Re-Evaluating Bad Movies

Terminator Genisys

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that makes as little sense as Terminator Genisys.  Honestly, I don't know where to begin or if it's even worth typing.  I could write a book on all things in this movie that don't work, the gaping plot holes or dangling storylines.  Oh wait a minute, those would have all been explained in the subsequent sequels that never happened, right?  This makes the second Terminator movie in a row that was supposed to kickstart the franchise again but went down in a huge fireball of failure.  This is the movie that I expected Terminator Salvation to be; a quick cash grab that steals the central plot points of other movies while offering nothing new that's interesting or unique, adds incomprehensible action scenes and gets slapped into theaters hoping that a few people will show up to make enough cash to get the next one off the ground.  

I don't want to recap the whole movie because I'll spend hours picking each thing apart so I'll hit some of the basics.  John Connor and the Resistance are about to smash Skynet once and for all but Skynet sends a Terminator to 1984 so it can kill Sarah Connor.  Okay, fine so far.  John sends Kyle Reese back to be her protector.  Great.  But right before Kyle makes the time jump he sees a Terminator attack John.  What?  And now he's getting these weird visions from a past that may or may not exist.  He gets to 1984 and realizes he's in a different timeline.  This one already has Badass Sarah™ and a standard Arnold T-800 that Badass Sarah™ calls 'Pops.'  Sarah was targeted as a kid by a T-1000 back in 1973 but Pops saved her and raised her since she was a child.  Who sent them to 1973?  Skynet I assume?  It's never explained.  In 1984 they battle a T-1000 and once he's dispatched, Pops tells Kyle that a 'nexus point' created a new timeline and now things are different.  If it worked for Star Trek and X-Men then it might work for Terminator.  So instead of doing anything interesting, they just plan to blow up Skynet again and prevent the war from happening.  Basically, the story of Terminator 2.  Basically, the exact story of Terminator 2.  They jump to 2017 which is the new year that Skynet is supposed to launch its missiles after disguising itself as a hip app called Genisys, a program that doesn't seem to serve much purpose other than to connect your devices.  This might have sounded a lot cooler if the movie came out in 2004.  And wait a minute, in 2017 they also meet John.  But he's not really John, he's John but infected by Skynet so he's some nano-Terminator human hybrid thing.  He pretends to help Sarah and Kyle until the T-800 blows the lid off the disguise and they learn Evil John came back to get Genisys/Skynet online.  That's weird but also, why didn't he just kill Sarah and Kyle the minute he saw them?  They serve no purpose in actually getting Skynet online.  He offers a throwaway line saying 'we can all be together' or some crap like that but it's all so silly.  I guess that's the new thing the movie tries to do, make John Connor the bad guy because what else is there to do at this point?  The kicker is that there's no explanation as to why there's this new 'nexus point' or time line, why any of this started in the first place and what exactly the plan is once the main story is over.  Again, I assume they wanted to leave it for subsequent movies but that definitely ain't happening.  Oh, and JK Simmons is in there as some crusty cop who doesn't do anything but at least he got a paycheck.

After the swing and a miss that was Terminator Salvation, I can imagine all the studio suits said we need to bring that cool new term into the fold; reboot.  Why spend the effort making new storylines when we can just recycle old ones?  Well, this is why.  Terminator Genisys is a movie that makes less sense the more you think about it, not just in terms of story which is bad enough but also in little one off creative choices.  What caused the new timeline in the first place? Why was the gang running from John Connor and instead of getting into any number of normal cars, they steal a school bus? Why is there some weird dick measuring contest between Kyle Reese and Pops?  That's another thing about movies these days, so many of them embrace comic relief to a fault.  Terminator 2 had plenty of light hearted moments but they felt natural and not terribly forced.  There's a deleted scene from T2 where John tries to teach the T-800 how to smile.  It's harmless but cheesy and it was rightfully cut out.  Genisys has several of these exact scenes with Pops awkwardly smiling and it's just painful.  Comedy is very hard to write and bad comedy can grind any film, especially non-comedies, to a halt.  Like I said earlier, Terminator Genisys is just a nothing movie.   Every other film in this franchise brings something new while Genisys tries to steal those things.  I guess the only thing there is to do is have each movie introduce a COOL NEW TERMINATOR because, what else is there to do if the stories are exactly the same?  Salvation didn't need to because it at least tried to movie the story forward.  Man, in retrospect that movie seems a lot more palatable after watching Genisys.  

At least Genisys reminded me of this great Redlettermedia video.

