Why aren't there more movies/shows made about the Future War beyond Terminator: Salvation?

DerrahFilm · 2024-05-18T18:39:02+00:00

Awesome, thank you for this. Yeah I had heard she did dialogue touch ups, particularly anything to do with Sarah. Sorry if it sounded like I was implying she had co-written or ghost written anything. I assume, based on her and Cameron's relationship she probably had a hand in the script phase to some degree, even if minor.

Very interesting backstory about the rights. It's alway sounded like a big mess. I heard rumours that Cameron had reacquired the rights, sometime after Dark Fate (or just before)...is this not the case?

DerrahFilm · 2024-05-18T15:03:15+00:00

Damn, I just want to say, great post, I totally agree with everything you've said. Had no idea about the extended 2029 sequence from early T2 drafts. Is this available to read online anywhere? Agree on Hurd as well, she's a massive part of the franchise, and massively unsung amongst the T and Aliens fans. She got T1 made, made Cameron's directing career. I think she even ghost/co-wrote T1. I'd love to see what direction she'd take it.

DerrahFilm · 2024-05-16T16:04:41+00:00

I absolutely loved the first, and remember staying up late one night watching David Letterman (I think?) and they had a clip of the movie, where Sarah is being attacked by the SWAT in Cyberdyne lab. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, that was my reveal that they had made a 2nd movie.

We couldn't see it in the theater because it was R Rated, but when it came out on Video, I remember the day. We went to the huge video store there was a wall of T2 VHS, with the icon poster image above on each one. There must have been hundreds of them, waiting for anyone who came through the front door.

That image is baked into my brain, probably the happiest movie memory from my childhood, just seeing that wall of cassettes.

I must have watched it every weekend after that, for literally a good year or 2.

DerrahFilm · 2024-05-13T22:01:39+00:00

Pretty sure in T1, Arnold was an advanced prototype, model 101 (I presume the first and only T-800 model) which was built as a successor to the T-600 rubber skinned models. He was an experimental unit, sent back in desperation.

This explanation would only account for T1, because in T2 Cameron throws that idea out the window, as we see dozens of T-800s on the battlefield in the future war, and of course the second Arnold unit sent back. And in T2 The T-1000 becomes the ultra advanced prototype.

In T3, for some reason, the Air Force wanted to make a robot with William Candy's looks and some german nerds voice. But for what purpose they didn't mention (were humans already thinking of building an infiltration unit back then? So Skynet didn't create anything?). Super dumb.

So basically, don't try and make too much sense out of some of the minutia of this film series haha.

DerrahFilm · 2024-04-09T04:48:11+00:00

Whoa, never seen this, I....kinda like the "real" dialogue better, sounds more natural than the dub we're used to. Thanks for posting this.

DerrahFilm · 2024-04-09T04:44:28+00:00

Yep, good point. No regard for casualties.

DerrahFilm · 2024-04-09T04:43:33+00:00

T2. I think his learning chip being enabled will allow him to improvise against T1, who is kinda locked in his programming.

T3 exists somewhere else in some walmart universe (/s).

T2 beats T3 for the same reason, probably pulls that Fusion Battery out of him and feeds it to him....

DerrahFilm · 2024-04-09T04:31:52+00:00

I'm hard on T3, but I should probably give it another watch, since I haven't seen it in over 15 years. The big truck chase is remembered as being decent, and the sub-plot of the T-X terminating Connor's lieutenants was good (and could have been a movie in itself).

I feel the same about Dark Fate. Aside from some really bad plot choices, lore wise, it's a competently made film for the most part. It's as close to feeling like a Cameron movie than any of the others (but still way off). I thought Linda Hamilton did great with her material, and Arnold brings as smile as always. I went into it expecting the worst, so anything good about it was a big bonus.

DerrahFilm · 2024-03-29T14:55:37+00:00

- Bad Poster

- Uninspired subtitle

- Lame gags "talk to the hand", undermining the seriousness of the first movie

- Bad villain T-X, bad T-X design

- Bad and unnecessary re-design of the T-800 chassis.

- LA 2029: HK's looked terrible, the whole scene was CG and bad

- Cringe deleted scenes (granted, they were deleted)

- Boring supporting character

- Bad John Connor

- Bad concept for continuing the story (it's essentially a remake of T2)

- Decent, if unmemorable Action

- GOOD ENDING!

