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I think that might actually make sense in terms of tech?

In the Skynet future, the resistance get most of their plasma weapons by capturing and reworking the Terminators' own rifles so humans can use them. That always seemed to me like a massive oversight - one of the only weapons that can kill a Terminator, while not being especially more effective at killing humans than a ballistic rifle... and the Terminators keep dropping them everywhere?

In the Legion future, the ones we see attacking - Rev 7s - use their own bodies as weapons and do so fairly effectively. A relatively small number of them take down a vehicle and pretty much everyone in it, and they leave nothing behind humans can use (Unless that's where the augmentation parts come from, but it's hard to say because the humans clearly have their own R&D department)

It's also worth saying that in terms of the augmented soldiers, Grace has much better luck dodging projectiles or thwarting stuff like the drone that she can anticipate than she has with fighting him hand to hand. So if the humans have a bunch of those super soldiers (we only see one other) maybe it's the most reliable way of killing them?

 Ouze wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
So.... What's up with this terminator? Metal endoskeleton with polymemetic alloy skin, kind of like the T-X in Terminator 3. The difference being that the liquid metal can at least temporarily split off from the skeleton to do it's own thing? I wonder if this is actually 2 terminators acting together, or a networked single entity.

Weirdly enough, now that the movie came out, I still can't answer that. They never explain how the Rev9 works at all. So, pretty much what you saw in the trailer, or barring that, what you saw with Transformers: Pretenders.

And, not to be pendantic, but

Spoiler:

the Rev9 isn't actually a Terminator at all, in the sense of the previous films - if we define Terminators as semi-autonomous agents of Skynet - since there is no Skynet, and Legion taking that branding seems gauche at best.

Also, the Rev9 was not at all equipped to deal with an actual T800 in the way the T-X was. I think from what we saw in the movie, a T-800 would probably destroy the Rev9 9 times out of 10.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
So.... What's up with this terminator? Metal endoskeleton with polymemetic alloy skin, kind of like the T-X in Terminator 3. The difference being that the liquid metal can at least temporarily split off from the skeleton to do it's own thing? I wonder if this is actually 2 terminators acting together, or a networked single entity.

Weirdly enough, now that the movie came out, I still can't answer that. They never explain how the Rev9 works at all. So, pretty much what you saw in the trailer, or barring that, what you saw with Transformers: Pretenders.

And, not to be pendantic, but

Spoiler:

the Rev9 isn't actually a Terminator at all, in the sense of the previous films - if we define Terminators as semi-autonomous agents of Skynet - since there is no Skynet, and Legion taking that branding seems gauche at best.

Also, the Rev9 was not at all equipped to deal with an actual T800 in the way the T-X was. I think from what we saw in the movie, a T-800 would probably destroy the Rev9 9 times out of 10.

Spoiler:

Legion still uses the same 2 classifications for it's machines it seems though. In the future people call them HK's (Hunter Killers for the "vehicles") and terminators (for the "man sized" entities).

Well the leader of the resistance Was introduced to them via a person who referred to them as Terminators.

Well, looks like Tim Miller got his wish and scared off those trolls. The movie according to the various industry news reports is a bomb and expected to lose $100+ million dollars and do worse than the previous two reboots.

 warboss wrote:
Well, looks like Tim Miller got his wish and scared off those trolls. The movie according to the various industry news reports is a bomb and expected to lose $100+ million dollars and do worse than the previous two reboots.

What is this in reference to? What was Tim Miller's exact quote?

In my opinion it was obvious as soon as that poster with three women appeared that there would be a culture war backlash against the movie. But there's some culture war backlash against every big budget movie these days, so no surprise. Without knowing what Tim Miller said and in what context, I assume he was talking about that.

As for the film having any kind of culture war message, there is one belabored conversation that was super cringey, out of character, and felt like it had been written for a film 25 years ago, but--but!--it was not written into the story for culture war purposes but rather to set up a twist. A really obvious twist that was in fact the audience's first assumption about the film and thus not a twist at all. That whole tangent was just embarrassing.

