Terminator (2019)

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Goatface

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so looks like they are looking at shopping the plan for the next 2 movies as a tv show
netflix will probably throw $100m at it to keep the woke going
 
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Arbitrary

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spronk said:
www.latimes.com

'Terminator: Dark Fate' spoiler: That John Connor twist was James Cameron's idea

'Terminator' creator James Cameron defends John Connor's dark fate
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
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It was his idea, the guy who literally dreamed up the SkyNet future and directed the first two “Terminator” films, both verifiable sci-fi action classics. It. Was. His. Idea.
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If true, another aspect of Ellison’s claim is more compelling. He says that he was contacted by a friend at Starlog, who said that the magazine was receiving pressure from Cameron’s representatives to excise a quote from an interview Cameron gave Starlog. According to Ellison, in the original transcript of the interview, Cameron says that he got the idea for Terminator from a handful of Outer Limits episodes. Ellison also claims that another acquaintance reported to him that he’d heard Cameron boast that he’d “ripped off a couple of Harlan Ellison stories” in the writing of Terminator. (Many people have noted that, in addition to “Soldier,” “Demon with a Glass Hand,” another Ellison Outer Limits episode, bears certain similarities to Terminator
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Settled out of court.
 
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Malakriss

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I could see wanting to cut off the ability to repeatedly shit up Connor continuity by ending it and moving on to something new. But the new thing still has to be good. It wasn't.
 
Lithose

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Cybsled said:
They've been toying with the "John isn't required to save mankind" idea for a while. T:TSCC played the most with that idea by really hammering down the time travel mechanics (ie, multi-verse).

It is sort of like the "what if Hitler was killed as a child?" thought exercise. The "kill Hitler" thing toys with the idea that if Hitler was killed off as a kid, then WW2 and the holocaust would have never have happened. But that is a gross simplification of things. WW1 still happened and Germans were still pissed at the punishment levied upon them. Strong anti-antisemitism still existed. Someone else could have easily taken the same role in the Nazi party and taken Hitler's place. Hell, without Hitler, maybe Germany would have even won Europe (since Hitler was an egotist who ignored a lot of military advice from people who knew better, resulting in opening up the Eastern front much earlier than he should have and hamstringing German military response during D-Day). I don't really have a problem with them killing off John or even changing Skynet. I kind of like the idea of a changing multiverse brought about by changes they do, and how no matter what they do, the future will always eventually find a way to make specific things happen anyways because the underlying things that cause those future events still exist.
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You're absolutely right. But you've also inadvertently hit on why these movies don't feel very satisfying. Because their themes are all fucked up and often downright contradictory. For example, as you described--the basic gist of what you described is...Fate. Things are fated to happen because forces that bring them about are larger than humans can control or any single human can change. Fate. Except the ENTIRE point of the Terminator one and two is that you have the power to...change your fate. And its clear they still attempt to adhere to this theme too, despite their entire film now showing how its wrong. Check out their movie posters if you don't believe me.

terminator-2.jpg



When Jen Connor becomes the fully realized "head" of the human resistance (When the hybrid tells her) there is a flash back scene where she says "Fuck fate". That's the entire point of her character is to fight against fate. But we've just watched how that struggle is useless. John Connor was supposed to fight against fate too, and he won that struggle...and what happened to him? He wound up dead and the same fate happened anyway with a new Jen Connor. There is no denying fate. If you won't cooperate, you'll simply die and fate will continue with someone else who is exactly like you.

The movie's entire theme is that the struggle to survive is pointless. Your actions are pointless. Even if Skynet 2.0 manages to kill Jen Connor, her very existence illustrates she is ALSO inevitable, and that said AI is also destined to lose the war. Meanwhile, every element within the movie is still trying to obtusely say "our fate is ours to choose"...What? No its not. Clearly its not. Unless you mean the choice to die or accept it, but you'll never live in a world that's been fundamentally changed by you in terms of how its supposed to be. Its inadvertent, depressing nihilism, and what's worse it makes the characters seem hollow and silly. Because they earnestly pursue the notion they can 'fuck fate', while stubbornly ignoring all the evidence they can't, without even a moment of self reflection on that fact--either they are idiots or vehicles to advance the plot and neither make for characters that are easy to sympathize with.

(And this is the issue with time travel movies in general, its why you can't really make sequels of them. Either your sequel illustrates you're stuck in a time loop that will play out in different ways to the same conclusion FOREVER, IE what Terminator is doing, and that's boring (Or horrific, and the only way you can make a good film is to acknowledge and confront the nihilism of it and make a story about that). Or you do what happened in T2 and show time travel is a true wildcard that disrupts fate/determinism and make your story hopeful.)
 
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Araysar

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The next Terminator should be a black woman played by Gabourey Sidibe

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V

velk

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Chukzombi said:
it all comes down to "do you have a story that you very much NEED to tell?" over "we have a marketable IP, lets print some money!". Terminator was not a marketable IP in its release, it told a story, it ended the story. there were no obvious loose ends left for a sequel. yeah the wrecked terminator was left behid, but as far as we know nobody recovered it . everyone just assumed it must have gotten scrapped by the owners of that industrial warehouse or whatever that was. the origin of Skynet was never explained. several years later. Cameron shits the bed with Abyss and he needs a comeback hit movie, so he revisits his old film Terminator which was originally a passion project of his based on a dream (by harlan ellison!) and had a huge following after it hit cable. he was able to revisit the story by finding all those loose ends and linking them together. wrecked terminator+skynet+sara connor pregnant with hero of the resistence. bam! makings of an excellent film. and he delivered because Cameron was still an excellent director at the time, it also worked because he developed the concept for the original film. thing is, he also ended it for good. all loose ends tied up.
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The 'industrial warehouse or whatever' in T1 was the Cyberdyne systems robotics factory, and the movie ended with Sarah pregnant with John Connor, heading to Mexico. T1 was all a closed time loop where the terminator trying to kill Sarah made John exist, and Reese trying to kill the terminator made skynet exist. None of that was a retcon for T2.

