Franchise Terminated - What Went Wrong with the Terminator Series

[shanto1138]

Franchise Terminated - What Went Wrong with the Terminator Series

The Terminator franchise hit its peak with its second installment - why was it all downhill from there?

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[Karadalis]

Well.. Terminator 2 was the end. It had a conclusive ending.. no cliffhanger, no teaser... no foreshadowing. The arm and chip where destroyed aswell as all the research data and arnie melted himselfe down to not give skynet the slightest chance whatsoever tp ever happen.

Ofcourse it could only go downhill from there because moving further on would lead to all sorts of timetravel loopey looney plot holes. In terminator 1 skynet was allready loosing and sending back the terminator was a last ditch effort to turn the war around.

Then in terminator 2 it literally send its most advanced terminator back in time just about when the humans defeated it, and had somehow still had a chance to send a T-800 back in time after the T-1000 (even thought that is a plothole in on itselfe) so at that point in the future, skynet was allready finished and the T-1000 was its last hurah.

And then they pulled the bunny out of the hat and claimed that SURPRISE! the military had its own version of skynet completly independand from cyberdine systems... and just so happened to be the very same skynet that would create the very same terminators and send those back in time.

In short: While the second movie had some minor plotholes... the other movies where complete trainwrecks from a narative standpoint... especialy the 4th movie where some random death row candidate is somehow turned into an infiltration terminator 4 or 5 years after the judgment day and god knows how long after he was actually executed... (wouldnt his corpse be decayed at that point?)

That and the practical special effects where alot more impressive back in the day then the computer generated stuff you see today. Theres nothing special about special effects when everyone with a computer and some money can pull them off.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Well.. Terminator 2 was the end. It had a conclusive ending.. no cliffhanger, no teaser... no foreshadowing. The arm and chip where destroyed aswell as all the research data and arnie melted himselfe down to not give skynet the slightest chance whatsoever tp ever happen.

When T-800 "Uncle Bob" is fighting the T-1000 in the steel mill, the T-800 gets its arm caught in a gear and severs it. The remains of that arm are never destroyed.

There were a couple novels that continued the story from where T2 left off, where Cyberdyne's R&D on SkyNet was only delayed, with the damaged arm in the steel mill recovered and replacing the destroyed arm from the first movie. Though they no longer had the damaged CPU from the first movie or Dyson's research, the novels were based on the fairly reasonable assumption that Cyberdyne executives kept much of the data backed up off-site.

The novels have flaws, sure... but they were a hell of a lot better than what we got with the actual movies that came out after T2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_%28novel_series%29

 

[shintakie10]

And then they pulled the bunny out of the hat and claimed that SURPRISE! the military had its own version of skynet completly independand from cyberdine systems... and just so happened to be the very same skynet that would create the very same terminators and send those back in time.

I tend to think of them as seperate things. The whole "AI goes evil and kills all mankind" thing isn't exactly a new idea. Having it be some other hyper advanced AI that just happens to fill the same void as the original hyper advanced AI wasn't too much of a stretch for me.

Plus I really enjoyed T3. There was something really interesting to me about the idea of inevitability. No matter what you do the future will always be the future. It might not happen exactly as it happened before, but it will absolutely happen.

 

[Zontar]

Well the future of the Terminator franchise is one which is going to be odd. Over the next 3 years 2 movies are planned to complete the trilogy Genisys started, and the year after that the rights automatically go into Cameron's hands so anything beyond that point is his call.

Personally I think of the first two movies as being part of a stable time-loop where the events of both happened but despite the character's actions Judgement Day still happens in 1997. T3 really should have been about the start of the resistance, when 2004's John Conner, 7 years into the war and without his mother to guild him, has to learn how to use the skills him mother and the T800 taught him and to teach them to those around him.

 

[fix-the-spade]

As for Terminator Salvation, it's actually kind of strange. When you sit down and look at it on paper, The movie is fine. The story is interesting the idea of Marcus was cool.

The worst thing about Salvation was the set up and reveal of Marcus being a Terminator. Aside from it being in every single trailer, the film treats it as a massive spoiler and surprise to everyone including Marcus despite his getting resurrected, smashed over the head without breaking step, then flung from a flying aircraft and comedy bouncing along the water at ninety miles an hour.

It made the tone really, really awkward.

 

[Zontar]

As for Terminator Salvation, it's actually kind of strange. When you sit down and look at it on paper, The movie is fine. The story is interesting the idea of Marcus was cool.

The worst thing about Salvation was the set up and reveal of Marcus being a Terminator. Aside from it being in every single trailer, the film treats it as a massive spoiler and surprise to everyone including Marcus despite his getting resurrected, smashed over the head without breaking step, then flung from a flying aircraft and comedy bouncing along the water at ninety miles an hour.

It made the tone really, really awkward.

I think I was misquoted, this seems to be happening more and more lately.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I think I was misquoted, this seems to be happening more and more lately.