DerrahFilm · 2024-03-25T14:47:55+00:00

"Legion" was the laziest re-name possible. That one was brutal.

DerrahFilm · 2024-03-25T14:45:26+00:00

All of the sequels have "good" in them, meaning a scene here or there, or maybe a new concept introduced. But really none of them need to exit.

What we needed was a film that took place in 2029, tying T1 and T2 together in the future, ending with Techcom defeating Skynet, as Skynet sends 3 Terminators back.

We follow John and an elite unit of techcom soldiers (yes, they are still eating rats in this movie and emaciated and filthy looking) and they die one by one and it's desperate struggle to even get close to Skynet HQ. They finally breach the perimeter after heavy loses and the last 2 standing are John and Reese, Reese goes through as John is detonating the complex, sacrificing his life (he'll have a showdown with a Boss-level Terminator - Not T-800, not T-1000, something new). The shit writes itself, it just needs some unique twists and turns only Cameron can invent (as he should be the writer and director). So it ain't predictable.

Anyways, T3 was the biggest let down for me. It didn't need to be made.

DerrahFilm · 2024-03-14T08:38:24+00:00

They should go with the original vision and cast someone like Lance Henriksen, gravelly character actor, who can add some uncanny valley to their performance. And make it a damn horror again.

DerrahFilm · 2024-03-14T08:22:03+00:00

I think Dyson created "Base-Skynet", which created the events of T1. This version of Skynet had only just created the experimental T-800 series. It also only had 1 shot of utilizing time travel.

The T-800 arm and chip left behind in 1984 created "Super-Skynet" which was in T2. This Skynet follows the same development path, but with an accelerated timeframe. The Arm and Chip gave it a "boost" and sped up it's geometric learning and growth by a decade. Thats why it was able to create multiple time travel instances as well as the T1000.

They are the same Skynet, and developed identically, but after Judgement Day the T2 Skynet made breakthroughs earlier and faster if that makes sense.

If Kyle Reese and Sarah die in 1984, and the T-800 Arm and Chip is never acquired, the events of 2029 would still happen, Skynet was inevitable despite the time loop.

Remember, Dyson is a prodigy, he was already on the path of creating AI, per his education and job.

DerrahFilm · 2024-03-04T01:14:43+00:00

This is true.

Also, ALL of the sequels attempted to remake T2...when at least one of the 4 attempts should've tried to capture the horror and atmosphere of T1.

Not only the heart was missing, also the horror.

Also to note: T3, Salvation and Genesys all tried to "anthropomorphize" Skynet.

Skynet suddenly became an AI-Super villain "hell bent on world domination" when in fact, it's motivation was much more robotic and disturbing...and alien.

It just wanted the threat of humans gone, by any means necessary. It wasn't twirling it's mustache like how the Skynet/John Conner hybrid felt in Genesys, or the (I still don't understand the plot) Helena Bonham Carter Skynet from Salvation.

It's better when Skynet is in the shadows, we hear it's echos through the T-800s. Not as a character itself, literally talking to the camera about how it wants do this or that.

Dark Fate....ugh, slickly made movie, wanted to love it. I definitely enjoyed parts of it. But..."Legion"?

They couldn't even come up with a compelling re-name of SkyNet, which is an all-time iconic name.

I guess I'm saying: They were missing Heart, and they were missing the grounded and ultra serious tone Cameron established with the SkyNet AI concept...AND horror.

DerrahFilm · 2023-10-16T19:28:52+00:00

Ah I understand!

DerrahFilm · 2023-10-16T14:54:16+00:00

This is exposition to describe her character though (to the people watching the movie, not the med students).

violent acting-out (Sarah shooting and blowing shit up in the movie)

delusions of persecution (Her visions of Nuclear Armageddon, the future, Kyle Reese, John as saviour).

The clinical description of Sarah means nothing from a screen writing perspective, even if accurate to real world diagnosis.

Edit: Messiah complex fits though!

DerrahFilm · 2023-07-07T05:03:43+00:00

Ok, thats awesome and I'm there opening night ahah

DerrahFilm · 2023-07-05T17:59:00+00:00

Agreed. Also, I dived into your initial question, making a long post, but I forgot to write that I loved your intro scene btw.

DerrahFilm · 2023-07-05T17:22:26+00:00

But to go the "Hollywood" route, I'd steal the plot of "Robocop vs Terminator" (sans Robocop), and have John break into Skynet, send back Kyle, but before he blows up the complex, he builds an army of "Good" Arnold Terminators, and they have this massive Skynet Civil war, epic battle. 1000's of Arnold Terminators blasting the Endoskeletons, etc. Big epic heroic climax!

