Terminator: Genisys

[MiniMan64]

Rick_1138 said:

Guvernator said:

I think it suffered from some major late stage re-writes which is never a good sign. Whatever happened, it ended up a total mess. A future war Terminator film could almost write itself, I could probably write a better story.

John Connor starts off as a green Lieutenant but through his skills and future knowledge learnt from his mother plus the fact that he is double hard bast*rd, rises through the ranks, has some kick-ass battles against armies of terminators and the final scene is them storming Skynets bunker just in time to see Arnie disappear through the time portal. Throw in some buddy buddy scenes with his future dad Kyle Reeese and it's Job-jobbed. Didn't need any of that weird cyborg\Sam Worthington rubbish, just needed to be a simple story showing JC becoming the bad-ass leader that we want him to be.

Script writers trying to be too clever for their own good methinks.

I believe the script got leaked and it was originally supposed to be Christian Bale was the unkown terminator, but they went a weird way after the leak.

Hence the John being a terminator in T5 as the idea has merit, but its been oddly implemented.

I believe the original plan was that Bale and Worthington's roles were reverse with Worthington playing Connor in a much smaller role only appearing at the end. But Bale wanted to be Connor and wanted the Connor role increased in prominence. Hence the movie we got.

Then the ending got changed due to the script leak. Bale was supposed to die and Worthington takes his face and John Connor lives on a Terminator which is a great twist.

[Rick_1138]

MiniMan64 said:

Rick_1138 said:

Guvernator said:

I think it suffered from some major late stage re-writes which is never a good sign. Whatever happened, it ended up a total mess. A future war Terminator film could almost write itself, I could probably write a better story.

John Connor starts off as a green Lieutenant but through his skills and future knowledge learnt from his mother plus the fact that he is double hard bast*rd, rises through the ranks, has some kick-ass battles against armies of terminators and the final scene is them storming Skynets bunker just in time to see Arnie disappear through the time portal. Throw in some buddy buddy scenes with his future dad Kyle Reeese and it's Job-jobbed. Didn't need any of that weird cyborg\Sam Worthington rubbish, just needed to be a simple story showing JC becoming the bad-ass leader that we want him to be.

Script writers trying to be too clever for their own good methinks.

I believe the script got leaked and it was originally supposed to be Christian Bale was the unkown terminator, but they went a weird way after the leak.

Hence the John being a terminator in T5 as the idea has merit, but its been oddly implemented.

I believe the original plan was that Bale and Worthington's roles were reverse with Worthington playing Connor in a much smaller role only appearing at the end. But Bale wanted to be Connor and wanted the Connor role increased in prominence. Hence the movie we got.

Then the ending got changed due to the script leak. Bale was supposed to die and Worthington takes his face and John Connor lives on a Terminator which is a great twist.

That was it. It was a good idea, and tbh would have been better if theyd kept it as contrary to popular internet belief, most cinemagoers dont read film plots online before they go.

[Guvernator]

It's a good twist but was it really necessary? I think keeping it simple and to the story we know would have been more than sufficient. I'm not even that comfortable with the "twist" in T5. It seems to have been put in for the sake of having a twist for the shock value. It's a film about time travelling robots, it doesn't really need any more gimmicks IMO but Hollywood always seem to feel the need to "go one better" when they'd be much better served keeping it simple in most cases.

[HorneyMX5]

Finally got round to watching this. I am disappoint.

Arnie was about the only saving grace to this steaming pile. The plot was bad and a mess, the CGI badly done and most of the acting was dreadful. I also felt the score didn't fit that well either which is odd as it's something I never really pick up on films unless the score is really incredible (Moon for example).

I actually think it's worse than T3 and T4.

[P-Jay]

HorneyMX5 said:

Finally got round to watching this. I am disappoint.

Arnie was about the only saving grace to this steaming pile. The plot was bad and a mess, the CGI badly done and most of the acting was dreadful. I also felt the score didn't fit that well either which is odd as it's something I never really pick up on films unless the score is really incredible (Moon for example).

I actually think it's worse than T3 and T4.

Caught it at the weekend, I didn't mind it - at least it was a 12 so I could watch it with my Son.

They got perilously close to the Matrix Sequels towards the end, both in terms of trying to make it more complex to hide the holes in the plot and I suspected they were about to claim that they'd been going around in the same loop for hundreds of years or something.

I actually liked Salvation, this was worse IMHO, I think they had to butcher it too much to get current era Arnie into it.

[Rick_1138]

I also believe they have shelved any possible sequals now.

But you know, 4 more transformer films, 3 more fast and furious films....

[remkingston]

P-Jay said:

....
I actually liked Salvation, this was worse IMHO, I think they had to butcher it too much to get current era Arnie into it.

