't once scared or felt threatened by this woman (and I adore Kristinna Loken). Point #1 - if you're going to make a villain in a sequel, they'd better be more threatening than the one in previous installments. She wasn't. An interesting note is that in James Cameron and William Wisher's original T2 treatment, there actually was a female "Terminatrix". Cameron and Wisher threw that draft out because she was deemed "too ridiculous". Hmmm. Methinks Mario Kassar should stop raiding Jame's Cameron's garbage.

The Cemetary Assault by the SWAT team -- this was lame. Why? Because we'd already seen Arnold take on more and better armed cops in T2. Not only was the Cyberdyne assault imore dynamically staged (nighttime, helicopter miniguns, etc.), it was actually essential to the plot. This wasn't. It felt like something out of Terminator - The Made for Cable Movie to me.

The Truck Chase - again, this would have been great - if I hadn't seen Cameron do it better in T2. I'm sorry, guys, but a simply street chase in broad daylight through South LA, no matter how elaborately staged ("Look, kids, they used CG..and we couldn't even tell!") with Arnold hanging from a crane, is no match for a nightime chase on a crowded freeway with helicopters flying under over passes (for real), a shoot out where one of our two heroes gets wounded, and the chopper becomes a spectacular flaming wreck on the freeway. Once again we get an action scene that was not as dynamic or engaging as those that came before it.

Stupid Character Decisions - why the hell is John Connor even still in Los Angeles. If he's having flashes that Judgement Day might happen, then why not get the fuck out of LA!?! Even if JD is inevitable, why not be like his Mom and hightail it to Central America? Or even Canada?It's sloppy writing like this that just makes me roll my eyes.

But most of T3's problems come from one main source - a horrible script. I don't know about you, but the writers of Tank Girl and writers of The Net would NOT be my first choice to foolw up Hurd, Cameron, and Wisher. Maybe if they'd had a good concept or story. But it was painfully obvious they didn't. In the original T3 script (I'll try and find the link) Sarah Connor is alive and hiding in a survivalist camp because she still has nightmares of Judgement Day. Even though this doesn't make sense (sorry, people, but T2 was about having the choice to make decisions that affect the future and destiny. Cameron states it several times on the DVD and in The Making Of T2 book), the script basically has her doing silly things like chasing after the TX on a motorcycle and other stupid stuff. John is 19 (it was written for Furlong) but the script is still lame and a bad retread of the first movie. The only reason Sarah Connor is dead in T3 is because Linda Hamilton was smart enough to turn down the $10 million Kassar offered her after she read the bad scripts.

As far as T3's nihilistic ending -- so what? The thing to do would have been to start the movie with that scene and then go into the Future War. And, yes, it could have been done for the price of a SW Prequel. Especially if you don't have Arnold (who isn't really needed). Sarah Connor could have been killed the first ten minutes - fueling Connor's rage to win.

The thing is T3 could have been good. Retreading isn't necessarily a bad thing. T2 is basically a remake of the first one (even down to the truck chases) but Cameron makes it work because he raises the stakes and gives us deeper characterizations on top of the excellent action sequences. T3 was just

BTW, even though Cameron said he enjoyed it (and I think he was just being kind), the same thing can't be said for his co-writer/producer Gale Anne Hurd. She hated it. When the Terminator rights went up for auction at the Carolco liquidation back in 1998, she begged Cameron to step in and acquire them - if only to prevent less creatively inclined parties (like Mario Kassar) from ruining the franchise. Fox was willing to step in and buy them but Cameron wanted no part of it, so they didn't. Unfortunately, T3 was the result.

To me T3 is an empty movie made up of missed character moments, and poorly recycled stuff from the first film, made only to line the coffers of Pretenders to the Throne. The fact that Kassar is planning on shooting T4 sans Arnold in Prague "for bugetary reasons" (if he can get the money), merely confirms this.

Look out Kreeper! I have just recieved word from the resistance that Skynet has sent a Terminator back in time to kill you before you type that post! And the only one who can protect you is: The Governator!

"T-1000s? Dey are girlie men!"

By such logic, surely the nighttime assault by Arnold in Terminator renders the Cyberdine sequence equally "lame".