Terminator: Dark Fate

Here we are.  Time to get serious.  Bottom of the 9th.  2 outs.  No one on base.  Down by 27 runs.  Most of the crowd has gone home.  This swing is our last chance at salvaging the Terminator franchise.  Time to bust out the big guns.  Arnold.  Linda Hamilton.  James Cameron as Executive Producer.  The gloves are off.  THIS was the movie that was going to put Terminator back on the map.  At least that was the hope.  Instead it became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time and hopefully, mercifully serves as the last attempt at bringing this franchise back from the dead.  That pains me to type, in fact this whole silly exercise of mine was painful because, believe it or not, I wasn't trying to hate-watch these films.  I don't have much time or interest in hate-watching movies these days and I certainly wouldn't want to do that with a franchise that I hold in such high esteem.  But Terminator: Dark Fate, the final Terminator movie to date, does take a few steps forward while taking a few other steps back.  Most of its steps though are mostly side to side in that they don't really contribute anything.  I think for the most part that right there could define these films that constitute the second half of the franchise.

So how did we get here?  One way to look at it is that after Salvation's failure, the bosses wanted to bring the franchise back to familiar territory.  Hence, Genisys.  Unfortunately that movie was convoluted, confusing and nonsensical so the bosses tried to bring it back even more into familiar territory, once again giving us the same story of 'machine sent back through time to kill someone' and this time have it not be as confusing.  It's also the first movie since T3 to get the R rating and the F-bombs try to give it a return to form.  The movie begins with a voice over from Sarah Connor about the coming war with machines.  It took six movies for me to finally realize that there must be some rule that says every Terminator film has to start with a blowhard monologue and scenes of 'the war' with a bunch of skulls as if we haven't seen a thousand versions of this already.   It immediately jumps to a scene of Sarah and Edward Furlong-John Connor where a T-800 immediately kills John.  Over the course of the movie it's revealed that Skynet and the 1997 Judgement Day never happened.  Instead, a different Judgement Day happens because of a different war with a different self-aware program that has different killer cyborgs that go back in time to kill a different leader of the resistance.  This time, a program called Legion sends back a Rev-9 to kill Dani Ramos, the next leader targeted for termination to radically change the future.  So yes, it basically erases all the other Terminator movies but hey, we need to market this thing somehow so why not bring Arnold back, a T-800 relic from a future that never happened.  Not only that, this T-800, the same one that killed John earlier in the movie, now grew a conscience, learned that human life is valuable and raised a family, all while secretly helping Sarah locate Terminators that are entirely unrelated to him, Skynet or his overall existence.  Also, Sarah mentioned that John was killed by a Terminator because Skynet sent back a bunch of them.  If the T2 T-800 knew about the T-1000, why didn't he know about any others?  If Terminator Genysis was a slap in the face to Terminator fans, Dark Fate was a middle finger and 'eff you.'  You know all those things you loved about the original?  Well forget all those, here's a bunch of new, not as cool things that are all still kind of the same.  But don't worry, we'll still drop easter eggs like the mandated 'I'll be back' variations and Dwight Yoakam's 'Guitars and Cadillacs' when the Rev-9 falls on a shed in the middle of a BBQ.  

Again, I understand the conundrum with trying to make more Terminator movies.  I've thought this for a while and those RedLetterMedia guys said it as well but the Terminator concept actually isn't one that's ripe for cinematic longevity.  There are only a couple directions you can take it, either 'machine goes back in time to kill someone' or show the war.  The war angle might have actually worked better had the execution been a little more on point while the time travel angle has been done to death.  And while they have to introduce Cool New Terminators™ every time to keep it spicy, you already know how these movies have to end.  I know fans were wildly offended by the erasure of pretty much the entire franchise in Dark Fate and while I understand the frustration, it's not the first time things were undone in these movies.  Heck, in Terminator 3 we heard the T-800 say 'Judgement Day is inevitable.'  That itself runs against the entire theme of T2, it's the complete opposite of the message it was trying to convey.  At least T3 didn't kill everybody and render their entire existence meaningless.  Messaging aside though, Dark Fate isn't entirely a failure.  It's a big step up from Genisys (easily the worst of the franchise, I even hate typing the name) and while they still try to make Arnold funny, at least those stuck a little better.  I have to admit that I chuckled at Arnold's delivery when talking about drapes.  Stupid? Yes, but Arnold does have pretty good comedic timing.  While the action is CG-heavy it does have some stakes and although the movie follows the exact beats of the first Terminator movie it shows just how lethal and murderous the Rev-9 can be.  By and large though, Dark Fate isn't exactly the whiff that Genisys was but it still doesn't demonstrate that this is a franchise worth continuing.

So where do we go from here?  It's clear that there is little demand for new Terminator films regardless of whoever's in front of or behind the camera.  Like I said, it's a story that's been done to death already and even when they try to make it new it's impossible to not tread over old ground.  I have started into the Netflix series Terminator Zero which has had a good reception and maybe smaller productions with more drawn out stories could be the way to go.  I think putting the cinematic releases on ice is a good idea though, at least until demand becomes more apparent if that even were to happen.  Nevertheless, Terminator 1 and 2 will forever be cherished in my heart and it will always be easy to convince myself to give them a watch every now and then.

