The Antipodean

Finally saw this. Decent if not quite great - I liked the first 2/3 a lot but actually thought it kind of fell down in the final act. While it was nice to see Arnold again the story sort of fell into standard action showdown territory after promising a bit more. I’d rank it tied with T3 for me (which I think is rather underrated). T1 and T2 are the only stone cold classics, T5 was muddled, and T4 is still by far the worst imho. I think this franchise is finally done though until theY reboot entirely with a new cast in 2028.

E Unit

They should have just called this Terminator: The Adventures of Carl. This was a silly mess right from the get go. So I guess this marks the 4th unnecessary sequel the doesn't add anything to the overall story.

rexinnih

Honestly, this is very close to my assessment. I am only counting Terminator and Terminator 2 and calling it a day.

Unclejosh

I actually like this a lot more than I expected and think it is the best one since T2. Got a bad rap in my opinion.

Mike86

I thought Dark Fate was okay. The problem with the Terminator franchise is that the first two are so good, and nothing since has come close to matching up.

I think it’s time to just stop trying with the franchise. I mean we’ve had four underwhelming films and a tv series. I’ve liked pretty much all of them to varying degrees, but they don’t have mainstream popularity and continue to do worse and worse. It’s tired and just not catching on with people like it once did.

E Unit

I really checked out when "Carl" was talking about decorating a girls room. Not exactly in the same vein as the original and Judgement Day.

TGM

agreed.

IBJoel

I would go so far as to say the issue is that they refuse to change the premise that much. Our relationship to technology and information has changed immensely since the 1980s and 90s. So why did Dark Fate change so little about the apocalyptic future? I thought the idea of super soldiers was awesome. But once SkyNet was stopped, another evil AI did the exact same thing? I thought a neat twist would have been that in the "new" future, there was no evil AI. Or if anything, there was a good AI born out of a human-created apocalypse, trying to piece the world back together, but humans too addicted to tribalism keep warring with one another and the machines.

tanman

Yeah the whole Terminator franchise just doesn't work as a franchise. They just wanted to make more movies for the money but the stories were never there. They had two great movies and a theme park attraction worth of ideas. After that they've pretty much been mediocre to awful. But I can't tell you what would make another great terminator movie. Either they try too hard to be like previous movies where they are clearly just hitting the hallmarks of the franchise e.g. "I'll be back", "come with me if you want to live" without finding an identity of it's own. I have to credit Terminator Salvation for at least giving us the future war movie we've always wanted. Dark Fate was definitely the best Terminator movie since T2 but still pales in comparison to T1 and T2.

Josh-da-man

The Terminator, as a concept, is really limited in scope. There's not really much you can do with it. It's like a closed loop. It's not open ended.

After the original Terminator, the logical direction would be to follow-up with things like Skynet causing Judgement Day, the war against the machines, and John Connor ultimately defeating the machines and winning the war.

But to do that might either be too budget intensive (especially for the 80s and 90s), and audiences might have rejected those films because they strayed too far from the formula established in the first one. Even now, Salvation is looked upon unfavorably by many.

So now we're stuck with a franchise that just keeps going back to the same well with diminishing returns. (Lucasfilm, take note!)

The Antipodean

Terminator and Terminator 2 together tell a concise apocalyptic story, one that has been exhumed every few years with diminishing returns ever since. Instead of it becoming a story of humanity changing a dark future, seen over six films it’s actually a tale of how no matter how many robots you kill, everything is still going to go horribly wrong somehow in the end.

Traxan

I caught this on TV. What a rip off of T2, right down to the helicopter chase. And did I miss it or was there no explanation from the T-800 why he suddenly looks 70 years old?

Grace was a nice addition but man, Mackenzie is a strange-looking chick. She has a neck to rival Marc Alaimo.

Unclejosh

The T-800 has living tissue so it ages normally.

MLBFan24

To expand on that....

The living tissue ages, which is why the T-800 is considered to be Skynet's perfect series. The T-800 can blend in with humans, which wasn't achieved with the T-600 series. The T-600 was 7'3" tall. Not a common human height. Very easy to spot.

And that is why Salvation is a great film. It really paid great respect to the Terminator mythology. Unlike the other Terminator sequels, which just ripped off Terminator 2 over and over and over....