As for people being upset about an event in the first 5 minutes...Yeah, it's supposed to be upsetting. And shocking. And it removed a lot of baggage from the character and actor that could have overly complicated a film where even Dani feels superfluous for most of the movie. If you don't like that moment, that's fine. If it ruins the film for you, that's understandable. For me, it put the movie into that "what if" category of side-canon.


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Casualty wrote:
I think that might actually make sense in terms of tech?

In the Skynet future, the resistance get most of their plasma weapons by capturing and reworking the Terminators' own rifles so humans can use them. That always seemed to me like a massive oversight - one of the only weapons that can kill a Terminator, while not being especially more effective at killing humans than a ballistic rifle... and the Terminators keep dropping them everywhere?

In the Legion future, the ones we see attacking - Rev 7s - use their own bodies as weapons and do so fairly effectively. A relatively small number of them take down a vehicle and pretty much everyone in it, and they leave nothing behind humans can use (Unless that's where the augmentation parts come from, but it's hard to say because the humans clearly have their own R&D department)

It's also worth saying that in terms of the augmented soldiers, Grace has much better luck dodging projectiles or thwarting stuff like the drone that she can anticipate than she has with fighting him hand to hand. So if the humans have a bunch of those super soldiers (we only see one other) maybe it's the most reliable way of killing them?

Did Skynet invent plasma weapons? The Terminator seemed to believe he could buy one from a human. I always assumed humans invented the tech and Skynet just made better use of It. The infiltrators were likely given weapons that the Reistance would not immediately spot as fresh Skynet originals. Also, the yield earlier in the war was noticeably higher, blasting humans into flaming rags. In T2-3D, one shot from a plasma rifle blasts a freeway pillar to dust. Skynet seems to have dialed down the yield for the final battle either to increase the rate of fire or charge life of the weapon or to reduce friendly fire damage and Tech Com's ability to pick up a rifle and get immediate use out of it. Also, Skynet may not have had the logistics for solid rounds; the HK's appear to be built for long, autonomous patrols.

I don't feel like we got to know enough about the Legion future. Apparently technological civilization fails soon and never restarts, but the resistance have cybernetic augment parts and flying water-strider troop carriers. Legion also used what were essentially missiles, but the Rev 7s never thought to pick up some rocks and turn any of their tentacles into slings.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

What is this in reference to? What was Tim Miller's exact quote?

https://variety.com/2019/film/features/director-tim-miller-terminator-dark-fate-comic-con-1203262797/

He’s not exactly wrong though, is he?

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

What is this in reference to? What was Tim Miller's exact quote?

https://variety.com/2019/film/features/director-tim-miller-terminator-dark-fate-comic-con-1203262797/

Spoiler:

An early “Dark Fate” poster received backlash, calling Davis and her co-stars “feminazis” and other chauvinist hate speech. How do you think she’ll be received in the room at Comic-Con?

If you’re at all enlightened, she’ll play like gangbusters. If you’re a closet misogynist, she’ll scare the f–k out of you, because she’s tough and strong but very feminine. We did not trade certain gender traits for others; she’s just very strong, and that frightens some dudes. You can see online the responses to some of the early s–t that’s out there, trolls on the internet. I don’t give a f–k.

I'm not seeing much of a problem with this other than his use of the word "enlightened" where "chill" or even "normal" would have been the better choice. This is pretty much exactly what I expected: trolls went nuts over the poster and Tim Miller said anything at all about it.




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Could you explain to me, if you see his comment as some kind of outrage, why?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I'm not seeing much of a problem with this other than his use of the word "enlightened" where "chill" or even "normal" would have been the better choice. This is pretty much exactly what I expected: trolls went nuts over the poster and Tim Miller said anything at all about it.

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Could you explain to me, if you see his comment as some kind of outrage, why?

It would be impossbile to have an open and honest discussion regarding the problems many folks (including myself) have with the messaging and apparently the end product (I didn't see it myself but rather watched spoiler reviews) without breaking the rules of this forum. It would be doubly stupid to do so with a mod warning on the prior page.

Fair enough. We can discuss in PMs if you're interested.

