Terminator: Genisys - Part 8

[Rocketman]

Salvation had the right idea, and honestly the perfect damn cast... It just needed a good director.

 

[TheVileOne]

I think what happened with Salvation is that they built the story around Marcus instead of John Connor. They tried to increase Connor's role after they got Bale for the role, but it never really worked. Marcus was clearly meant to be the lead character.

I think settling on Marcus as that guy was the mistake.

 

[DyeLorean]

That's where I disagree. The first two movies are most compelling precisely because we don't exactly know what happens in the future. What works in T1 and T2 is that both films are about the people in it, and what they have to do in order to prevent something from happening. The future itself is sort of the MacGuffin of it all.
The future was far more interesting (at least to me) when I didn't exactly know what was going to happen, the mystery and the 'unknown' of that terrifying future works a lot better than actually being in that future, you know what I mean?

 

[Brother Jack]

I just don't think the story can go anywhere. It ended with T2, closing the causality loop and (most likely) preventing judgement day. Anything you do after that muddles and bloats an already complete arc. The only place you could go is in the machine war, but you run into the problem of that being an alternate future rendered moot by the original two.

 

[Octoberist]

Then that war is happen no matter what since they said you're just pushing back destiny or whatever. Pointless.

 

[TheVileOne]

In the first movie though, time travel is a self-fulfilling prophecy. the time travel in Terminator prevents nothing. It changes nothing. The time travel is simply part of that history. The Terminators going back in time to kill John Connor's mother is what causes John Connor to be conceived and ultimately born. Judgment Day can't be averted. Sarah can only exist as the mother to give birth to humanity's savior.

 

[Brother Jack]

In the first movie though, time travel is a self-fulfilling prophecy. the time travel in Terminator prevents nothing. It changes nothing. The time travel is simply part of that history. The Terminators going back in time to kill John Connor's mother is what causes John Connor to be conceived and ultimately born. Judgment Day can't be averted. Sarah can only exist as the mother to give birth to humanity's savior.

The second movie undoes that loop by making the remnants of the T-800 the catalyst that allows Skynet to become self-aware and then destroying those remnants. The T-800 sacrifices itself to prevent judgement day. That is the end of the story.

It's helpful to think of it as a line with diverting paths like in Back to the Future II rather than a circle. The original timeline goes on its self-fulfilling course with Reese being sent back to father John and the original T-800 being sent back to birth Skynet. Then T2 creates a diverging line wherein the T-800 is prevented from kickstarting Skynet.

 

[Rocketman]

I know most will disagree, but I think one way to continue this franchise is by saying bye-bye to the Connor/Reese family. Focus on a whole new group. There's nowhere else to go with the Connors, and the TV series arguably presented them best.

The TV series also wasn't afraid to fully embrace Non-Arnold terminators, and it worked. He is not the be-all-end-all of the franchise. Good storytelling and good directing will keep this alive and nothing else.

 

[Alien Anal]

I never saw the attempts in T2 as being successful but just another attempt at destroying the inevitable.

In T1 we see a fresh faced Sarah learn about the future, she is still very emotional and very human which is a big contrast to how we see her in T2 where she has almost become a human machine with one purpose of stopping judgement day. The same can be said about the T800 in T1 to T2 but in a reverse order. I think this time it needs to be John who starts out as a emotionless cold killing machine but he slowly learns what it means to be human again through his interactions with Kyle.

My simple idea for a T3 film would be to take the story full circle. I think the film needs to follow the original themes of robots/humans gaining and losing humanity. I would have the movie start with a very cold and robotic like John Connor that has lost his humanity in the war against the machines and has basically become a machine. I would have him and kyle on the final mission that leads up to the time travel scenes but I would have john Connor slowly throughout the film regaining his humanity as he talks with his younger father..much like Sarah did or the T800 did in T1\T2

If anyone reads this I would really like some feedback or discussion on this idea

 

[TheVileOne]

The second movie undoes that loop by making the remnants of the T-800 the catalyst that allows Skynet to become self-aware and then destroying those remnants. The T-800 sacrifices itself to prevent judgement day. That is the end of the story.

It's helpful to think of it as a line with diverting paths like in Back to the Future II rather than a circle. The original timeline goes on its self-fulfilling course with Reese being sent back to father John and the original T-800 being sent back to birth Skynet. Then T2 creates a diverging line wherein the T-800 is prevented from kickstarting Skynet.

Brother Jack, but has anything truly been undone? The film ends with a sense of hope that maybe Judgment Day has been averted and the future is not set. But it's still ambiguous. Cameron cut the future ending where everything is OK and Sarah grew into a content old woman while John Connor became like a senator and plays with his family in a playground.

There's still a sense at the end of Terminator 2 that Judgment Day could still happen.

 

[GREEN =w= DAY]

if only Cameron would have stuck with the original ending in T2

 

[TheVileOne]

I'm glad they took that ending out, it doesn't fit the rest of the film IMHO. It just looks kind of goofy compared to the rest of the film.

Not only that, it gives the film a better proper ending. One that's hopeful but still ambiguous. Maybe the future has been saved, but maybe time is in flux so it could become endangered again.

 

[dude stannis]

The original ending was closer to Demolition Man than T2 lol.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Salvation had the right idea, and honestly the perfect damn cast... It just needed a good director.

I still to this day wonder what the hell they were thinking getting McG to do that movie.

 

[Rocketman]

I still to this day wonder what the hell they were thinking getting McG to do that movie.