Well, I don't know about anyone else but I thought the truck sequence was a remarkable achievement - CG and all. Certainly I found it no less engaging than the freeway scene in T2, which, quite frankly, I'm struggling to recall the exact details of.

Having a character hide out in the one place his enemies would expect him not to is hardly symptomatic of sloppy thinking. It's a popular evasion tactic that has been used, with considerable success, for centuries.

In my opinion, a Terminator movie without Arnold is akin to an Alien movie without Sigourney. Even if it "worked", it wouldn't be the same.

Awesome thread. I'll chime in with the T3 extreme like--any summer actioneer that has the balls to kill off billions of people in the last twenty minutes has my respect, and I'd kill to see a full Future War movie with Nick Stahl--but then again, I'm a whore for Post-Apocalyptic fiction. Big time.

A couple of things:

Regarding sending T-1000s to 1984, I think this was retconned into that the machines sent three Terminators of varying degrees back into three different times. Which, of course, makes no sense, because the T-1000 was discontinued after the events of T-2 (in the future). For starters.

The only way I can think to explain this (and this is just something I came up with) is that Skynet is so advanced in terms of AI that they can "calculate" every possible variation on the past in seconds. Like how a computer can play chess, but really really really really really advanced.

Also, regarding Reese & the date of Judgement Day. He was probally a kid right before or after JD (given Biehn's age in the original), so who knows what happened to calenders, and maybe the date got fudged. July 4, 1776, is Independence Day in the US becuase of the Declaration of Independence's signing, but the move towards Independence and revolution actually started before then. So maybe the '97 date has some signifigance we're not aware of--the decision to make Skynet software rather than hardware, or perhaps the day it was named "Skynet." I dunno. Then again, how are they going to know that shit? I guess Danes might know, because her dad worked with Skynet, and I suspect John, though "off grid" would make it his buisness to at least be aware of that kind of thing--especially after Judgement Day comes and goes.

Just some ideas.

I go back and forth on this. I was disapointed in the T-X the first time I saw the film. Not only is she not scary, but unlike the previous Terminators who just take what they need, the T-X asked for things. The "I like your car" scene was really off-putting to me. But after seeing the films a few times, I think it works because she is a more advanced model and thus better designed to blend in with other humans. She doesn't stand out like Arnold does and that's precisely why she can be a more effective killer -- no one suspects her as a threat.

I also liked how they gave her facial expressions. John spent alot of time in T2 trying to make Arnold seem more human. The T-X on the other hand looked like she thoroughly enjoyed her job. When she spotted a pool of blood in the veterinary office, licked it and determined it was Johns, the T-X smiled so wide, she looked almost orgasmic, as killing John is like the holy grail of kills for her. I do wish we actually got to see her kills (the cut aways were very disappointing) and that there was a longer fight at the end (we got to see like 2 minutes of her as a robot and then she was smashed in the door), but overall I liked her character. The T-1000 was more fun to watch though.

As for the rest of your complaints, I agree with Geoff Foster. I didn't think any of those scenes were sub-par.

Kreeper, very nice post. I don't agree with it, but there's some great information in there. Hurd hated Terminator 3? I'd assume then that she's only listed as a producer due to her involvement with the previous two?

I think Loken was okay as the T-X, but I think another actress moving in a different direction would have worked much better. Consider Robert Patrick playing the sinister T-1000 in T2. IMO, one of the major reasons for that character’s success was Patrick’s sheer physical inferiority to Arnold. Cameron’s T-1000 genius was in creating an almost Lecteresque conjunction of disarming aspect and savage nature. We are programmed to expect brutality from muscle-packed skinheads with outlandish tattoos (see Oceans Eleven when Danny first meets Terry Benedict’s “goon”). We are not programmed to expect violence from people who look, to all intents, peaceable – hence our shock when we witness such.

Now, the producers of T3 had the opportunity to take this idea one step further using female terminator. After all, women have always been regarded as the more peaceable sex. What could be more terrifying than say … a diminutive (in comparison to Arnold), dainty, fragile-looking woman, with a delightfully sunny disposition, who can, in the blink of an eye, transform into a brutal and remorseless killer? It’s the ultimate women-hit-back concept. Unfortunately, what we got in T3 was a 6ft muscled-up Amazon whose femininity was all but strangled by her dull, monotone nature. Not frightening, IMO.