My own take on the film bombing is that the last 3 Terminator films were crap, the advertisements for Dark Fate were crap, there are angry people online (who may not have seen it) calling it crap, and most action movies are crap, so most people just assumed it was crap. The Bumblebee Effect, they call it.

Reading spoiler reviews is no match for actually watching it.

Seriously. The gender of the leads doesn’t even come into it. At all. Nothing is made of it. It’s not commented upon.

Wait until it’s on digital media and give it a rent. See for yourself.

It is commented on once in that cringe-inducing conversation I mentioned earlier, but it was in service of a lame twist rather than gender politics.

Having her "Kyle Reese" unable to impregnate her also neatly keeps the audience from wasting time anticipating the closed loop twist of the first movie. I suppose they could have done that with Danny and Gary instead of Dani and Grace, but then the movie would have felt even more repetitive.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Fair enough. We can discuss in PMs if you're interested.

My own take on the film bombing is that the last 3 Terminator films were crap, the advertisements for Dark Fate were crap, there are angry people online (who may not have seen it) calling it crap, and most action movies are crap, so most people just assumed it was crap. The Bumblebee Effect, they call it.

Yeah, I'll pm you later tonight as I can't right now. Needless to say, the prior three movies also being "meh" to "bad" depending on the viewpoint on top of whatever folks thought of this one certainly didn't help this movie either on top of the voldemort issues (that can't be discussed).

I thought Bumblebee was a financial success; am I mistaken? I remember the general talk around that movie being positive in regards to how much it was making at the time with the studio execs hinting that it might spawn a reboot fo the franchise even.

I thought Bumblebee was considered a soft success at best, like Godzilla KOTM, but for the studios a failure to live up to studio expectations and the death-knell for the franchise.
Common wisdom is that it massively underperformed for its quality.

I think Genesys was more than bad enough to cripple any chance this film had.

 warboss wrote:
Needless to say, the prior three movies also being "meh" to "bad" depending on the viewpoint on top of whatever folks thought of this one certainly didn't help this movie.

Yeah, it's kind of ironic that the only good Terminator movie post-T2 is probably going to be the one to sink the franchise. My guess would be "franchise exhaustion" - you can only have so many turds in a row before all but the diehards tune out.

Even if the next Predator movie is somehow amazing*, I imagine it will meet the same fate.

Kinda sad we're likely never going to get any answers to some of the questions I was thinking about last night:



*which, statistically, it won't be, lol

Spoiler:

How come the T800 estimated the chances of destroying the Rev9 at like 12% or whatever when it appears the T800 was significantly better in hand-to-hand combat? In that same vein, why was the Rev9 - with a clear and distinct predisposition to melee - so bad at fighting the T800? I mean, at one point the T800 literally just grabbed him and tarpitted him for a fight.

I wasn’t planning to see this movie at all until I read MDG’s review and a couple others. Franchise exhaustion is real.


Too be fair to Carl, the Rev 9 had his hands on Dani a couple of times and should have killed her instantly like he did the border patrol. Carl couldn’t have anticipated such incompetence.

This is a really interesting "burning questions" piece with Tim Miller, if anybody's still curious about any hanging plot points or implications -

https://io9.gizmodo.com/dark-fates-tim-miller-helps-us-answer-all-your-burning-1839400178

My main takeaway is that maybe we should all be more careful what we wish for in terms of Cameron's involvement because this is the latest of a few examples where his takes seem WAY off base to me.

Yeah, I remember Cameron raving about how amazing Salvation was going to be, too. Yet another dude who created something awesome and now desperately needs to be kept away from it (see George Lucas, Chris Carter, etc).

thanks for that article, lots of neat backstory. One of the things that was kind of a bummer - but I guess consistent with the franchise worldview - was



So, while Skynet specifically isn't inevitable, something Skynet-esque surely is.

 warboss wrote:
Well, looks like Tim Miller got his wish and scared off those trolls. The movie according to the various industry news reports is a bomb and expected to lose $100+ million dollars and do worse than the previous two reboots.

I mean, I like how everyone tries to make this about gender.