I loved the look and feel of Salvation too but Salvation had a huge plot hole; SkyNet knew who Kyle Reese was and scanned him during their chase with the flying drone. Why didn't SkyNet just kill Kyle Reese there and then?

[Ali_T]

remkingston said:

I loved the look and feel of Salvation too but Salvation had a huge plot hole; SkyNet knew who Kyle Reese was and scanned him during their chase with the flying drone. Why didn't SkyNet just kill Kyle Reese there and then?

Movie still had another hour to go or more. Skynet knew killing him would reduce ticket sales.

[Guvernator]

remkingston said:

I loved the look and feel of Salvation too but Salvation had a huge plot hole; SkyNet knew who Kyle Reese was and scanned him during their chase with the flying drone. Why didn't SkyNet just kill Kyle Reese there and then?

Agree the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic future was absolutely spot on as was the beginning of Genesis but they didn't really spend enough time on John Connor again who really should be the main focus now.

I've had enough time travel shenanigans and putting the focus on Terminators and side players, they really need to tell John's story properly. All the films give tantalising hints then go off on a tangent, instead of focusing on yet another version of the Arnie's T800 (done to death), Sarah Connor (done to death), Kyle Reese (done to death). I want to see John with his slightly deranged mother, live through the apocalypse and come out the other side, through the desolation of those early years scrabbling around in the ruins and eventually becoming the guy that leads humanity out of the ashes, this is the main event that hasn't been done proper justice IMO.

[Hooli]

Guvernator said:

remkingston said:

I loved the look and feel of Salvation too but Salvation had a huge plot hole; SkyNet knew who Kyle Reese was and scanned him during their chase with the flying drone. Why didn't SkyNet just kill Kyle Reese there and then?

Agree the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic future was absolutely spot on as was the beginning of Genesis but they didn't really spend enough time on John Connor again who really should be the main focus now.

I've had enough time travel shenanigans and putting the focus on Terminators and side players, they really need to tell John's story properly. All the films give tantalising hints then go off on a tangent, instead of focusing on yet another version of the Arnie's T800 (done to death), Sarah Connor (done to death), Kyle Reese (done to death). I want to see John with his slightly deranged mother, live through the apocalypse and come out the other side, through the desolation of those early years scrabbling around in the ruins and eventually becoming the guy that leads humanity out of the ashes, this is the main event that hasn't been done proper justice IMO.

[Negative Creep]

Hooli said:

Guvernator said:

remkingston said:

I loved the look and feel of Salvation too but Salvation had a huge plot hole; SkyNet knew who Kyle Reese was and scanned him during their chase with the flying drone. Why didn't SkyNet just kill Kyle Reese there and then?

Agree the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic future was absolutely spot on as was the beginning of Genesis but they didn't really spend enough time on John Connor again who really should be the main focus now.

I've had enough time travel shenanigans and putting the focus on Terminators and side players, they really need to tell John's story properly. All the films give tantalising hints then go off on a tangent, instead of focusing on yet another version of the Arnie's T800 (done to death), Sarah Connor (done to death), Kyle Reese (done to death). I want to see John with his slightly deranged mother, live through the apocalypse and come out the other side, through the desolation of those early years scrabbling around in the ruins and eventually becoming the guy that leads humanity out of the ashes, this is the main event that hasn't been done proper justice IMO.

+2 what the franchise needs is a stripped back approach without massive set pieces and multiple timelines. You could tell a story about how John and Sarah broke some people out of a camp and began to form the Resistance, or a group of soldiers trapped in a building where one is actually a Terminator. It could also be done on a modest budget, so less worry for the studio

[Guvernator]

My ideal Terminator storyline

Pick up John in the ruins of post apocalyptic earth scratching around in the dirt trying to stay alive. Establish the squalor and desperation of living through this time constantly hunted by machines. He is at a major low point in his life at this point, just surviving.

Intersperse this with flashbacks to various memories of a time before the nuclear holocaust. Pick up Sarah training John to shoot, hanging out with military types, survivalist nuts etc, anything to give John the skills he needs.

Show the nuclear holocaust all kicking off, John and Sarah survive in a shelter and emerge months later into this new world where they are now constantly hunted by Terminators and HK's

Sarah Connor sacrifices herself at some point to save John. His mothers death and all the suffering he has seen leads John to have a crisis of confidence\faith in the future of humanity.

John get's captured but the machines have no record of what he looks like so they stick him in a camp for "processing", he has almost given up at this point but he meets Kyle Reese, his future father who manages to break him out of his funk, they organise a break out and escape. Beginning of the resistance. John starts to teach them all he has learnt from his mother and they go through various battles, freeing more people and the resistance gains momentum, culminating in storming Skynets facility but too late to stop the Terminator. The last scene is John Watching Kyle Reese step into the time machine and disappear.