Not really, I was just proffering my opinion on Salvation, with that segment of your quote as the lead in. It's not exactly a gotcha attempt.

 

[Zontar]

I think I was misquoted, this seems to be happening more and more lately.

Not really, I was just proffering my opinion on Salvation, with that segment of your quote as the lead in. It's not exactly a gotcha attempt.

Actually my point was that I was the one marked for the quote, but it was a different user you where responding to.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Actually my point was that I was the one marked for the quote, but it was a different user you where responding to.

Well herp and indeed derp, that's weird as I didn't edit the quote numbers or user. Corrected now, sorry about that.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

The arm wasn't that big of a plot hole. The endoskeletons are comprised of Titanium (for lightweight strength) and Coltan (for heat resistance). It's not like they could have learned anything significant from it.

Time travel as a plot device can make or break a franchise, Terminator never really kept track of what it did and didn't change. If they couldn't keep track, then the story for future movies would suffer for it.

But my question; How much better would Genesis have been if the didn't spoil the big points of the movie?

 

[llubtoille]

I'm going to go with an over-complication of an already fairly complicated story, on top of an insistence to keep reusing the same characters.

 

[CommanderL]

they cancelled the sarah conor chronicles thats where it went wrong

 

[pearcinator]

T2 was practically perfect.

The concept for the T-1000 was accepted and they thought about almost EVERYTHING to do with the liquid-metal concept.
-They showed how he can impersonate anybody
-Turned his arms into blades
-blew his 'hand' off and showed how he could re-form himself
-he morphed into the floor to hide
-Walked through metal bars
-Blew his head apart
-(briefly) showed him having four arms
-'melted' into the helicopter
-got frozen by liquid nitrogen
-shattered when frozen
-melted and re-formed: Except this time he had glitches from the damage
-decimated the T-800 in single-combat
-exploded by a grenade launcher
-melted in the furnace: finally killing him

T3 Meanwhile had the T-1000,000 which is a stupid name and was overall inferior to the T-1000. Go back and watch the movies back-to-back. Terminator 1 was a great thriller, T2 a superb action movie then you reach T3 and go 'wtf is this shit!' then Salvation is almost nothing like the others but I thought it was better than T3. Then Genisys comes and fucks up all continuity and ruins what made T1 and T2 great!

 

[SoulChaserJ]

What went wrong with the Terminator series: Time travel/The Butterfly effect. After the first Terminator was sent back and failed, the future would have the knowledge of what happened and how. They could/would send back the original Terminator with updated programming ad infinitum until their mission was accomplished. Think Edge of Tomorrow(live die repeat) and you'll see exactly how it would go. A never ending Groundhog's day

 

[zumbledum]

Franchise Terminated - What Went Wrong with the Terminator Series

The Terminator franchise hit its peak with its second installment - why was it all downhill from there?

Read Full Article

ive never understood why the second terminator was so popular, its a cheesy fan servicey piece of shash imo. the terminator takes like an hour off in the middle of the film, hes got none of the menace or threat of the first film. its just weak sauce! i actually think 4 was better than 2, and i dont rate 4 much either

 

[pilouuuu]

Maybe because they lack Guns n' roses on its soundtrack. Maybe Terminator movies are a product of the 80s and 90s, much like Guns themselves.

Terminator was an OK 80s B-movie. It was almost like a horror movie.

T2 had great action and it had an amazing production with innovative CGI FXs that were never seen before. All movies afterward failed to impress like T2. But I also think that T2 is not as amazing as most people think. I haven't seen it in many years, but I remember some pretty boring parts.

I enjoyed T3 a lot, but its flaws are mostly that it became somewhat like a self-parody and the new Terminator enemy was kinda boring.

Terminator Salvation: I remember being somewhat interested about its plot, but I can barely remember it. What I remember is that it was incredibly gritty and boring.

I quite enjoyed Genisys. It was very light-hearted and silly, but it had some good action and it opened possibilities for the future without ruining the previous movies.

What I think the Terminator franchise needs is a really big production directed by J.J. Abrahms and to move forward the plot.

 

[shteev]

I don't think Terminator should ever have been a franchise; the premise gets weaker and weaker every time we return to it. Terminator 1 presented us with a loop in time; soldiers sent back from the future create the very future that they were sent back from. A paradox, but a pretty simple and elegant one.

Terminator 2 threw all that out and retconned all that 'the future is not set' stuff back into the first one. By rights it should have killed the franchise stone dead but sadly it turned out to be a really great movie on account of it's groundbreaking and creative special effects and fantastic action sequences. Curse you Cameron!! I think it instilled in the minds of studio executives that we the audience really don't mind how ridiculous all this time travel stuff gets... and now here we are at Terminator Genisys.

 

[shanto1138]

That and the practical special effects where alot more impressive back in the day then the computer generated stuff you see today. Theres nothing special about special effects when everyone with a computer and some money can pull them off.

While watching the opening of "Genisys" I couldn't help but think how much BETTER the opening of T2 was. It kind of blew may away back in '91... and it still holds up!