Who will save the Terminator franchise?

RHE · Post by **RHE** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:09 pm

3 of the 5 Terminator movies was made by different production teams. The Terminator and Judgement Day was masterpieces both in terms of story telling and visual effects, but Terminator 3 was mediocre at best, thin script, annoying cast and the Terminatrix was not half as cool as the T-1000. Terminator Salvation was another bad approach, but at least it was cool to see the "retro future" and Christian Bale performed some cool action scenes.

Terminator: Genisys is easily the worst Terminator movie ever, although it has some nice CGI effects going on and it pays homage to first Terminator movie.

So, which directior and what production team could save the Terminator franchise?

(If you ask me only Cameron himself could make a new great Terminator movie but he gave the story up after T2 iirc.)

pegboy · Post by **pegboy** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:18 pm

The Terminator franchise ended with T-2, and all the crap made without Cameron is not canon to me.

If they really wanted to do something new they should start a new franchise without any of the previous characters and in a totally different time period (far in the future). Enough of Sarah and John Connor. And nobody wants to see a 70 year old Arnold still playing the terminator, it's just ridiculous and insulting.

Satan · Post by **Satan** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:33 pm

Couldn't give a shit. Avarice ruins art, once again.

BIL · Post by **BIL** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:38 pm

Terminator Ev0lut1on: Arnold uses his chrome bell-end to reflect Skynet's unfathomably powerful laser directly into Matt Smith's mouth.

broken harbour · Post by **broken harbour** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:45 pm

The obvious answer is JJ Abrams, look what he did with Star Trek. The 2nd movie wasn't as good, but compare it to anything post- Star Trek: Generations and its a film masterpiece.

Christopher Nolan would also be a great choice to reboot the series.

BryanM · Post by **BryanM** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:49 pm

The TV series was okayish. Probably as good as you could do with the material.

RHE wrote:(If you ask me only Cameron himself could make a new great Terminator movie but he gave the story up after T2 iirc.)

There's a reason he did this. It's because the man raises the bar.

Two simple little chase movies are all you can get out of it. The foundations are not really that strong or interesting. With time travel being trivial and the multiple lines of resulting continuity, it quickly becomes a clusterfuck.

(Personally I was hoping for the following at the end of Terminator 3: They enter the bunker that contains Skynet. There's a single table in the room. Upon the table, sits an Apple II computer. Its disk read light blinks a few times ominously. Cut to black. The end.)

but compare it to anything post- Star Trek: Generations and its a film masterpiece.

Oi, some stinkers for sure. All it takes is giving it to someone who isn't a hack fraud, but by definition only hack frauds would be given the opportunity to make a movie in Hollywood.

J'ers is definitely a hack fraud, just very slightly less bad than average~

RHE · Post by **RHE** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:05 pm

Lol the T-5000 was turned into a T-3000 I did not even know that.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:10 pm

T2 has highlights but the first is still the most impressive all-rounder. Probably because it was robbed off of Harlan Ellison' s short story.

The series should never have been a series and it will never be saved. It will be bled dry as tastelessly and forgettably as possible until people stop paying money for CG green screen events with a few bad actors thrown in for good measure.

vinnyguy · Post by **vinnyguy** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:11 pm

Um... I liked genisys a lot
And to a point made above, I didn't pay to see it, maybe that made it seem better like a dinner you didn't have to cook.
Nah, I liked it, definitely

blackoak · Post by **blackoak** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:15 pm

I liked Sarah Connor Chronicles, and thought it was cancelled right when it was starting to come into its own. I agree that time travel is nearly always a bad plot device though. I think Terminator 1&2 handled it best: simply. One dumb timeline which didn't get in the way of the atmosphere and suspense. The byzantine elaborations of the later entries only served to deflate the drama, on both a scene-level and in the bigger picture.

Agree about new characters, that's what Alien needed as well. But as noted, we're well past the point of the intelligent Hollywood movie. The conservatism of the narratives we're presented with is probably at an all-time high.

RHE · Post by **RHE** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 7:16 pm

so amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbcmLPXuQzo

Theres no way make a better teaser for a Terminator movie (that doesn't show scenes from the movie itself) ever.

@vinnyguy: Really? What did you liked about it.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:11 pm

I saw some video of a press appearance Arnold did recently for a small-budget film, where he talked about how much he worried over putting some time into the film because it was small and had a small budget - $4M he said, 'the same amount it took to make a Terminator film back in 1984' (to paraphrase).

Star Trek's reboot-ish thing didn't really grab me because of the uncanny valley or something. You've got characters that were built up and substantially owned by the original actors, suddenly being run by younger actors chosen only for a seeming physical resemblance. The cast are good guys, but for what it's worth I like the cheesy official fan-fiction of the late Next Gen cast films better, being backed by another classic cast who again did their time and built up their characters through years on television.

That, and "shiny" Trek has never felt right to me.

vinnyguy wrote:And to a point made above, I didn't pay to see it, maybe that made it seem better like a dinner you didn't have to cook.

