Action-Adventure Terminator: Dark Fate

[Sithborg]

I'm getting so sick of seeing recommended videos on youtube about this film flopping and the phrase "Go Woke, Go Broke" in the titles or thumbnail images

Welcome to my youtube recomendations post Last Jedi.

 

[Schlosser85]

Yup, did nothing to change my opinion that they should have ended with #2 and everything since feels like fanfiction. While there’s a certain small pleasure in seeing Arnold and Linda Hamilton again, neither of them really did anything special. The concept of a Terminator left adrift with no purpose after fulfilling its mission, developing a conscience, and becoming more human could have been interesting but it and “Carl” in general was pretty underdeveloped.

Spoiler

Also let’s just kill John Connor and then....replace him with a pseudo John Connor stand-in. Even their “daring” decision there doesn’t shake anything up. John becomes Dani and Skynet becomes Legion.

There’s also too many characters with Grace the most obvious extra one. Mackenzie Davis was fine but they could have done more with Carl if they’d left her out and gotten to him sooner and had more focus on him and Sarah. Grace just felt like she got in the way of all that. Gabriel Luna wasn’t all that threatening and definitely no Robert Patrick. The fight scenes have way too much CGI and exaggerated flipping around and everything just looks too cartoony and has absolutely none of the grittiness of the first two movies. Overall it’s iust meh.

 

[titansupes]

Just got out-- Happy to say, I really enjoyed this.

Very visceral, very exciting with just enough of a different flavour from its predecessors. It definitely has almost all the issues we all saw coming a mile off, though ie repetitive (technically more the fault of the previous failures than this, but still), too large and CG-ish in scale, has to disrupt the end of T2 to set up basically the same thing with a different coat of paint etc.

Plus a couple more-- The John situation (great scene, though) clunky exposition, never fully buying the Dani character, and one too many protector characters (though I can't actually decide who to cut, I liked them all).

But heck-- They said they wanted it to be a white-knuckle thrill ride, and it delivered that for me.

T2: JD
T1
TD: DF
...
...
...
...
T3: RotM
TS
T:G

 

[Da-Scribe]

Dani really needed a stronger actor. Also Miller fell into the same trap as those Ghost Rider 2 guys. Trying to make every character a badass. It gets old quick especially when there are obvious weak links in the cast.

 

[TheVileOne]

Not sure Tim Miller was exactly "fired' in post, but it does sound like the editing process was a creative mess and Cameron and Miller didn't see eye to eye on a lot.

 

[Punisher_MAX]

Havent seen the movie but I'm wondering what each of their visions entailed.

 

[dark_b]

Spoiler

i think the opening flashback was meant to be used in the apartment scene when Sarah introduces herself. In the theatrical version IMO it doesnt make sense that they first show the flashback in the beginning and then later Sarah tells the characters that John was killed. It would make sense that the movie opens with Grace .

 

[GothamAlleys]

Sucks the movie does so bad. Putting aside the issue of discarding the John/Skynet mythology and how fans accept it, I think the movie is intense and much more adult oriented than many scifi movies today. Its grimm and brutal, and its almost Alien 3 of the franchise. Its not a action comedy like T3, silly cartoony transformers video game like Salvation or superhero/marvelish like Genisys. Its going for the throat from the beginning. I like the idea of new threat and completely new villain and future and really liked the movie aside from how brutal Johns death is

 

[Zorro]

Being the Alien 3 of a franchise ain't ever a good thing

 

[Arachnerd]

They needed to introduce a fresh new direction with this movie, and while they were headed there with the opening scene, it basically amounted to nothing since it mostly became a retread of T2, and not a well-done one at that.

I would not mind seeing this franchise die, but realistically speaking this is Hollywood we're talking about, so just leave it in purgatory for a long while until someone comes along who actually wants to do something different with the franchise and is successful at it.

 

[DarkKnight88]

Better than being the Alien Resurrection (Salvation) or Alien Vs Predator (Genysis) of the series.

 

[Arachnerd]

You should've put AvP: Requiem on there.

 

[Schlosser85]

They needed to introduce a fresh new direction with this movie, and while they were headed there with the opening scene, it basically amounted to nothing since it mostly became a retread of T2, and not a well-done one at that.

I would not mind seeing this franchise die, but realistically speaking this is Hollywood we're talking about, so just leave it in purgatory for a long while until someone comes along who actually wants to do something different with the franchise and is successful at it.

Exactly. It makes

Spoiler

unceremoniously killing off John Connor even more insulting when all they do afterwards is just replace him with a pseudo-John Connor, someone who's so much a John stand-in that Sarah even says "you're John" (yea thanks for spelling it out, movie), and replacing Skynet with Legion which is literally just Skynet with a different name.

