Action-Adventure Terminator: Dark Fate

[Da-Scribe]

Saw this last night. Overall, I enjoyed it but I think where it lets itself down is that it doesn't give you those quieter moments. Like I look back at T2 when John is teaching the T-800 slang and how to hi-five. We didn't get those smaller human beats. We hear about how Sarah drinks or how Carl learned to become human, but we don't ever see it.

And I kinda agree with whoever said this flick could've worked without Grace. She's badass, but that's about it. She's mostly just an exposition machine and without her, the film could've been about Carl and Sarah saving Dani from the Rev-9. Would've given them more time to focus on the characters that matter most in this franchise and allowed for some added intrigue as to how things still went south in the future and where Dani fits into it all.

Gabriel Luna though. Hollywood needs to stop playing with this man. Such a shame this film is flopping because he ranks right up there with Arnie and Robert Patrick for me. He is just charming and smooth as hell while still being so unsettling. From his dead-eye look to the face of a sort of pleasure when he regenerates, he just absolutely nails it here. If a Terminator can learn to love and protect because it wants to, I would say a Terminator can also learn to hate and destroy because it wants to. Luna's Rev-9 feels like it's enjoying all of this at times.

 

[Detective Conan]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree about Salvation being the better movie. It may have had a better idea for a movie, but the execution was pure trash. Worthington is a charisma-less black hole that I didn't care what happened to him. Bale either whispered or yelled his way through the movie. The only good thing about that movie was Anton Yelchin (RIP) as Reese. If they had made a movie with him as the lead, it would have been so much better (minus the cliche kid who doesn't speak)

To clarify: I only mean that Salvation had a better story direction to the take series in than this movie since Salvation was doing stuff that was conceptually new that we’d never see the series do before. I like that it was a departure from the formula of the first three movies & moved into uncharted territory, but I still think Dark Fate is a better movie.

James Cameron done goofed up with that idea!

This is just another case of where even the original creator of a beloved franchise can come up with bad ideas. Case in point: George Lucas came up with the Midiclorians in the prequel trilogy as well as the idea of having aliens in Indiana Jones: Crystal Skull.

 

[Daywalker89]

Does the Terminator brand even mean anything to people anymore? Besides those of us who grew up in the 80s/90s who obviously hold it near and dear, do the 2000’s babies care about this franchise? This opening weekend seems to tell me ‘no,’

Exactly this, Terminator and other 80's properties are not for this generation coming up. There pretty much on Marvel/F&F films mixed with Netflix and Amazon Prime. A few people in this thread discussed this over the last few pages. Its a obvious sign.

Not only are the people who grew up with these 80/90's films sick of the reboots but sometimes the blatant pushing of political agendas. I have a feeling some are pissed off from " the future is female " vibe around the plot of TDF and

Spoiler

the killing of john

pretty much confirms that from all the video reviews i've watched. The comment sections speak volumes. Before anyone calls me a misogynist, Women are saying the same aswell.

 

[TheVileOne]

The prologue of the movie basically ****s on the audiences who loved the first two films and who T2 is precious to.

And the rest of the movie? Terminator means nothing to millennial audiences of today. To the people who didn't grow up with these films. Or all they know is the past awful sequels.

Not to mention, Cameron himself railed against the way Alien 3 started and basically did the same thing here.

The women in the movie are not the problem so much as their dialogue and direction.

 

[kguillou]

Yup. The Terminator is very much a product of its time, just the concept itself is derived from that 80’s paranoia of the Cold War and technology taking over to kill us all. Its a dated concept even if those first two movies still hold up extremely well.

Its time to put this, Predator and Aliens to rest, people.

 

[Neno_Kos]

Yup. The Terminator is very much a product of its time, just the concept itself is derived from that 80’s paranoia of the Cold War and technology taking over to kill us all. Its a dated concept even if those first two movies still hold up extremely well.

Its time to put this, Predator and Aliens to rest, people.

Movies like Predator are timeless. And i still believe you can make great Predator movie. You can have Predator in any century in any culture and any location. It's basically hunting sport game where hunter eventually gets hunted. There is nothing outdated there as the concept. Just dumb Hollywood.

You can still make great Terminator movie if you put and set it in future. Where we basically following Resistance and events there. Without actual time travel or rehashing Linda or rehashing Arnold. Movie which could actually improve T1 and T2 and made it even more important. As for Alien franchise I dont need sequels.

 

[Kane52630]

The prologue of the movie basically ****s on the audiences who loved the first two films and who T2 is precious to.

I love the first two and yet I never felt I was sh** on with what they did.

 

[TheVileOne]

I love the first two and yet I never felt I was sh** on with what they did.

Hey some people don't have a problem with the prologue and that's fine, but it's a polarizing scene and that's undeniable. But there are people who love the franchise feel that scene takes a big giant dump on them.

 

[kguillou]

Movies like Predator are timeless. And i still believe you can make great Predator movie. You can have Predator in any century in any culture and any location. It's basically hunting sport game where hunter eventually gets hunted. There is nothing outdated there as the concept. Just dumb Hollywood.