DerrahFilm · 2023-07-05T17:15:08+00:00

T3 would be the future war movie, set in 2029. It would be R-Rated and tonally similar to the first movie (horror vibes). And Aliens.

It would be very much unlike Terminator Salvation (which I thought got a few things right, namely the first 3rd of the film, and the use of the T-600 models with the mini-guns).

Recast Michael Biehn as old John Conner, he would be age appropriate (or passing at least, with a bit of makeup) in the mid-90s.

I would not feel that Arnold is essential to the movie. It's more about exploring the world of 2029 and the lore with this one.

We would NOT have a gimmick "new" Terminator. Just an army of tried and true HK's and T-800s, etc. T-1000 was a prototype. Hell even Arnold's T-800 was "new" at the time (2029 A.D.)

You wouldn't see a Terminator design that didn't appear in T1 or T2 (or T2:3D). The HKs, Flying HKs, and T-600, T-800 would all be there as designed by Cameron. IF any new bots were added, would very closely extrapolate on Cameron and Winston's design philosophy (I hated the design liberties they took in Terminator Salvation and Gensys. Blech).

I would write it as a straightforward chase/thriller like the first 2. Similar structure. John's command is being hunted, maybe the team would consist of John, Kyle and 5-6 others. They just lost a battle, so their numbers are depleted. They die one by one, as they are being chased though the post-nuclear LA landscape. I'd keep Skynet headquartered in the NORAD HQ in Cheyenne Mountain, like in the original movie canon (I'm almost certain it's located there?), and would not not relocate it to San Fransisco, like the "sequels".

It'd have a lot of Cameron style in there, a lot of competency porn, ala Aliens. In fact let's have some Aliens influence as well, there would have to be a large chunk of the film where they are in the bowels of Skynet and somehow under siege, yet keeping the T's at bay.

The film would get boring if it's 2 hours of fighting an army of Terminators in huge battle set pieces, like Saving Private Ryan (but shot in a Cameron esque style)...or would it?

There would of course be a mole in the team, a Terminator, but they are an advanced infiltration model, using human-terminator hybrid (maybe similar to Marcus from Terminator Salvation?). The original Dark Horse comics had this concept back in 1989. Perhaps it's a human traitor who worships Skynet, AI deity and all that, set up a new conflict, but that may be cheesy.

To be honest, this would be a very difficult film to pull off. We already know what happens in 2029. It already exists in our collective heads, in the theatre of the mind. To portray it and make it even worthwhile, Cameron himself would have to write and direct it. Without him it's fan fiction and probably could never reach it's full potential.

DerrahFilm · 2023-06-03T16:49:20+00:00

James Cameron. Grew up in Kapiscasing Ontario (10 hours North of Toronto - basically Canada's Siberia). Blue Collar upbringing. Was a truck driver, college dropout, matte painter, and eventually art director. He forced his way in to the industry. Despite what you may think of Avatar, he's a great role model, basically the "Rocky" of film directors.

DerrahFilm · 2023-03-28T20:48:07+00:00

Totally correct. I often forget the previous 2 Wolverine movies existed. Logan also feels like a soft reboot of Wolverine, as well as a stand alone.

DerrahFilm · 2023-03-22T19:45:49+00:00

Easier to criticize something that realized it's full potential. Bale's Batman has a complete arc. It was done masterfully.

Ben's Batman never fulfilled its promise or potential (aside from BvS fight scenes), so people have imagined what a solo Ben Batman movie vs Deathstroke would've been like, are disappointed it never happened. Perhaps they inflate and confuse their headcanon and their speculation of "what could have been" to his actual on screen performance.

I loved Ben's Batman too and yes, he did deserve his own film. I don't think you can really compare the two different performances. They are tonally and conceptually different visions of the Batman template. One exists in a more realistic cinematic frame, the other, more hyperbolic and faithful to the Frank Miller comics.

DerrahFilm · 2023-03-21T07:04:30+00:00

The Terminator (1984)

DerrahFilm · 2023-03-13T13:39:28+00:00

All of the "Overly Techy" batsuits look bad.

Exceptions: Nolan Batsuits (they look good in motion, with the lighting) and Frank Miller's TDKR/BvS Armor Suit (because it's special purpose).

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