Gotta plow through the Alien 3: Assembly Cut and Alien Resurrection first.  Maybe work in Robocop 3 in between.

Too bad Pbar doesn't post here anymore, he would take you to task or listing Robocop 2.

I've considered going through the Alien and Predator franchises again but, like Terminator, I don't know if it's worth rewatching favorites that I've seen several times already in order to watch a bunch of movies that have less than stellar reputations. It doesn't seem like a fair trade-off.

Wife hadnt watched all the alien movies so during covid we were like well let's go.

Got through 1 and 2 and was excited for the series. Hit 3 and we started wobbling. Delayed resurrection.

I think we made it to the literal bball scene before she threw her hands up and called this stupid and refused to watch.

I tried to convince her that it was Amelie in space but she didn't bite.

I just got an Alien: Romulus screener, I may be watching that after all.

For real, I already got a Juror #2 screener which just came out.  They're taking their sweet ass time.

Alien 3: The Assembly Cut

After plowing through the Terminator movies that I spent years ignoring, I thought I might take an additional minute to give the unseen Alien movies a try.  Now don't get too excited, the plan is to watch Alien 3, Resurrection and cap it off with Romulus, I have no intention of watching the AvP movies because...well those don't even feel like they're real movies.  Is that pretentious? Maybe, but I'll stick with this Ripley cannon for now.  To be honest, I've never been an enormous Alien/Aliens fan.  I've watched them and really enjoy them but they were never staples in my upbringing nor were they in my regular rotation like Terminator or even the original Predator.  That's part of the reason I was never terribly anxious to watch Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection, two Alien sequels that have less than stellar reputations.  A while back though I caught wind of this 'director's cut' or what I later heard was referred to as the 'Assembly Cut' of Alien 3, something that was supposedly an improvement on the original Fincher cut.  I had only seen bits and pieces of Alien 3 on TV back in the day and unfortunately have long known the ending.  But late 2024 was time for me to finally take it down and, with some luck, watch a movie whose reputation might be unfair.  I am an Rocky V apologist, after all.

I won't go heavy into the plot since I'm probably the only one on these boards who hadn't seen the movie until now but on the whole, I would put this Assembly Cut in the thumbs up category.  I can't compare it to the theatrical cut but I think a lot of what this movie presents seems to work.  It tries to hearken back to the original Alien with giving the film a more creepy vibe as Ripley crash lands on prison planet Fury-161 and discovers that not only is there an alien on the loose, she also has a queen growing in her chest at a considerably slower rate than what we've seen elsewhere in the franchise (I'll be charitable and assume that queens need a little more time to gestate).  Both Alien and Alien 3 try to be horror movies but I think Alien 3 goes down the slasher route much more.  It's bloodier, gorier, the last 20 minutes are the alien hunting down and picking off people one by one.  He's closer to a Michael Myers version of xenomorph.  That doesn't detract much from the movie for me but also doesn't contribute much to the suspense.  The puppetry work on the xenomorph is actually quite awesome here, I loved seeing the closeups and textures.  It almost makes up for the running CG version that looks every bit like it's from the early 90s but hey, they're 30 year old effects, I'll give them a pass.  What does feel suspenseful is how we're locked in this dark, murky prison with unarmed prisoners.  It's a nice, bleak atmosphere to create and there are great supporting turns by Charles S. Dutton and Tywin Lannister.  While bleak can be good to an extent, it also feels like Alien 3 is trying a bit too hard at some points.  Newt's autopsy for example felt equally uncomfortable and unnecessary.  I dunno, something about cracking open a 10 year old's ribs just doesn't quite do it for me.  I think my main issue is that it never felt like there was a big arc for Ripley in this movie.  Yes, she has the alien in her and she's finally able to destroy them but by and large she's a survivor just like everyone else on Fury-161 and, similarly, like she's been throughout the franchise.  Giving her Newt and a motherly role was a big step in her character development and in Alien 3 it felt like she was taken back to default settings.  That doesn't ruin the movie though, not by a longshot.  I don't know how this compares to the Fincher cut, the only real difference I noticed was that she didn't have the queen coming out of her belly at the end of the Assembly cut, but Alien 3 is a movie that I think is definitely worth a rewatch by detractors.  I'm thinking maybe they were expecting a rehash of Aliens, a big action packed beast, and seeing a movie similar to Alien was not to their taste.  Well, I wish those people luck because Alien 3 is a pretty rad if flawed movie and I'm glad it exceeded my expectations.  It's certainly better than the later Terminator films, that's for damn sure.

Your response is a 7 1/2 minute video??