I'm sure he wasn't the first director they were talking to... He was probably the one who finally said yes (10th or 11th down on the list). I'll bet anything that they talked to the usual suspects first. The thing is, most high profile directors probably didn't want to get anywhere near this. The intimidation, the big shoes to fill, the amount of work, etc.

 

[Kanon]

I'm sure he wasn't the first director they were talking to... He was probably the one who finally said yes (10th or 11th down on the list). I'll bet anything that they talked to the usual suspects first. The thing is, most high profile directors probably didn't want to get anywhere near this. The intimidation, the big shoes to fill, the amount of work, etc.

And the script was a mess (of the highest order, tens of major revisions), due to the strike, IIRC they rushed it so they had something to shoot. It was probably poison to the average director.

 

[Rocketman]

And the script was a mess (of the highest order, tens of major revisions), due to the strike, IIRC they rushed it so they had something to shoot. It was probably poison to the average director.

Yeah. And there wasn't even a main character. It's like two screenwriters were fighting over who the lead was. "It's Sam Worthington!" "No, it's Christian Bale!" -- That's honestly the first thing they should've worked out.

And neither of them were true protagonists, nor were they antagonists. I don't even remember who the villain was, to be honest. We basically had two "heroes" and zero villains, haha.

 

[henzINNIT]

I never saw the attempts in T2 as being successful but just another attempt at destroying the inevitable.

In T1 we see a fresh faced Sarah learn about the future, she is still very emotional and very human which is a big contrast to how we see her in T2 where she has almost become a human machine with one purpose of stopping judgement day. The same can be said about the T800 in T1 to T2 but in a reverse order. I think this time it needs to be John who starts out as a emotionless cold killing machine but he slowly learns what it means to be human again through his interactions with Kyle.

My simple idea for a T3 film would be to take the story full circle. I think the film needs to follow the original themes of robots/humans gaining and losing humanity. I would have the movie start with a very cold and robotic like John Connor that has lost his humanity in the war against the machines and has basically become a machine. I would have him and kyle on the final mission that leads up to the time travel scenes but I would have john Connor slowly throughout the film regaining his humanity as he talks with his younger father..much like Sarah did or the T800 did in T1\T2

If anyone reads this I would really like some feedback or discussion on this idea

This would be how a T3 was made if someone who cared had a say in it. The problem is none of the films post-Cameron could respect making something with finality while they had the scent of a potential frachise.

It makes total sense to continue the complicated Connor family arc through to its fruition. I've always pictured future John as someone who has become completely detatched from humanity because of his knowledge of the future. Similar to Sarah in T2 but more calculated and emotionless. He probably sits in his bunk and stares at a wall covered in a grid of dates and locations. Over the course of the film, he would develop a fatherly/brotherly bond with Kyle Reese building toward an emotional climax where Kyle makes the choice to travel through time and sacrifice himself.

Throw Arnold in as a human soldier to build on the complex relationship between that face and the Connors, and you have a movie.

I still to this day wonder what the hell they were thinking getting McG to do that movie.

He's a bull***** artist. The interviews and statements he made during production and promotion were filled with (false) promises. I bet he gives a good pitch.

if only Cameron would have stuck with the original ending in T2

The original ending was awful. How many US senators have backgrounds in domestic terrorism?

 

[Jay Beezy]

I just don't think the story can go anywhere. It ended with T2, closing the causality loop and (most likely) preventing judgement day. Anything you do after that muddles and bloats an already complete arc. The only place you could go is in the machine war, but you run into the problem of that being an alternate future rendered moot by the original two.

Not to be a technical nitpicker, but T2 breaks the loop. A closed loop is an infinite never ending cycle, a linked circle chain of events from present to future to present.

 

[StarLord]

I still to this day wonder what the hell they were thinking getting McG to do that movie.

I wonder how this hack still gets work.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Agree with you all on McG, poor director and should never have been near the franchise.

 

[Teelie]

Salvation might have been a much better movie but with the massive problems it encountered it was never going to achieve that. McG is a questionable director but he might have pulled it off. However stick in a writer's strike on top of massive rewrites to make Batman Christian Bale's involvement more prominent and they changed the direction so entirely it was doomed.

 

[Jay Beezy]

Salvation might have been a much better movie but with the massive problems it encountered it was never going to achieve that. McG is a questionable director but he might have pulled it off. However stick in a writer's strike on top of massive rewrites to make Batman Christian Bale's involvement more prominent and they changed the direction so entirely it was doomed.

Didn't McG do a decent job from a visual standpoint?

 

[Teelie]

Visually I think so. The story was very much a problem but as a director he can only do so much with that. I honestly don't think there are any directors who would have walked away from this movie unscathed but he got a bad reputation right off the bat being only a director of music videos previously.

 

[Jay Beezy]

Visually I think so. The story was very much a problem but as a director he can only do so much with that. I honestly don't think there are any directors who would have walked away from this movie unscathed but he got a bad reputation right off the bat being only a director of music videos previously.

Not all music video directors become lousy film directors. Directors like David Fincher and Spike Jonze started off in music videos.

Going into Salvation, though, McG's reputation stemmed from doing the Charlie's Angels movies. Plus he behaves like a frat brother. He's a producer on that Shadowhunters show which costars Alexandra Daddario's brother Matthew. McG once tweeted a photo of the two of them together and likened them to Jaime and Cersei Lannister. He since deleted that tweet, but it's obvious what his mindset is.