Keep in mind, these same movie-goers hated The Predator just as much. I know I did.

I'm sick of the creatively bankrupt just rebooting old stuff and hoping the name carries it. And when that's not enough, they seem to do the lazy writing thing where "this new thing is so much scarier than the old one and kicks its ass!"

JAWS 5- SPACE JAWS, THE SHARK FROM SPACE THAT EATS THE ORIGINAL JAWS BECAUSE IT IS BETTER!

I can't imagine disliking a movie and then someone's response is to call me a 'troll' or some variation of a bigot. No wonder the movie industry is flailing.

He was speaking about people who were against the movie before they could possibly have seen it based on their belief that the poster was a culture war statement. What you are describing is not that. He did not do what you say he did. Please stop being deliberately obtuse.

 Ouze wrote:
Yeah, I remember Cameron raving about how amazing Salvation was going to be, too. Yet another dude who created something awesome and now desperately needs to be kept away from it (see George Lucas, Chris Carter, etc).

Oh God. Chris Carter is such a good, terrible call. Ugh.

Yeah, so while I sort of liked Carl, and get why they wanted him in, I think I've made up my mind he was probably one of the movie's big weak points. Everything slows down abruptly once he appears, and the justification he gives for the texts etc feels very much like something somebody wrote on a napkin in a hurry when Arnie said yes. I can live with it, but *just about*.

More than that though, while some comic relief was fine, the amount Cameron seems to have wanted feels really misjudged to me.

Any further explanation on Carl’s change of heart would have slowed the movie down even more. They just wanted to skip to the part where the audience accepts Uncle Bob mk2. From the interview posted earlier, it sounds like a lot of that kind of exposition got cut.

Third best in the franchise indeed.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Any further explanation on Carl’s change of heart would have slowed the movie down even more. They just wanted to skip to the part where the audience accepts Uncle Bob mk2. From the interview posted earlier, it sounds like a lot of that kind of exposition got cut.

Third best in the franchise indeed.

I get that, but I'm inclined to think the movie could have been far sleeker and meaner without him at all. I enjoyed him - and I think they actually did well to give him a sort of ersatz "happy family" while making it clear he is not and cannot be a human - but I wonder if there was a draft that ran cleaner without having to get bogged down in an extended pitstop around him.

I doubt the film would have been funded without him attached o it.


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I mean, I agree, but his presence does add some fun fight scenes and a better explanation for Sarah's presence than "I saw it on the news and drove right over."

At this point, I'm just ready for these movies to do what slasher flicks did, and embrace the absurdity.

I'll say it- Freddy vs. Jason was awesome. And it was stupid. It can be both. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Now, let's do that with these franchises. Terminator vs. Predator vs. Aliens vs. Robocop vs. whatever. Go nuts and get stupid.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
At this point, I'm just ready for these movies to do what slasher flicks did, and embrace the absurdity.

A bunch of the roughest, toughest, rootinest, shootinest geriatrics running around with a 5'1" 100lb butt kicking savior of humanity didn't scratch that itch? I would have thought that the muscle bound killer robot from the future turned seamstress/interior decorator living like Al Bundy in Married with Children would have clinched that. There's a great article out there lampooning Carl and his predicament as an 80's/90's TGIF sitcom. They must have executed it really well for it not be as absurd as it sounds from this outsider's perspective.

Even the Usual Suspects sounds stupid if you hear the plot explained by a hater.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That said, I would love it if they embraced the ridiculous. a Short Circuit/Terminator crossover would make me very happy.

 warboss wrote:

A bunch of the roughest, toughest, rootinest, shootinest geriatrics running around with a 5'1" 100lb butt kicking savior of humanity didn't scratch that itch? I would have thought that the muscle bound killer robot from the future turned seamstress/interior decorator living like Al Bundy in Married with Children would have clinched that. There's a great article out there lampooning Carl and his predicament as an 80's/90's TGIF sitcom. They must have executed it really well for it not be as absurd as it sounds from this outsider's perspective.

I said embrace the absurdity, not turn into a parody.

I'm going to pretend you made that bit up because no terminator movies exist after the 2nd one.