[civilian_number_two]

Gobbler: if we allow each successive film to be a new universe created or branched off or whatever from the timeline of the revious one, then they are not successive events in a story; like the recent STAR TREK movie, they are just other films using the same character names. And allowing this raises some questions:

1. if changes to the past simply create new timelines, why do the Terminators bother to go back in time? All they are doing is sacrificing a soldier in their current war to create a possibly different timeline that they themselves will never enjoy.

2. if we go with the different timelines idea, then how do we reconcile that with the nicely-plotted self-creating paradox of the first film? That one used a completely different set of time travel rules, and did not acknowledge alternate timelines.

3. if these are all different timelines, and if skynet is different every time, and if the technology's better every time (following the rule of successive sequels demands more magic, eg Robocop's and R2-D2's rocket boots), why is John Connor central to the story every time? Wouldn't you imagine that huge changes to one aspect of the timeline might have similar huige changes to another? As far-fetched as time travel stories tend to be, this is reminiscent of SLIDERS, where in each new world the characters travelled to they discovered that their counterparts were all central figures in the plot.

No, I can't go from "Terminator had to look up Sarah Connor in a phone book because the world had been destroyed and all he had to go on was a name + "LA"" to "Skynet has a complete database of every human in existence through its history and while metal cannot travel through time, liquid metal can, and while the liquid metal can only form itself into simple tools, the Terminator chick can turn herslef into a DNA scanner and later into a flamethrower, complete with some sort of explosive fuel inside. And also, the T-800 has an atom bomb inside it, but it never thought to use that in that factory when Sarah was defeating it."

It's all shit. But I like the first one.

[barend]

We've got a generation of movie makers out there who are retarded and weren't spanked enough by their parents. They have no imagination, but they really want to put something out, so they take something from their childhood that they don't remember and fuck it up for all to see.

Michael Bay has millions of dollars but doesn't have the $80 to purchase the entire Trasformers Series to check his fucking character histories before launching blindly into two massive movies that focus on an irrelevant love story and comic relief characters he just made up.

McG gets intrusted with one of the most loved sci-fi franchises ever and can't hire a guy who doesn't walk across the set during filming to adjust the lights during the goddamned shot. "It's fucking distracting" just like his stupid ass name. Melbourne Cricket Ground? That Bale rant was awesome, because it alerted me to the fact hat THIS WAS NOT A PROFFESSIONAL FILM. So I went in there hoping for some post-apocalyptia and got a fun (slow) ride, that I can't see myself ever watching again. In fact the only thing I really like about this film, was Yelchin, and Marcuses character who found 'salvation' for his past crime about which we're grossly underinformed, reminded alot of a cool dream I once had about ten years ago, so that was nice. But I mean he never even tried to explain himself when captured by john conner. just WTF, I hate when films do that. "Uh, I signed up for an experiment in 2008 when I was on death row, and woke up here in this fucking mess, who the hell are you, and whats your problem?!?"

[Icey]

I honestly can't say I enjoyed the film. The plot was stupid, and you could have cut out Bale/Connor completely without losing anything from it, and maybe instead given Kyle Reese a bit of a bigger chunk out of screen time so he'll get to amount to something larger than a damsel in distress. I did like the real lead, though his name evades me at the moment, saw the film a couple of months ago, I think.

I'm just glad that I haven't seen the original Terminators in years, so I could easily spend my time rolling my eyes. Yes, I'm sure mister Butch badass motherfucker does not want to fuck Moon Bloodgood, yes, I am sure that the Resistance planning an attack on Skynet is integral to the plot of Butch Punchbot road to self discovery and salvation. Oh wait, it's not. Half the movie felt tacked on because some studio exec, or good ol' McG because he's a hack of the highest caliber.

Thankfully, I did not pay to see the film.

[Ty.]

Thankfully, I did not pay to see the film.

Sadly I did. I just went in there with very low expectations, and, as a trashy pop-corn action flick, it's not bad. It wasn't T3, so we can call it a step in the right direction.

It suffers from a classic case of being over-written, takes way too long dragging out plot explanations, most of which have already been revealed cinematically, so all that dialogue is really just for the thick people in the back row. The plot was pretty weak, but that shouldn't effect a good action movie too much, the fault is with the writers for including all that garbage, when all we really wanted as something like Black hawk down with T800s.

Film makers just can't seem to grasp the concept that sometimes 'less is more' when it comes to the plot.

Whomever decided Skynet needed HBC as a human face has played way too much system shock, of maybe watch that star-trek movie. Either way it's a bad turn for Skynet, which was one of the ultimate faceless malevolent entities. HBC's scenes could of been cut entirely without it having much effect on the film, and it would've led to better pacing.

[civilian_number_two]

Wow. HBC? I didn't know that. This may have to go on my list of films I refuse to see, because each time I learn some new detail it's way funnier than if I just saw the movie myself.