 

[Zorro]

I can agree with Genisys being AvP: Reqiuem

I don't completely hate Alien: Resurrection and Salvation is my 2nd favorite post T2 after Dark Fate

 

[kguillou]

I actually refuse to watch Ali3n and Resurrection to this day in order to preserve my perfect image of the first two.

 

[Schlosser85]

I actually refuse to watch Ali3n and Resurrection to this day in order to preserve my image of the first two.

I take the same approach with Alien as I do with Terminator, I don't consider anything after #2 canon.

 

[Zorro]

I sure wish I never saw Alien 3 after Aliens

 

[Schlosser85]

I sure wish I never saw Alien 3 after Aliens

"Remember that little girl whose bond with Ripley was pretty much the emotional crux of the whole last movie? Yea, **** her. We killed her offscreen before the opening credits are done rolling. Hope you weren't attached to Hicks or Bishop either. Oh, and Ripley's knocked up with a chestburster and is gonna sacrifice herself at the end of basically a slasher movie filled with rapists."

It's just a nasty, unpleasant movie. Not to say that Alien or Aliens were sunniest movies or anything, but Aliens has heart. It makes you care, and then Alien 3 just unceremoniously craps all over it.

 

[Zorro]

Alien vs Predator was smart not to make it a direct prequel or sequel to any timeline besides having Weyland. It felt like it's own what if thing such as the comics and video games

 

[Asr]

Just came back from this and thought it was ok. Not good by any stretch, but not terrible either.

I'm with those who didn't like what the opening did—and honestly it made little logical sense if this was supposed to follow on after the events of T2:

Spoiler

Since the T-1000, T-800, and the CPU all melted in T2, Judgment Day was supposedly averted, and thus the creation of Skynet was averted as well. And if Skynet was never created, then there'd be no Terminators to keep sending back in time. So how the heck was another Terminator able to show up to kill John Connor?

Stuff like that made me wonder how much effort was actually put into the screenplay, because it seemed like the writers didn't care at all about a plot that made sense.

Honestly, could easily nitpick the movie to death as a fan of T1 and T2, especially since I basically grew up with those movies in the pop culture consciousness (I was too young to be able to catch either of their original theatrical runs, and forget now how I first saw them, but it might have been on either VHS or a TV broadcast). It definitely felt like the filmmakers were familiar with the Terminator legacy in this movie with a bunch of homages to the earlier movies, but at the same time I also felt like they intentionally chose to crap on the legacy of T1 and T2 in countless ways (not the least of which was not even letting the Terminator theme music play out its full length during either the opening or ending!).

I will say that I liked the action the most in the movie. The fight scenes were staged pretty well and really highlighted how deadly and capable the Rev-9 was. The Rev-9 was a legitimately frightening villain and nearly every scene with it was suspenseful as hell. The only thing not great about the Rev-9 was Gabriel Luna who didn't quite have the same screen presence that Robert Patrick did.

At this point I wouldn't mind another entry in the franchise, but it's long past time to move on from Arnold's T-800 and Sarah Connor. Definitely still feel like there's unexplored potential with the universe, as long it's set in the future. These "present day" movies aren't doing anything good for the franchise and keep rehashing old characters in pointless ways.

Also, total missed opportunity in not having the Dr. Silberman character show up again. That might've been a fun cameo since he was in the first 3 Terminator movies and we haven't seen him since.

 

[Willi Berg]

I'm with those who didn't like what the opening did—and honestly it made little logical sense if this was supposed to follow on after the events of T2:

Spoiler

Since the T-1000, T-800, and the CPU all melted in T2, Judgment Day was supposedly averted, and thus the creation of Skynet was averted as well. And if Skynet was never created, then there'd be no Terminators to keep sending back in time. So how the heck was another Terminator able to show up to kill John Connor?

I think the idea is that

Spoiler

there were a bunch of Terminators all sent at once but to different time periods. So it was sent at the same time the T1000 in T2 was sent, before the creation of Skynet was averted.

 

[Vapor]

I had an alright time watching it and I didn’t hate it but neither did I really like it.

I feel like there are some solid ideas in here but they never really meet their full potential and It makes me wonder just how much involvement James Cameron actually had or if he just signed off on some early concepts again.

Carl was interesting in concept, if maybe underdeveloped and (even though he always been involved in some capacity) it was good to see Arnie in the role again - I thought he did good with it and in his own way he is funny too. It was good seeing Linda Hamilton back but she didn’t do much apart from swear a lot. Gabriel Luna was ok and the idea of the Rev9 was cool but it just wasn’t menacing or intimidating (like the T1000 was). Dani was ‘fine’ and I thought Mackenzie Davis was good but does the Terminator franchise really need to go down the “enhanced” route.