You can still make great Terminator movie if you put and set it in future. Where we basically following Resistance and events there. Without actual time travel or rehashing Linda or rehashing Arnold. Movie which could actually improve T1 and T2 and made it even more important. As for Alien franchise I dont need sequels.

I actually agree on The Predator. That could still very much work. You just need to make it a down and dirty, R-rated survival film which is what the first one was at its essence. And you need colorful, charismatic characters that you root for.

 

[Zorro]

I kinda want to rewatch this but this time at a theater so I can support it but then I also feel like just watching T1&2 instead!

Everything after T2 is fine for a watch on a streaming service once in a while but I can't ever get enough of the first two films and I'm 34yo now in 2019(I watched T2 in theaters in 1991 at 5 or 6yo)

 

[Da-Scribe]

I didn’t mind it but I think there were better ways of handling things.

My initial thoughts for what could’ve been different:

Spoiler

I’d have had Sarah and John narrowly escape. So Sarah fakes his death and spends the next few years isolating him from the outside world under the idea that Carl could one day find them. John grows spiteful and runs away and the two don’t see each other for over a decade.

Then Sarah starts getting the texts like in the movie and spends her life hunting Terminators and trying to find her son. It similarly leads her to the Rev-9 and Dani and takes the two on a road trip.

They eventually encounter Dyson’s son who helps them get the coordinates to Carl. When they reach Carl, he’s shacked up with John.

It’s revealed that Carl came across John sometime during his disappearance. This completely shatters Carl’s programming as it’d been Mission Complete for him for years and he’d been in the early stages of growing a consciousness. John stays with him because he sees Carl as a father figure from his T2 experiences. Together they’ve been monitoring Sarah and trying to give her purpose. Carl tracks the time shockwaves or whatever and John handles the data encryptions (a callback to his early hacking skills seen in the T2 ATM scene).

There’d be no Grace in this version. Instead Carl learns of the future from a nearly successful attempt by the Rev-9 to reprogram him.

You still get a new savior without killing off John. And the relationships between Sarah, John, and Carl get more ample focus.

 

[Marvolo]

'Terminator: Dark Fate' Puts Franchise on Ice, Faces $120M-Plus Loss

A storied Hollywood film franchise has been terminated — at least for the foreseeable future.

Terminator: Dark Fate bombed in its global box office debut over the weekend, grossing just $29 million in the U.S., well behind expectations.

Nor was its performance much better overseas, where it has earned $94.6 million to date, including a lackluster China launch of $28 million, for a global total of $123.6 million.

Dark Fate faces losses of $120 million-plus for partners Skydance Media, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, which each put up 30 percent of the $185 million budget (Disney, which now owns the Fox film studio, will absorb the loss), sources tell The Hollywood Reporter. China's Tencent has a 10 percent stake.

The red ink could end up at $130 million if the pic doesn't hold internationally; conversely, the losses could be closer to $110 million if it does have strong legs offshore, sources add.

While the losses will be spread around, Dark Fate's surprisingly poor performance is a blow for David Ellison's Skydance, which has spent tens of millions trying to reboot the James Cameron-created series that first hit the big screen in 1984. It's also a blow for Paramount, which needs franchises.

Ellison’s first attempt was 2015's Terminator Genisys, released in partnership with Warner Bros. The film, which cost more than $150 million to produce before marketing, grossed $440.6 million globally, so it wasn’t a financial disaster. It earned more than $100 million in China alone, but faltered in the U.S., where it topped out at $89.8 million.

Terminator Genisys was supposed to be the first of a trilogy but was reviled by critics. Ellison quickly scrapped the two follow-ups and went back to the drawing board. He arranged for Cameron to come back and produce a movie that would be a direct sequel to the first two films — The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, both of which were directed by Cameron — as well as helped arrange for the return of original series stars Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The R-rated Dark Fate was directed by Deadpool helmer Tim Miller. Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes, Gabriel Luna and Diego Boneta also star.

Box office analysts say the movie's poor opening is a reflection of complete IP failure. (Insiders at Paramount and Skydance don't disagree.)

"It is time to let this franchise finally go to the great beyond," says Eric Handler of MKM Partners.

Adds Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations, "This is definitely the end of the line for the Terminator franchise in its current iteration. That said, IPs are harder to kill off than Jason Vorhees these days. So, expect a new series in five years on CBS All Access. Probably animated this time."

None of the companies involved would comment on the losses, but sources close to Skydance say there are certainly no plans for another film at this point. Ellison acquired the rights to Terminator from his sister, producer Megan Ellison, who bought them for a reported $20 million in 2011.

Following the first two films, neither Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) nor Terminator Salvation (2009) were able to reboot the film series, followed by Genisys. Analysts say any company would have tried again, considering the franchise mentality permeating the Hollywood studio system.

"The goodwill and brand equity created by the first two Terminator films was arguably undone by the subsequent pre-Dark Fate installments, which may have negatively impacted audience interest in this latest chapter in the series," says Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore.

