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Terminator Dark Fate bombs at the Box Office

Cravis

Member
Worth more time than T3, Salvation or whatever the hell Genesis was.
high quality GIF
 

Werewolf Jones

Gold Member
I memed on it a bit as it was coming out but never had a bad time with it. Not like it can do anymore damage than the previous movies.
 

Dural

Member
T3 got some shit for killing Sarah Connor off screen, but the movie isn't that bad. It's just not as nearly as good as the first two films. I like how it ended and the traditional chase scene without nasty CGI is still fun to watch.

Yeah, that chase scene is epic. Not a fan of the actor that plays John, but overall I really liked T3.
 
The series is utter trash at this point, if Arnold wasn't in these, nobody would see them.

The sheer amount of SJW libtard shit crammed into the last one was beyond eye rolling. Utter garbage.

Yes we have to demasculate every single male character. Big strong Arnold is now an interior decorator. John Connor was never a hero. Ice agents deserve to be slaughtered for daring to work in immigration.

They cram their dumb agenda into everything. Fuck Tim Miller and everyone who worked on this. Hollywood can choke a dick.
 
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Doczu

Member
Didn't he end up in jail so they had to recast?

Anyway, I can enjoy just about any movie in this universe as I just like it that much but what they did with Dark Fate was BS.
Nah, he probably was high as a kite or in rehab. Don't remember anymore, dude really lost it.
I've got a soft spot for 3 (saw it in the cinema as a teen) and the rest is mostly meh for me. Genesys is a train wreck, DF was insulting to the OG fans, but other than that it was a reboot of T2 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
I liked Genisys. The real problem of that movie was the marketing. If it was presented as a Terminator 1 remix, word of mouth after the first weekend would have been good. It's an exciting flick with many twists and an interesting story that goes full retard in a good way.
But the entire movie was spoiled and the trailers were trash.
 
I liked Genisys. At least it tried to get a little wacky. All the ones since 3 have been so dour and serious.

Like this one, which is 50% about the plight of immigrants. I don't care about immigrants in a movie series about time travelling robots. I care about time travelling robots.
 
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I liked Genisys. The real problem of that movie was the marketing. If it was presented as a Terminator 1 remix, word of mouth after the first weekend would have been good. It's an exciting flick with many twists and an interesting story that goes full retard in a good way.
But the entire movie was spoiled and the trailers were trash.

I liked Genisys. At least it tried to get a little wacky. All the ones since 3 have been so dour and serious.

Like this one, which is 50% about the plight of immigrants. I don't care about immigrants in a movie series about time travelling robots. I care about time travelling robots.

I actually just bought a digital copy of Genisys for cheap. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a bad movie. But holy shit is it the only one of the four latter-day sequels that is actually fun to watch. It's hilariously bad. "John Connor is a Terminator now, and we gave him the most ridiculous callback line ever in a franchise full of terrible callbacks." LMAO. It's the only sequel that's basically a loving pisstake of T1 rather than an incompetent, sombre, miserable attempt to live up to T2.

The part of Dark Fate's preaching that really got me isn't the "let's stop the movie cold for 30 minutes to lecture the audience about immigration" sequence, it's the moment where the movie announces, as pompously as possible, that "the hero of the future isn't the hispanic girl's child, it's the HISPANIC GIRL HERSELF!" Holy shit, what a twist. It's not like that was incredibly obvious, probably from the first 30 seconds of the first trailer. It was so obvious that I had just assumed it for the first three quarters of the movie, and so I was especially insulted when the script basically looked directly into the camera and said "betcha never imagined that a GIRL who is a MINORITY could be a great SCI-FI LEADER OF THE FUTURE! You thought GIRLS in movies were only good as INCUBATORS for MALE ACTION HEROES! Look how transgressive and clever and virtuous I am for disabusing you of that notion!" Fuck you, writers. Fuck you.
 
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turd of a movie

i’ve come to realize that 95% of all new movies suck

Yup, even Nobody which I liked, was kind of lackluster. Crap like Kong vs Godzilla and the new Mortal Kombat movie isn't even worth my time. It seems clear to me that hardly any directors respect their audiences intelligence and taste anymore.
 

StormCell

Member
Yup, even Nobody which I liked, was kind of lackluster. Crap like Kong vs Godzilla and the new Mortal Kombat movie isn't even worth my time. It seems clear to me that hardly any directors respect their audiences intelligence and taste anymore.
I'm just waiting for all that bullshit they're throwing up into the air to come raining back down on them. The tide will shift and a lot of these writers are going to be out of work since their reputations have been nailed to the social justice virtue signaling ship. They'll go out to sea with the rest of the show.

