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Pointless plot and absolute disrespect towards the source material


Part 1, because of character limit. Here are the stupidest points in this film:

1. It was established in T1 and T2, that sending back a terminator and a protector was a last ditch effort by SkyNet and the resistance, and the time machine was destroyed after that. So there should be no more terminators coming, as there is no time machine to send them through. This was not addressed at all!

2. Sarah and John are inexplicably chilling on a beach in 1998. You could say the date has significance, because they stopped JD happening in 1997, so they were calm and tried to have a normal life, but... it still directly goes against Sarah's character to not be alert at any given time about potential threats to his son. For a Terminator to get a drop on them like that is disrespectful towards the characterization of these two in T2. At least they should've put up a fight. Sarah was unable to produce even a handgun to protect John. Of course without the help of any protectors, they wouldn't have stood a chance, but still... Of course JC is Cameron's character, so he can do anything with him, but my heart dropped when I read his quote about why he thought it was a good idea to kill off John like that. Newsflash: it wasn't. Not like this, not without dismissing the previous point and not without any meaning (see next point).

3. John's death was meaningless in the long run: only the names of the AI and the people involved changed, but history is always playing out the same way (so much for "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves"), so what's the point?

4. The Rev 9 doesn't bring anything new to the table. It's incredible that since 1991, no one could come up with a truly surprising ability for any terminator models we saw ever since. It speaks to T2's brilliance that's for sure. Liquid metal, stabbing weapons, imitation of people, endoskeleton... it's like a goddamned checklist from T1 and T2. Besides that, the guy played it has 0,0000003% of the charisma of Robert Patrick.

5. Grace, the protector has also very little character and charisma. Conceptually she is a cross between a human and a terminator, but in order to avoid her being OP, they gave him this "short bursts of action" weakness. It really showed how the writers artificially crammed this into the plot. Also, the fact that she is saved by Dani and sent back to protect her is a lame rehash of Kyle Reese's relationship to John & Sarah... in that movie it made sense from time travel standpoint to send him back, it had extra meaning. Here? Nah. Also, apart from being a badass soldier, she did not have any character traits. Kyle Reese was human, and had some moments where his personality was revealed. We don't get anything here.

6. The plot is entirely pointless. It's T2 again, just like T3 and T5. T5 at least had some creativity as it played around with some characters and concepts and had interesting parts. It wasn't a good movie (mainly because of the horrible, horrible casting choices for Kyle Reese and John Connor), but at least it was bold and took some chances. This movie not so much, everything happens just like in T2. Arnold at one point is even damaged almost the same way as in T2, before he switches to a backup power source, just like in T2. Disgusting.

7. The action scenes are nothing special. A complete misunderstanding of what made T2 a great movie. Truck chase? Check. Helicopter chase? Check. Liquid terminator blowing up then reassembling? Check. T-800 VS liquid terminator? Check. The only new elements were the plane scene and the endoskeleton - liquid outer layer separation trick. The former was entirely forgettable, and even this latter new element was under-utilized. It could have used for some neat fight coreography, but that would actually have taken some effort, so obviously no such scene was planned. I was very excited after the factory fight scene at the start, because finally it was a well-lit scene with nice coreography and fun beats. After that, the highway scene was decent - and then everything went downhill fast. The night scenes in T2 were much better lit than the night scenes in this movie. And the location of the final fight was lame - a similar "factory" looked much better in T2.

8. The main character, Dani was so forgettable, I almost forgot her entirely.

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Part 2, continued with #9:

9. "Carl" - WTF? I remember the fun speculation we had back on the IMDb Terminator (1984) board (RIP) about what would've happened if any of the terminators from T1 or T2 completed their mission. The plausible answers ranged from shutting down on the spot to proceeding to a safe location and lying dormant until SkyNet calls it again to use him again in the war... but even the most deranged users (and trust me... we had many of those back on IMDb) wouldn't dared to come up with such ludicrous scenario, not even for a fun comment on the internet. To include this nonsense in the script of the film and then filming it boggles my mind! Also I facepalmed when they showed Arnold with a dog in his lap... Dogs should go absolutely mental in the presence of Terminators!!! The fact that it's completely ignoring the switch in the Terminator's head introduced in the DC of T2 is adding insult to injury. When the protector T-800 in T2 learned some stuff, it felt earned, as he asked for the Connors to activate the learning chip. But even at the end of the movie he understands that he may learn about human emotions, thoughts, etc., but he could never actually feel them. "Now I know why you cry. But it's something I could never do.". Of course not - understanding the "mechanism" and the reasons behind crying is a long shot from feeling the emotions that trigger it - and T2 was a smart movie to let this machine understand how exactly is it different from humans and that it can never be a human (of course). And a terminator understanding the value of human life without the learning chip activated in his head would be bad enough, but... but... Carl? CARL? In a cabin in the woods? With a wife? Raising a kid? With a day job? Drapers? Polka dots???????? Balloons???????????? WHAT AM I WATCHING??????????????????????