Dark Fate is the second pricey miss in a row for Paramount and Skydance, following Ang Lee's Gemini Man.

Skydance is Paramount's financing partner on pics including the Mission: Impossible series and the upcoming Top Gun reboot. Separately, Skydance sold Michael Bay's big-budget 6 Underground, starring Ryan Reynolds, to Netflix for a reported $150 million-plus.

Netflix and Skydance are also making The Old Guard, an action pic directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Charlize Theron, KiK Layne, Marwan Kenzari, Matthias Schoenaerts and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The pic, based on the comic book of the same name, is currently filming.

Guess I'll wait for it to show up on Disney+.

 

[Zorro]

Disney owns Terminator? I think you mean Amazon/Hulu or Netflix

 

[The Chris]

Hey some people don't have a problem with the prologue and that's fine, but it's a polarizing scene and that's undeniable. But there are people who love the franchise feel that scene takes a big giant dump on them.

It's strange for me because even though it didn't affect my enjoyment of the overall movie, at the same i really wish they didn't do that. Couldn't they have found another way?

 

[Marvolo]

Disney owns Terminator? I think you mean Amazon/Hulu or Netflix

Disney owns Fox.

 

[-JKR-]

Depends on where you live. 20th Century Fox doesn't distribute the movie in the US. And Disney+ won't have R-rated movies anyway.

 

[Filmfreak]

Yeah, Disney+ will basically be for Disney stuff. With a few exceptions like the Simpsons, pretty much all of the FOX stuff will surely go to Hulu.

But I am confused. Who actually owns the distribution rights to the Terminator movies?

 

[Legendver2]

Yeah, Disney+ will basically be for Disney stuff. With a few exceptions like the Simpsons, pretty much all of the FOX stuff will surely go to Hulu.

But I am confused. Who actually owns the distribution rights to the Terminator movies?

Skynet...er....

Spoiler

I mean Legion.

 

[TheVileOne]

It's strange for me because even though it didn't affect my enjoyment of the overall movie, at the same i really wish they didn't do that. Couldn't they have found another way?

It's sort of the tough thing about sequels. People want movies to have a satisfying or happy ending for the characters. But movie plots and narratives thrive on conflict and tragedy. So bringing Sarah back sort of precludes having tragedy in her life as Cameron and Tim Miller expressed.

So like take Jurassic World for example. At the end of the movie, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt's characters get together. Then they break up off screen and not dating at the start of the sequel. Then by the end they are back together. Because Hollywood doesn't really know how to do it any other way. They need to have the characters in conflict to have more tension there because they don't know how to write them together as a couple in the movie.

 

[Zorro]

The conflict and direction of John Connor still could have done in so many better ways though

 

[jfurioso]

shows the fault of the filmmaker mentality in regards to the character. I can see the problem in the fact that the character has to live up to the legend. But simply removing the puzzle solves nothing. If you think handling the character of John Connor is too difficult, then have a story that doesn't focus on him so much. That or, you know, go make a movie that is not Terminator.

Or move the story forward in unexpected directions without having to retcon anything.

Have John Connor win the machine war and become dictator of the world, using T1000s as shock troops to keep the world ordered and in "peace", his paranoia born of decades of struggles making him think the only way to save the world is to keep machines and humans alike as serfs without freedom. Or have intelligent machines be now enslaved creatures despite being able to have emotions and dreams. And that Skynet and the machine war was actually a slave rebellion that John Connor helped put down.
Have a new lead try to overthrow John's rule and establish a world where machines and humans can coexist in harmony, and to do that, repairs the last functioning T100, the last Terminator that is not enslaved to human orders, to use to save the world, by killing John Connor.

 

[TheVileOne]

Well Genisys already tried making John Connor the bad guy and fans didn't like that either.

 

[jfurioso]

Genisys tried to remake the Terminator story with twists making Connor an evil timetraveling terminator. What I suggest is to make him complete the typical path of all great revolutionary liberators, like Fidel, etc. Turning him into a tyrant who brings a new kind of slavery. And the solution is a twist of the original premise, a Terminator must be awakened from the past to kill the John Connor of the future. Maybe even have Sarah be the one to help, since her son went down that dark path.

 

[TheVileOne]

How long until Cameron disowns this movie and says he never wanted to be involved in the first place and just did it as a favor?

Tim Miller is blaming Joker on the movie's failure. *Sigh*



The Avengers was responsible for the failure of Battleship as well.

 

[Zorro]

I've enjoyed all John Connor actors and the character(except for getting turned into a terminator in Genisys)but something about the cameo/glimpse of future john in T2's opening scene has always stood out to me and really interestes me.

I'm fascinated by the future of the first two films and this actor has a unique presence about him despite not saying a word and only appearing for a couple of seconds walking and doing this

Plus john is only a teenager in T2/SC Chronicles and Dark Fate, Confused and scared young adult in T3 and an elite soldier with some command in Salvation but not what/who's he's supposed to be yet. He finally got to his destiny in Genisys..but then got ruined and screwed by Skynet