In spite of all of Dark Fate's woes, there was originally a quality story in there. You had to have, at some point, wondered what would happen if a Terminator ever completed its task of killing John Connor. I believe that the assumption should have been that the machine would go to sleep. The future would rewrite itself with no human resistance left to battle Skynet. The real surprise should have been that without John Connor there's no Skynet. We now have a tale about a future without Skynet that somehow still goes awry...

Were it not for the politics crammed into this thing, we had a perfectly good story to tell. Just imagine that the original script was far better than the drizzling poop spoon fed to us in the end.
 

VulcanRaven

Member
The movie was ok. It flopped because people arent very interested in Terminator movies anymore. It tried to be the true T3 but it didn't work because there have been so many bad sequels. People won't forget them easily.
 
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I actually just bought a digital copy of Genisys for cheap. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a bad movie. But holy shit is it the only one of the four latter-day sequels that is actually fun to watch. It's hilariously bad. "John Connor is a Terminator now, and we gave him the most ridiculous callback line ever in a franchise full of terrible callbacks." LMAO. It's the only sequel that's basically a loving pisstake of T1 rather than an incompetent, sombre, miserable attempt to live up to T2.

The part of Dark Fate's preaching that really got me isn't the "let's stop the movie cold for 30 minutes to lecture the audience about immigration" sequence, it's the moment where the movie announces, as pompously as possible, that "the hero of the future isn't the hispanic girl's child, it's the HISPANIC GIRL HERSELF!" Holy shit, what a twist. It's not like that was incredibly obvious, probably from the first 30 seconds of the first trailer. It was so obvious that I had just assumed it for the first three quarters of the movie, and so I was especially insulted when the script basically looked directly into the camera and said "betcha never imagined that a GIRL who is a MINORITY could be a great SCI-FI LEADER OF THE FUTURE! You thought GIRLS in movies were only good as INCUBATORS for MALE ACTION HEROES! Look how transgressive and clever and virtuous I am for disabusing you of that notion!" Fuck you, writers. Fuck you.
The thing is, it doesn't matter to me that she is a Hispanic girl, the problem is that they just took the only story underpinning the entire franchise for decades and threw it under the bus. I know the series is all about paradoxes, but killing John was a jumping the shark moment. It makes the entire enterprise pointless. It is much like The Last Jedi, which started from a premise of failure, the failure of Luke to live up to Yoda's dying words, something that never existed in the SW franchise until that movie, when Rian Johnson pulled it out of nowhere to troll fans. This movie pulls the same move, purposefully jumping the shark, daring the audience to walk out of the movie theater, showing that it is all pointless right from the start.

I feel like movie making has just become such a risk-free and profitable enterprise that these people don't have to even consider pleasing the audience anymore. So they are allowed to be outwardly antagonistic. When you kill John Connor, you don't just write him out of the picture, you pretty much make Sarah Connor a pointless character. So the Terminator fan goes into Dark Fate understanding that everything our heroes have worked towards for decades is now a failure. Great. What a way to start your movie. How "subversive". You totally failed to write an interesting franchise entry and are basically admitting it in the opening minutes.

Then they introduce Dani and say "she's the hero now" but in the most poorly, rushed, lazy way possible. My problem with the immigrant sideplot was not the girl, I thought she actually did a good job, and her family and friends were even interesting, but there was no time given to them, she was not allowed to carry much of the story, there was no chance to learn who she is. They were not 3 dimensional characters. We don't know anything about Dani other than she has a job at an automotive plant and has to deal with immigration issues. She is just there as "A Latina Girl" in a Terminator movie, watching the movie take place from within it, maybe having a few token hero moments, but mostly being an observer. To me this is just a woke liberal's idea of what a Latina is like, she works hard at a working class job, she has to escape ICE, and that's it. Nothing about her friends or homelife. Nothing about her personal dreams or talents. She is kind of a side character, despite the movie's attempted pose of making her a main character. There is nothing there. She is underserved by the movie and her identity is exploited for clout. The writers were all white men by the way. So I can see why they would overlook anything that makes her interesting and only include politically charged aspects of her character.

This is my problem with most woke stuff and is why I call out SJW despite being fine with stories that involve POCs. My problem is the woke movie makers often exploit the POCs for their own political gain, and when you try and call them out on not doing a decent job or not treating the character with enough thought and respect, they call you a racist. I actually WANT the Latina to have a better role. What is she like? Actually give her a character that isn't reduced down to news talking points. A shame the 5 writers could not figured that out. But then again none of the characters are treated all that well in this movie.
 