Some of this we have seen already seen on screen, some of it is mentioned in passing but I think a whole story dedicated to John's journey would be great.

[remkingston]

I think the Terminator universe needs to pretend that the actual events of the late 90s to present day haven't occurred. It needs to go back to the world it imagined from the 80s.

The main element that the original films didn't predict was broadband enabling everyone to connect to everyone and the understanding that the internet could become home to decentralised software being more of a threat than any hardware.

The Terminator universe needs some catalyst which stops the technical marvels which now cause plot holes. If SkyNet became a virus and could launch our own human hardware against us then there would be no need to build more hardware to eradicate humans. If SkyNet is software based then why does it need to worry about the same concerns as humans with regards to eradicating humans to maintain itself. It could just launch itself into space and exist without humans on a satellite. Or beam it's source code to one already there?

Basically, SkyNet was evil in the original movie because it had a prime directive to destroy everything that was not a machine in order to protect itself and most importantly its geographically fixed central mainframe. Now that SkyNet is everywhere all the time does it really have to bother fighting a war in reality if it can be contempt living in a software universe? What are SkyNet's reasons for using energy to kill if it has already won the war?

Edited by remkingston on Wednesday 28th October 13:21

[Guvernator]

remkingston said:

I think the Terminator universe needs to pretend that the actual events of the late 90s to present day haven't occurred. It needs to go back to the world it imagined from the 80s.

The main element that the original films didn't predict was broadband enabling everyone to connect to everyone and the understanding that the internet could become home to decentralised software being more of a threat than any hardware.

The Terminator universe needs some catalyst which stops the technical marvels which now cause plot holes. If SkyNet became a virus and could launch our own human hardware against us then there would be no need to build more hardware to eradicate humans. If SkyNet is software based then why does it need to worry about the same concerns as humans with regards to eradicating humans to maintain itself. It could just launch itself into space and exist without humans on a satellite. Or beam it's source code to one already there?

Basically, SkyNet was evil in the original movie because it had a prime directive to destroy every that was not a machine in order to protect itself and most importantly its geographically fixed mainframe. Now that SkyNet is everywhere all the time does it really have to bother fighting a war? What are SkyNet's reasons for using energy to kill if it has already won the war?

Actually VERY good point. The film has a countdown to sentience\self awareness at which precise point, the very second it goes online, it will instantly launch nukes and destroy all humans but why? In the original it's quoted that the humans panicked when it became self aware and tried to pull the plug so it fought back and launched the nukes but in the new one, people can't wait to have the new Genesis OS installed on all of their devices so A) Humans are no longer a threat as everyone loves Skynet and B) It's already everywhere so you can't pull the plug. Very large plothole that I hadn't realised before.

Also why is an OS evil\destructive, surely the humans programming it wouldn't allow that to happen? If my Windows PC became self aware tomorrow, I wouldn't expect it to try to kill me, why would it? Unless it was totally bored with the hours I spend on PH of course

[Jonesy23]

Have a read of the S.M. Stirling Infiltrator novels that follow on from T2.

They basically cover all the above and are the best continuation of the story & tie it all together.

You may recognise a couple of minor bits that ended up in the sequels or TV show, though unfortunately not enough; they should have just filmed the books.


That said I quite liked the idea of Genisys, at least the first half. The rest wasn`t brilliant.

[ajprice]

Arnie won't be back, and the Terminator 6 / Genisys story is done until they decide it's a good idea to reboot it again without Arnie. So at least for now, no more Terminators.
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/terminator/4812...

[Regiment]

This is a movie that needs abandoning or fully rebooting from the scratch.

[RemaL]

Regiment said:

fully rebooting from the scratch.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO like Ghostbusters

[Halb]

remkingston said:

Basically, SkyNet was evil in the original movie because it had a prime directive to destroy everything that was not a machine in order to protect itself and most importantly its geographically fixed central mainframe. Now that SkyNet is everywhere all the time does it really have to bother fighting a war in reality if it can be contempt living in a software universe? What are SkyNet's reasons for using energy to kill if it has already won the war?

Edited by remkingston on Wednesday 28th October 13:21

Doesn't matter if skynet is a virus, it would always want to eradicate humans as the other lifeform who could end it. Artificial satellites don't last, nor do cables, SKynet would always have to have a physical presence to exist, and that would always mean getting humans out of the way. Like BSG, the virus aspect would just make skynet so much more deadly.

[soad]

Someone should despatch a Terminator to destroy the makers of this st film.