Terminator: Dark Fate **Spoilers from post 983**

Red Letter Media's review with spoilers.

I found it to be 50% good then pretty bad.

1 thing i must admit, when i heard what happened to JC before I went and saw the film, so already I was biased against it to be honest.
I felt it was kind of a middle fingers to purist fans of T1 and T2.
In saying that, I tried to go in with an open mind knowing this, and the fact it felt very much a retelling/rehash of T1 and T2.

I was kind of pleasantly surprised that i started to really enjoy it - the first chase and the scenes with Grace who i thought was the best thing about the film - there was tension there in those scenes that i was feeling.

I thought the movie then slightly slowed down and was spinning it's wheels a little but i wasn't too annoyed with that.

Then, I felt the movie took a complete and total nosedive when they got to "Karls" house.
I felt what they did with the T-800 character was horrendous, especially his dialogue - it took me right out of the film.

It only went from bad to worse with the CGI plane chase and dam scene - I remember thinking "this is more like Marvel or Transformers than true Terminator action" - to me Terminator action has always felt visceral, intimate, and "real" for want of a better term - but the total unrealism of the scenes made it feel hollow without emotion. It was way too grandiose!

It was a real pity because I had been pleasantly surprised at the beginning of the film up to 40-50 mins of the way through.

The final fight in my opinion was kind of a damp squib. I just thought "that was it?" - it felt a little rushed and there wasn't enough tension.
I didn't buy the new resistance fighter - but i loved McKenzie Davis's character.

I felt that this was a squandered opportunity for terminator - instead of rehashing the old story and doing what they did with the T800 and the over the top CGI - they could have written a smart, tense follow up to T2.
The whole "multiple terminators" kind of makes the T2 tension of 1v1 better terminator takes the tension away and with the killing of JC it all meant nothing.

I will watch again if its on TV but i think I like to prefer that Terminator ended when John and Sarah had the future open to them... and the T800 lowered himself into the foundry.
RIP Terminator.

McDermotX wrote: »

Poor weekend overall as well it seems.
Hopefully that puts an end any ideas they have about continuing on.
I dare say, Salvation might be getting a rewatch soon, as I'm sure in the cold light of day, it can't be as bad a 'hopeful trilogy starter' as I remember it to be in comparison.

Or better yet, revisit the first two for the umpteenth time (and fit in the last 10mins of T3 - gets a lot of stick that movie, and rightfully so, but that ending took a bit bravery IMO).

Dark Fate certainly isnt the "best since T2" like many critics are stating.

Jesus Christ. I almost got up and walked out after that first scene. I waited for it to play out and make more sense. It never did. Maybe I should have walked out. It was grand, I laughed at the jokes, I was impressed by some of the action, I enjoyed seeing charters that I love on screen again. It was just lacking anything of substance for me.

Calhoun wrote: »

If the numbers are accurate its $123M on a budget of $160-200M, not good but this weekends sales might not have come in yet.

Probably needs close to $450m to break even.....only saving grace for the studios is a shared responsibility on production and marketing, which might soften the blow of it individually assuming it under performs. A soft Chinese response would be another nail.

Still though, production companies dont make movies to break even. Or to make good ones, as this can atest to.

pah wrote: »

Jesus Christ. I almost got up and walked out after that first scene. I waited for it to play out and make more sense. It never did. Maybe I should have walked out. It was grand, I laughed at the jokes, I was impressed by some of the action, I enjoyed seeing charters that I love on screen again. It was just lacking anything of substance for me.

I actually did walk out. No hesitation.

The horror

Officially bombed. $29M.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/terminator-dark-fate-bombs-at-the-box-office-with-only-29-million/

I think it's a positive thing for the franchise as a whole. Now, the intelligent option is to take it's back to its roots as a gritty and grounded body-horror thriller - these days you could make an excellent film in the style of the first for relatively speaking, very small, and quite safe, money. Look at something like Upgrade - an excellent sci-fi action thriller made, amazingly considering its polish, for a few million.

Don't think so. Genisys was a domestic flop as well, and that was PG13.

Salvation was also PG13 and had a weak performance. Likely, we're now staring at 3 failed new trilogies.

Can't see them chucking another $100-200m at a fourth attempt. Weak as Genisys was they should've stuck with that trilogy, it was not much worse than Dark Fate and it will probably, in the end, have performed much better.

j.s. pill II wrote: »

Aye,

- self awareness is one thing - but raising a child, owning a nice house and watching football on the telly???

I kinda liked that to be honest. They explained it, quickly, as him being designed for infiltration, which I guess was always the case and just not something they ever delved into before.

The previous Terminators we've seen all had a mission to carry out (and would not stop ever until it was done, etc), but without the mission they are just built to act normal and infiltrate. So he did.

And actually thought Arnie's performance was pretty good in this too. He'd been mostly awful in the last three.

Pretty certain there will not be another attempt at a Terminator movie for many many years after this.

I'm glad. Should have been ended after T2 because the story was over.

There never was anywhere to go with it.

That is why James Cameron does not care about it.

This could be the nail in the coffin for Tim Millers career as well. A part from the huge losses I felt the movie really exposed his shortcomings as a director.

Homelander wrote: »

I have to admit I did expect more from Tim Miller. The direction was really uninspired.

I expected more from a story Cameron was apparently involved in, twas as unimaginative if not more so as the last three films.

Homelander wrote: »

Don't think so. Genisys was a domestic flop as well, and that was PG13.

Salvation was also PG13 and had a weak performance. Likely, we're now staring at 3 failed new trilogies.

Can't see them chucking another $100-200m at a fourth attempt. Weak as Genisys was they should've stuck with that trilogy, it was not much worse than Dark Fate and it will probably, in the end, have performed much better.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/terminator-dark-fate-puts-franchise-ice-faces-120m-loss-1251926

Box office analysts say the movie's poor opening is a reflection of complete IP failure. (Insiders at Paramount and Skydance don't disagree.)

"It is time to let this franchise finally go to the great beyond," says Eric Handler of MKM Partners.

Adds Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations, "This is definitely the end of the line for the Terminator franchise in its current iteration. That said, IPs are harder to kill off than Jason Vorhees these days. So, expect a new series in five years on CBS All Access. Probably animated this time."

Well, that's a bit different to the cinematic future of the Terminator franchise. The 3 movies prior to Dark Fate were PG13, so as you've just pointed out, it's nothing to do with ratings and everything to with IP failure. I was more speculating on the future of the movie franchise.

Even if that off the cuff comment came to pass, loads of blockbusters have had cartoon counterparts at various times, more or less completely independent of the overall franchise and with little bearing on future films in said franchise. Starship Troopers, Robocop, Toxic Crusaders, etc.

What baffles me is that Salvation did poorly, Genisys did reasonably well (very similar to T3 really), but they still rebooted it, thinking they'd land a major hit with a 3rd stab at a new trilogy....with another film that's more or less Genisys 2.0 in the end.

If they just released an actual sequel to Genisys with the same cast, I'd be fairly confident it would've fared better.