There was definitely too much CGI jumping around. I don’t understand how, over 20 years later, they can’t better or even match the T1000 effects. Maybe it’s the modern day cameras… everything felt too clean and crisp whereas T2 had that old school action vibe.. Whilst the action is directed well, it also felt like they took a “more explosions, more action, bigger is better” approach but they don’t compensate with any real character moments. If you look at T2, there probably isn’t a great deal of action but the action set pieces are well paced and integrated and it makes you appreciate the action when there is some. The ending was too over the top IMO, bigger isn’t always better.

Spoiler

I didn’t like the way that John Connor was so important previously and they just offed him, it felt a bit like a shock tactic, although I did like the effect it had on Sarah, being bitter that no-one remembers him. And I’m glad they didn’t spoil his return in the trailers, that was a pleasant surprise and I’m not sure if it was a cgi recreation or what but it looked seamless.

Maybe it was intentional but I felt they were a bit wishy washy on some of the details.. like what exactly Legion is, how it starts and when the new judgement day is. On the one hand I suppose, with human nature, there is always going to be an AI and a judgement day and I get that Legion is a ‘new’ threat but I thought they could have done a bit more to connect Skynet to Legion in some way… like explain that Skynet was the pre-cursor and a setback (events of T2) caused Legion to be built or something, whereas they made it sound like Skynet never existed.

I don’t know if it was just me but it felt a bit like the timeline/character ages didn’t really add up – you see a young Grace In the future when ‘judgement day’ is happening and you see a young Grace playing in the present too but they look the same age which to me suggests that the new Judgement Day is right around the corner - but you never get that impression from the film or from what Grace says. The future with the hover jets and weapons and whatnot feels too advanced for the amount of time that would have passed too - unless we’re meant to assume that Legion is already super advanced and creates a lot of the future tech. Also, Grace says that on Day 1 everything “went dark” and on Day 2 they sent the nukes up…. How if everything was ‘dark’ ??

I think it might have been Sarah who makes an off hand comment about the Terminators been infiltrators that feels like it was put in there to help explain Carl… but – at least IMO – they’re not infiltrators. They’re Terminators. They don’t blend in or con their way in to the targets life. They have one job – find and kill the target. To me, this just felt like an odd thing to say.

I think there’s probably quite a lot that you can nitpick at with this film.. It does a lot to act as a ‘true’ sequel but at the same time I feel it does a lot to separate itself and (either un-intentionally or intentionally, I’m not sure) crap on the first two..

It’s definitely better than previous sequel attempts but no-where near as good as T2. If this was its own thing or T1/T2 never existed and this was the first, then it would probably be pretty good… but at the end of the day, nothing is ever going live up to or surpass T2.

 

[Willi Berg]

I think there’s probably quite a lot that you can nitpick at with this film.. It does a lot to act as a ‘true’ sequel but at the same time I feel it does a lot to separate itself and (either un-intentionally or intentionally, I’m not sure) crap on the first two..

It’s definitely better than previous sequel attempts but no-where near as good as T2. If this was its own thing or T1/T2 never existed and this was the first, then it would probably be pretty good… but at the end of the day, nothing is ever going live up to or surpass T2.

I think that was its problem- it was trying to go old and new at the same time. Either go all the way new and forget the past and forget the old characters. If it was all new characters then more time could be spent developing them and setting up the new future scenario and threat. Or, if it wanted to focus on the old characters- if it was true sequel to T2- then do it more completely and stick with them and the original story more. They wanted both and so both suffered.

I saw an interview with Cameron and he seemed to be the one insisting to Tim Miller to add more of the old characters (I think especially Arnie.) In the movie Miller looked like he wanted to move on to a newer scenario and now it seems he should've been given more freedom to do so.

It's true nothing will top T1 and T2. Which is why it probably would've been better to completely break away or do something much more different with the concept. And that sounds like it could be done better with a streaming series (if anything at all now.)

 

[Joe Von Zombie]

So is Tim Miller's career as a director over at this point? Doesn't seem to play well with others.

I actually take a harder stance on the Alien franchise. There's Alien and Alien: Isolation. I love Aliens for the big dumb video game movie that it is, but James Cameron's Starship Troopers take on the Xenomorph really trivialized a lot of the more Lovecraftian elements of the original film which the prequels tried to go back to, but that's a mixed bag.

 

[Hunter Rider]

Terminator Dark Fate T-800 Statue by Chronicle Collectibles