I didn't pay to see ST in a theater at the same time as the cast and Leonard Nimoy. All respect to everyone involved, but JJ's made his mark with Lost, not Trek, I think.

Xyga · Post by **Xyga** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 9:57 pm

pegboy wrote:The Terminator franchise ended with T-2, and all the crap made without Cameron is not canon to me.

Yes, Terminator has long been terminated.

BryanM · Post by **BryanM** » Fri Jul 24, 2015 11:08 pm

For the inverse, I think the Evil Dead only gets better over time.

No one's gonna care about your dog/kid as much as you do.

copy-paster · Post by **copy-paster** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:25 am

pegboy wrote:The Terminator franchise ended with T-2,

Agreed.

Lord Satori · Post by **Lord Satori** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 2:31 am

George Lucas will take the reigns.

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:31 am

Even Batman couldn't save the franchise.

TransatlanticFoe · Post by **TransatlanticFoe** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:01 am

Salvation had promise, given it was slated as the first in a new trilogy. No more identical time travel plots, just straight up action in the future war.

Sarah Connor Chronicles had a slow start (not helped by a writers' strike truncated season 1) but came good in season 2, then got cancelled in typical fashion. There were some interesting plots around the agendas of both Skynet and the resistance, you never knew who could be trusted. A real shame it didn't get a proper conclusion.

MJR · Post by **MJR** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 12:23 pm

And WHY it has to be saved? Let it die already!!

Post by **system11** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:37 pm

The only way to stop the rot now is not to approve any more of them.

Strider77 · Post by **Strider77** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:53 pm

I will save it.

NTSC-J · Post by **NTSC-J** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 2:25 pm

RHE wrote:So, which directior and what production team could save the Terminator franchise?

waiwainl · Post by **waiwainl** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 3:34 pm

MJR wrote:And WHY it has to be saved? Let it die already!!

+1

Xyga · Post by **Xyga** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:10 pm

Come on you know it'll be back.

MX7 · Post by **MX7** » Sat Jul 25, 2015 10:47 pm

First Terminator was a pretty good slasher film with a nice sci-fi twist. Second one was alright, can't remember much of it though. Obviously the rest are completely forgettable. But very confused why such a generic film needs so many sequels. Seriously, just make another cool sci-fi/slasher hybrid and everyone will think it's the most original thing ever.

BryanM · Post by **BryanM** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 12:49 am

MX7 wrote:Second one was alright, can't remember much of it though.

There is a sequence where a man flies a helicopter under an overpass. That is something he really did in real life, not some CG effect like how it would be done today.

neva4get

Obviously the rest are completely forgettable. But very confused why such a generic film needs so many sequels. Seriously, just make another cool sci-fi/slasher hybrid and everyone will think it's the most original thing ever.

Conservatism is the name of the day when you're gambling hundreds of millions of dollars.

Truly, the real mystery is why FOX keeps greenlighting scifi shows only nerds will watch which then have to be cancelled since the profit margin will be too low due to budget.

But yeah, I feel the same way. Taking aspects of something and creating something inspired by it, like Metroid was by Alien, could make tons of wonderful stuff. Why the hell aren't there movies like Ghostbusters out there? Completely empty wasteland for 30 years, wtf.

But yeah, hollywood is like the Drake equation. A bunch of random numbers that almost ALL have to roll right for a good movie to come out. It's really a miracle that anything worthwhile comes out of that machine.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:14 am

For any Terminator movie to succeed it needs an 18 certificate. It needs to be made for adults, it needs to be horrific and it needs to be authentic. It needs to lose time travel and it needs to be realistic. I don't want to see a Terminator do anything but terminate. All that smiling, grinning and learning human behaviour has been done to death and needs to stop.

The main issue with Hollywood is that money talks and not many people over 18 go to watch over 18 movies.

Just watched Dredd yesterday, better than all the Terminator movies.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:36 am

neorichieb1971 wrote:It needs to lose time travel and it needs to be realistic. I don't want to see a Terminator do anything but terminate.

Wait, what?

BryanM · Post by **BryanM** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 3:43 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:Wait, what?

In a rare case of worrying he raised the bar too high, Cameron was concerned that audiences wouldn't "get" the terminator character. However his fears were put to rest during the first screening. When the terminator's attempt to acquire access to the police station with diplomacy failed, he walks away commenting off handedly "I'll be back." The audience erupted in glee at the massive amount of violence to come, that this otherwise simple, innocuous remark implied.

Like most things with a soul Hollywood immediately sucked all the life out of the line "I'll be back", much like a re-occuring "he looka likea man" sort of skit on a sketch show.

>-_0)> At this point the killer robots with improbably bad aiming skills where main characters are concerned and their crazy hijinks, is all the franchise has. Summer Glau was the protagonist of the TV series, for example. An argument could be made to just get rid of human main characters altogether and just have nothing but robots. Because that's all we care about. Like the matrix fights in The Matrix or giant monsters in The Godzilla.

BryanM · Post by **BryanM** » Sun Jul 26, 2015 3:48 am

Look. All I'm saying is the cake would be much better if it was made all out of icing.

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