Jesus Christ, this gorram character limit. I'll need a Part 3.

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Part 3, continued with #10:

10. James Cameron's involvement. This is the big one. The most painful point of them all. James Cameron is one of my most respected directors / writers working currently in the industry. James Cameron understands how to tell a story. James Cameron knows how to direct stunning and creative action sequences. You know, if none of the original creators of T1 / T2 were involved in this, I wouldn't be this mad at DF. But come on, JC himself came up with killing JC (heh), and I don't know what else he suggested exactly, but at least he passively let the other writers disrespect T1 and T2 (details in the previous points), and... I just... don't know what happened to him. If he didn't care at all about Terminator anymore (he stated numerous times in the past that T2 is the end of it as far as he is concerned), then why get involved in the first place? It happened to Ridley Scott (see Prometheus and Alien Covenant), but I never thought it could happen to Cameron: he forgot what elements made his original work so compelling and so brilliant. Such a shame...

All in all, this is the third time they tried to make a decent sequel to T2, and this one also crashed and burned. I gave it 5/10, because overall it's watchable, at times it was neatly filmed, and Sarah Connor's return was badass, as Linda Hamilton still has an amazing screen presence. And I loved seeing Arnold again in action as a T-800 (aside from the Carl nonsense of course). So I'll stop here to end on a positive note.

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10. James Cameron has gone SENILE, OBSESSED with his stupid Avatar movies that will bomb completely by the second and he's wasting his time developing FIVE of 'em!! He's so obsessed with Avatar that he's decided to discard his previous work completely and that's why he went along with DF, probably because he's fed up of moaning fans so his attitude is "fuck it" or just "meh" or "whatever" and is just doing anything so he can eschew Terminator from his life and go back to his precious pet Avatar. He's certainly lost my respect for him. At this rate, T1+T2, Aliens, Titanic and True Lies will be mere FOOTNOTES to his bloated ego praising Avatar to the hilt.

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I have no problem with Cameron being obsessed with Avatar, I liked the first.

If he wants to do 5 more Avatar movies, so be it. If he doesn't care about Terminator anymore, leave it. Fine by me.

But why did he get involved at all in DF? Why not leave it for someone else to fail miserably? This is what's baffling to me. He should've just left it alone altogether.

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1 - time travel films / loops / paradoxes / whatever , anything can happen
2 - they were , chilling , war was over . fine . at least she was armed.
3 - well , looks like the machines are always gonna take over , as sure as wars in the middle east.
4 - you dont need anything new , the liquid over skeleton was a bonus
5 - didnt really understand the rambling but she a protector. soldier from the future . job done.
6 - thats what usually sequels are , same shit with a few twists.
7 - the action scenes were adequate from what i remember.
8 - u maybe right , i have no memory of her.

9 - I cant deny thats pretty F***ing out there

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1. Haha, an easy out. Just because you have time travel in your story, doesn't excuse the lazy "back to square one, we'll tell the same story folks!" approach. Just for fun, let me cite an example from... this very franchise! The plot complexity T2 compared to T1 was great, and it logically followed from the events of T1, instead of being a lame rehash of the previous plot... like DF clearly is.

2. "at least she was armed" - umm... no, she wasn't. As I mentioned in my OP.

3. This point renders all the plot of the previous movies moot. Not a good start (, Boris!) for a sequel to disrespect them like that, right?

4. "you don't need anything new" - Thanks for telling me that in actuality I wanted to see the same Terminator for the 6th time. Clearly it's too big of an ask towards the filmmakers to give us something new in 2019 compared to what we had in 1991...

5. The rambling was about how she doesn't really have a personality and how she's not memorable at all.

6. See point #1 above.

7. This is a subjective point. If you liked them, good for you.

8. Haha, exactly!

9. Haha, exactly!

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NO...BAD DOG...NO.

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Care to elaborate? I'm not really getting your point.

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Never mind Kowalski, he's an idiot with a stuck-down Shift key.

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ILL HAVE YO KNOW....I HAVE TO ENSURE MY CAPS LOCK IS ENGAGED EVERYTIME I POST...AN IDIOT WOULD FORGET OR GIVE UP.

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