T2 was also left open, in that skynet was built from the original terminator's severed arm and chip, both of which were crushed out of the press in T1. In T2 Arnie loses the same parts in his battle with the T-1000, suggesting that the same thing could have happened again, despite Sarah's efforts.

Bringing it slightly back on topic, I was amused to note that Arnie lost those parts *again* for Dark Fate, at this point you'd have to assume they are deliberately detachable as a design feature ;p
 
mkopec

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Look, im not saying that there is not badass women, because some are. But this can kinda backfire too. I think women can get the wrong sense of power fantasy vs males when they are fed this bullshit over and over in the cinema and other places. Point being is even an average soy boy cuck faggot millenial could do some fucking dmg to a big girl if he wanted to. I know I could fuck up the women that were in my life with one hand and not even full power. In fact the wife and I play fight sometimes and I end up hurting her on power level 1 or even .5 when I dont even mean to.
 
Slaanesh69

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Lithose said:
You're absolutely right. But you've also inadvertently hit on why these movies don't feel very satisfying. Because their themes are all fucked up and often downright contradictory. For example, as you described--the basic gist of what you described is...Fate. Things are fated to happen because forces that bring them about are larger than humans can control or any single human can change. Fate. Except the ENTIRE point of the Terminator one and two is that you have the power to...change your fate. And its clear they still attempt to adhere to this theme too, despite their entire film now showing how its wrong. Check out their movie posters if you don't believe me.
Click to expand...

But isn't the whole point well beyond Fate in the multiverse concept? Every decision splits into a new universe so that there are infinite threads and infinite universes. So you go back and kill Hitler and just create a new thread. When you return to the "present" do you return to your original thread where nothing changes or this "new" thread?

I agree with the whole "shit would still have gone down" premise under the "kill Hitler" thought exercise, and the fact that we would all be blond and white and goose stepping to work if a more tactical leader rose to power. But would that leader have had the charisma and presence to bring the people together like Hitler did? The guile and fortitude to bully political opponents into the dirt? Maybe the alternative would lead but be unpopular. Maybe a woman would have led and the world would have been destroyed in atomic Armageddon before 1955.

Anyway, the time travel in entertainment rules are as loose as the rules about Vampires. They change to suit the story. Family Guy does a great job satirizing this regularly (love you, Stewie). I like movies like Looper that use it loosely around a decent story. I fucking love the end of that movie.
 
DickTrickle

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velk said:
The 'industrial warehouse or whatever' in T1 was the Cyberdyne systems robotics factory, and the movie ended with Sarah pregnant with John Connor, heading to Mexico. T1 was all a closed time loop where the terminator trying to kill Sarah made John exist, and Reese trying to kill the terminator made skynet exist. None of that was a retcon for T2.

T2 was also left open, in that skynet was built from the original terminator's severed arm and chip, both of which were crushed out of the press in T1. In T2 Arnie loses the same parts in his battle with the T-1000, suggesting that the same thing could have happened again, despite Sarah's efforts.

Bringing it slightly back on topic, I was amused to note that Arnie lost those parts *again* for Dark Fate, at this point you'd have to assume they are deliberately detachable as a design feature ;p
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It's chuk, can't expect him to understand anything.
 
Gamma Rays

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There are people who want to de-credit James Cameron for ripping off that TV show episode.

Just think of Terminator as one of the greatest re-boots ever. The original TV show is a low quality early 60's mess, that virtually no-one remebered after it aired.

What Cameron delivered was a hell of a great movie with a very small budget. Based on a very small amount of that TV episode. The bulk of the film was all James Cameron's ideas.
 
Arbitrary

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Gamma Rays said:
There are people who want to de-credit James Cameron for ripping off that TV show episode.

Just think of Terminator as one of the greatest re-boots ever. The original TV show is a low quality early 60's mess, that virtually no-one remebered after it aired.

What Cameron delivered was a hell of a great movie with a very small budget. Based on a very small amount of that TV episode. The bulk of the film was all James Cameron's ideas.
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All James Cameron had to do was pay him. That's it.



I love Terminator but not paying Ellison until you're forced to settle out of court complaining about it all the while is where Cameron gets some guff.
 
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DickTrickle

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Chukzombi said:
he's talking about stuff not in the movie. there is no point arguing deleted scenes because moviegoers never got to see them.
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You made it sound like James Cameron pulled it out of his ass because he needed a hit. The deleted scenes and other information makes it clear that he always had at least some plan for the future of the story if it ever continued.
 
Chukzombi

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DickTrickle said:
You made it sound like James Cameron pulled it out of his ass because he needed a hit. The deleted scenes and other information makes it clear that he always had at least some plan for the future of the story if it ever continued.
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it still has to make sense to the average moviegoer. i never said he pulled anything out of his ass. i said he went back to the well for a hit. he put the loose ends together that the average moviegoer would recognize. i dont even recall in T2 them mentioning the terminator was wrecked in their factory. just that cyberdine had acquired it. they had to do that because people who were unaware of the deleted scenes. as far as we were all aware, Skynet was the real threat.
 
C

Cynical

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Read the plot on Wikipedia, more than enough for me.

Kinda feel bad for Hamilton, sounds like she really put a lot of work into this.

Terminator learns to be a human, and adopts a family. What the fuck.
 
Lanx

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Cynical said:
Terminator learns to be a human, and adopts a family. What the fuck.
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i didn't read the spoiler, but thats what they did with GOT terminator, he stayed and aged, the girl calls him pops
 
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