Decided to go through a bunch of Terminator-related articles that popped up in my Google feed this week:
Terminator: Dark Fate bombed this weekend because, for the third time in a decade, audiences have shown that they do not care about Terminator movies.
www.forbes.com
Several of them happen to be from Scott Mendelson of Forbes, so this will be a brief delving into the man's psyche regarding this franchise.
Oh I bet you're real salty about that, Scott, even though the same criticism ended up applying to Star Wars too, after the brand's good will ran out. The truth hurts.
No, people still enjoy watching Arnold as a Terminator. They're not interested in a anorexic grandma, a beady-eyed Dyke-1000, and a Mexican shortstack pretending to be action heroes & fighting an unthreatening, Marvelized Mexican Terminator.
People would still enjoy seeing this:
Ver archivo adjunto 1003812
'Terminator' isn't 'Star Wars,' Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't a movie star anymore and audiences have shown three times in a row that this isn't a franchise that justifies top-tier blockbuster budgets.
www.forbes.com
I think Dark Fate is more of a symptom than part of the problem. Studios are desperate to stay afloat in the midst of a media juggernaut like Disney, so they will spring for whatever pre-existing lifeboat or driftwood of an IP they can access. If anything you should be talking about the Disney monopoly damaging the entire entertainment landscape, let alone the film industry.
I don't have much to say about this one, except it seems to be the inverse effect of what's happened to Star Wars.
I agree. There should be more to a Terminator film than just trying to outdo T2's action set pieces. They should be different movies. That being said, I'm not sure I'd trust Tim Miller and company with $85 million anymore than I would with $185 million. Deadpool's action and CG was good for your typical Marvel blockbuster film, but not for Terminator.
Incidentally Junkie XL also did the soundtrack for Fury Road, not that it helped Dark Fate much. Fury Road was fun for one watch, but not so good I needed to watch it again. It was at least successful.
I will say that Fury Road had much better chases than Dark Fate, that's for damn sure. Makes me wonder what a George Miller directed Terminator film would look like...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aGTkgB62754
...shit, that could be fucking awesome. Just set it in the Future War and off you go. The music doesn't sound half bad either. I should watch this movie again.
I don't think it's so much that he's the problem as it is that the people making these movies are the problem. For all the flops he's been in, people still like Arnold as an actor. Yeah, he'll never be at his prime again, but that's what we've got newer folks like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for. Even Brett Azar could have a future like that, given the chance.
Nevermind those characters were shit though, right Scott? All you care about is ticking boxes, except "white male". You're right that nobody really gives a shit what sex or skin color the actors are as long as their roles, their performances, and the overall film are good, but you're wrong if you think the only people who had problems with them were bigots. God I fucking hate this faggotry.
Yeah dude, Terminator isn't Star Wars. Nothing is Star Wars. The only franchise I can think of that either exceeds it or comes close is Marvel. So this is a moot point, but you may be right in that it shouldn't have tried to compete with superhero movies.
T2's success didn't guarantee a lifelong fandom? Then why are studios still trying to make a sequel to it 20 years later, moron? Obviously there must be something there to keep wasting money on hacks for.
You're closer to being right if you said the fandom is small compared to the likes of Star Wars, but both T1 and T2 are hallmarks in American cinema nonetheless. I doubt anyone's going to forget about them anytime soon. What audiences don't care about are either misguided or lazy, uninspired cash grabs, which is all the Terminator has gotten since T2, give or take some exceptions like T:SCC.
Giving the franchise the 'Force Awakens' treatment, 'Terminator: Dark Fate' only comes alive when it dares to make its own fate.
www.forbes.com
100% agreed, Scott, except for the "necessary evil" part (though I understand it isn't necessarily something you agree with). It's just the culmination of the manipulative hack factory that is JJ Abrams' Bad Reboot studios. I'm hoping The Rise of Skywalker will represent the denouement, or the falling action.
I don't know. Scott seems to be the kind of guy that really gets it, but he's just hopelessly brainwashed by gender studies and living in a political bubble. "Yes, it’s great that the new savior is a young Hispanic woman and that the movie is primarily anchored by three action heroines" sounds like it could be forced. Like, he doesn't honestly think this, but he feels like he has to say it, as a guilty white savior who's scared of being "othered".
Damning with faint praise while telling it like it is. It really speaks volumes as to how good T2 is: whenever I see either a really good or a really bad action scene in a movie, I always go back to the canal chase in T2.
Let's shift to somebody even more insufferable than Scott: a
woman BuzzFeed writer.
Linda Hamilton's iconic character is as fit and formidable as ever in Terminator: Dark Fate, but the movie ultimately squanders the opportunity to say something new.
www.buzzfeednews.com
archived 9 Nov 2019 05:05:43 UTC
archive.ph
Just to put this article in perspective before I start:
It's as bad as it sounds.
Fucking hell. The Terminator doesn't cynically treat her as "just a womb". They treat her as "the mother of the future": the one who taught John to fight and prepared him before the war. If anything, you're the self-hating misogynist for suggesting she was nothing more than a womb that needed protecting. You've dehumanized her and mothers in general with that statement. Kyle fell in love with Sarah the Woman, not Sarah the Womb. Drop the brainwashing.
I feel like the Kyle vs Terminator analysis is just overlayed rather than organically rising from the film itself. Cameron saw the fearsome Terminator in Arnold and the more vulnerable fighter in Michael Biehn. That's all there is to it as far as I'm concerned. It's not a commentary on masculinity, but on technology.
This feels like a particularly forced interpretation of that scene.
This is textbook "reading too much into it." Nothing about her feminine form had anything to do with killing the Terminator. A cold, hydraulic press did.
Fathers play ball with their sons. That's not motherly. What maternal responsibilities does the Terminator fulfill? Unless you're referring to Carl changing diapers without complaining.
Funny how that works. Maybe Gavin McInnes was right.
Masculine men bad, masculine women good.
Wow. Real sucker-punch to 16 writers behind Dark Fate.
I love how Shannon has effectively underlined what the writers expected of the audience: that they'd be sexist pigs who thought Dani was just going to be the next Sarah Connor. Well, joke's on them, because she was the next John Connor this whole time! No sign of projection here, no sir.
Thank you admitting that Dark Fate was fucking boring and didn't do anything remotely new.
Ya Boi Zack is right again. "You know how people
hate Nazis respect women, right? SJWs want to be
congratulated for it."