f13.net

Since I've been going back and watching a bunch of movies lately, including stuff I "should have" seen, we've been watching the Terminator movies.

Part 1 is as good as it ever was, though it's got that dated 1980s look to it now - the same as Die Hard 1 did. But like the first Die hard, it still holds up well. T2 is still good, though the cheesy things that annoyed me about it back in the day still annoy me.

Salvation - well, I haven't seen it yet, but when I watch it in the next week or so, I'll join in and necropost over here:
http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15547.0

But part 3... well, I heard it was a bad movie, which contributed to my not having seen it when it came out. But damn, it really was a bad movie. There were some alright parts, but mostly it just made me lolroll my eyes. The car chase was particularly stupid, especially the elements with the police and emergency service vehicles. The TX having both an evil robot skeleton as well as the liquid metal and all of the superpowers of the T-1000 was also pretty /eyeroll.

Yep, awful film. That they made John Connor such a softcock didn't help as well as adding in new bits of backstory (the T1000 was a prototype, but the T-X was a super prototype  :awesome_for_real:) that messed with the existing canon.

I wouldn't watch Salvation either, if I was you.

I disagree.   I actually enjoyed it.  The first 1/2 is actually particularly good, and the second half is well, not as good, but worth watching anyway. 


Back to T3, yea, absolute crap.   I think it suffers mostly from the fact that the T2 villain (T1000) was just fucking awesome.  It was just too hard to one-up it, and it ended up being really deliberate to the point where it ripped you out of the movie a few times thinking "well, it feels like they are just trying to make her more powerful than the T1000."

I disagree as well. Despite some flaws, I liked Salvation, especially considering it was done by the execrable McG.

Salvation is one of two movies I enjoy if I watch it with the originally planned ending in mind.

Did they ever release footage of that ending?

Never seen any. But the fact alone that Marcus was supposed to be the hero of the piece instead of a glorified organ donor suddenly made sense of the movie.

Yes, I agree entirely.  But they didn't do that.  So it became a bit fucking pointless.

Also, we talk in the Salvation thread of the massive plot hole running through the whole movie;  I won't spoil it here.

The biggest problem with T3 was that they didn't know what to do beyond remake T2 and had to figure out how to do that as a sequel. They'd really have been better off just making it a reboot of some sort and I have a vague suspicion that T3 being that shit was part of the reason studios have been much keener on reboots than continuing sequels. Though it might just be because generally third movies that haven't been planned as part of a series have been just awful generally.

"So, like, a Terminator goes back in time to kill a Connor."

"Again?!?!?!"

I wasn't fond of Salvation, but at least it didn't just ape the first 3 movies.

This pissed me off no end.

Ability-wise, it seems to me that the T-X is considerably more logical than the T-1000, in all the abilities she has, like the taking over computers and such.  T-1000 was awesome, but only in a direct physical way, while T-X's abilities seem much more in line with a logically constructed weapon-of-the-future sort of thing, able to take control of enemy weaponry, obtain data from their computers, and so on.

Except its a fucking wasteland.

The T-X does it's computer magic on an automobile, and suddenly it can shift it's own gears and steer itself and shit. I know cars have a lot more electronics in them now than they used to, but I still had a hard time with that.

Still, as shit as the movie was, the T-X seemed like a logical successor to the T-800 and T-1000 overall. The 800 was tough, but could only look like one person and wouldn't blend in very well once it's meat disguise was damaged. The 1000 got rid of those drawbacks, but wasn't quite as immovable. When hit with pistol and rifle bullets, the 1000 would wobble back and forth badly enough to spoil it's own aim, whereas the 800 in the first movie casually waded through a hail of gunfire without missing a shot while storming the police station.

The T-X is a tank like the T-800, but it maintains the T-1000's ability to look like other people and resistance to being easily disfigured. It can't pull off fancy tricks like turning into floor tiles or passing through bars like the T-1000, but it trades those tricks for vastly more practical things like on-board weapons. Something neither the T-800 or T-1000 were able to pull off. The 800 couldn't have built-in weapons without compromising it's disguise, and the 1000 couldn't because it had no solid parts.

The whole film was a bunch of solid parts.

The best part of T3 was the ending. And I mean that in a non-sarcastic way. Bland rehash of T2 right to the end, then suddenly:
"You can't kill Skynet. It's the Internet"
"But then why were we sent here?...oh crap"

The videogame ending is better than the film's, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpsoyyDoGWc
 :drill:

I think the T3 ending was a stroke of genious that pleased the nerd in me to no end.

Agreed; I loved the ending. None of my friends did, though. They didn't think the movie had any redeemable qualities.

That's really how it felt - Terminator 2.2



That was the most fucking stupid thing to me. Especially given the cars in question. The cop cars were bad enough, but that paramedic van thing was no brand-new state-of-the-art vehicle - pretty much a mechanical automobile than an electronic one. And how did the cars "see" where they were driving so well to be moving at high speeds and agressively? Using their headlights as eyes?  :roll:

Also, the T-X was just bad. It really was "we'll give this one all the powers of both the previous baddies, plus more. and it won't make consistent sense even within the one film, buit it doesn't matter, because we're making TERMINATOR 2+1 MONEYHATS"

I'll give the ending some credit as an unexpected twist from the bland T2 remake that the rest of the film was, but that's about it. One good idea doesn't make a shit film good, unfortunately. -but it can have the opposite effect, just ask Will Smith and the evil animalistic vampires.

Meh. Once you've got the shapeshifting liquid metal goop that can break the "nothing dead will go" time travel rule, why would you bother covering your terminators with meat ever again?

(http://www.martinwildig.com/pictures/kylereese_1.jpg)

"I don't know, I didn't build the fucking thing!"

 :drill:

No.  People don't understand this one.  The meat shell is still there.  It just doesn't last very long at all.  And once it's gone, the Terminator can put the metal covering over it. 

(No, I don't know either, but that's ALWAYS the rationalisation that I've used...)

We shouldn't go down that road, lest we ask ourselves why they didn't fill a metal box with a fully armed and equipped Terminator and coat that whole box with the Terminator meat shell. Or better yet, an asskicking Terminator De Lorean. The Windshield Wipers could be razors cutting away the Meatshield after it came through the Time machine.

Good Call.

In T1, they didn't have time to do all the silliness. It was Kyle Reese and the Terminator and then they smashed the time travel device. Maybe they could fix it or build another one, but by then, it's over. Note that I always was under the impression that the Terminator situation was last ditch, hail mary, people are still shooting guns and fighting while the time machine is warmed up.

T2 pushed that premise really hard by adding another set of time travellers, and I assumed that the T1000's skin could mimic flesh well enough to pass the "living thing" field limitation.

Anything beyond that gets you meatcapsules, which is goofy.

They were pretty explicit about describing the situation thus in the first movie, but then dropped the emphasis on it all being very last ditch in the later ones, which I think is what generally causes all the confusion.

Or... the events of the first movie altered the timelines of the subsequent movies, thus changing the war and the situation - so as it was no longer a last ditch thing. Err, or something like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCpJBzB17g0#t=04m45s

Poop. The auto-embed won't let me link a time. Start at 4:45 if you want teh funnay.