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QSD

Member
I liked Genisys. At least it tried to get a little wacky. All the ones since 3 have been so dour and serious.

Like this one, which is 50% about the plight of immigrants. I don't care about immigrants in a movie series about time travelling robots. I care about time travelling robots.

But the time travelling robots are immigrants (from the future). There is clearly massive unemployment there.
 

INC

Member
In my mind theres only 2 ways it save this franchise

Do the actual war, in all its 80s and 90s awesomeness

Or

Reboot it, go back to its underline stalker sci-fi slasher film vibe.

Until arnie can be removed itll never go anywhere.

Or better yet, just let it go
 
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The Skull

Member
Absolute turd of a movie. Honestly don't know what they were smoking when this got the green light.

At the very least, albeit it's still is a shit film, Genesis tried something different with John becoming a terminator. Should have ended with T2.
 
They get worse with each entry starting from 3. That's clear to see. Dark Fate was atrocious and confirmed that nobody in Hollywood has half a clue what to do with the franchise. The next logical step is to do a full CG film or full cartoon film of Robocop versus The Terminator. No fucking live action spliced with CG horseshit. All CG or all cartoon mother fuckers. No SJW bullshit either. I want 80's grit. Bring back Peter Weller and Arnold Schwarzenegger for the voices because let's be honest, these franchises without these 2 mains are fucked. Give me what I've longed to see since playing that genius Mega Drive game. I know deep down in my heart Hollywood will never do that though so they can get fucked.
 
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Davey Cakes

Member
I just remembered that there are SIX Terminator movies. Plus a TV Show. Plus all the games.

And...people are really only endeared to the first two movies still. Well, that and maybe T2 Arcade. It's crazy how much of this franchise has been entirely wasted.
 

StormCell

Member
I just remembered that there are SIX Terminator movies. Plus a TV Show. Plus all the games.

And...people are really only endeared to the first two movies still. Well, that and maybe T2 Arcade. It's crazy how much of this franchise has been entirely wasted.
Or it's proof that many good things should just stop at 2.

Good things that should have stopped at 2:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (III was just awful)
Ghostbusters (this one should have been left in the containment unit)
Predator (nowhere to go except AvP)
Aliens (the third movie wasn't unwatchable)
Batman (has either completely gone off the rails in Forever or become a total snooze fest that runs way too long with an uninteresting villain)
Spider-Man (Bad emo)
X-Men (let's kill everybody)
 
Terminator 1 has that horror element to it. IMO the sequels were never able to capture that and the story neve evolved past killing John Connor. Every sequel that came out was pretty much the same thing.

Also the franchise needed to move on from Arnold ages ago.
 

SinDelta

Member
I finally watched this movie and I can’t think of another instance in which the whole thing was ruined in the first few minutes.
The Last Jedi. Yeah I think Dark Fate actually has it beat though in that aspect which is impressive in a bad sort of way.
Even Luke was only killed off later in the Last Jedi. Reading what happens to John in Dark Fate was just the worst. In another sense it seems modern writers like their Alien 3s more than their Aliens. Treating the heroes my generation watched and idolized growing up like absolute trash.
 
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StormCell

Member
Terminator 1 has that horror element to it. IMO the sequels were never able to capture that and the story neve evolved past killing John Connor. Every sequel that came out was pretty much the same thing.

Also the franchise needed to move on from Arnold ages ago.
That's certainly true of the first one, but it was the sequel that really hit it out of the park in every conceivable way.

Probably, they would have fared much better if they had taken the third movie in the direction of going further back in time to stop Sarah Connor from ever being born. Could have gotten way more interesting.
 

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
I didn't mind dark fate actually.

The female super soldier was pretty great actually. She played the role well. Linda Hamilton is always good. Arnie wasn't that bad and the addressed it well. The Terminator was pretty good too. The replacement for John was terrible though and there were huge plot gaps and big parts needed work.

It wasn't great, but it certainly wasn't bad. Oddly, if it didn't have Terminator in the name it might have done better, not worse.
 
All they need to do is a cheap thrill ride. Like Don't Breathe but the guy turns out to be a robot and market it like that surprise Blair Witch movie.
 

theclaw135

Banned
Dark Fate is misunderstood. It was phenomenal at punching fans in the gut to make sure they get the franchise was futile all along.
Stopping Skynet doesn't change the inevitability of humanity creating a doomsday device.
 

Chiggs

Member
Worth more time than T3, Salvation or whatever the hell Genesis was.

Completely agree. If it had come out in 2009, instead of Salvation, I doubt reactions would have been so harsh.

But there's just no getting over 3 bad Terminator movies in a row.
 
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xrnzaaas

Member
Completely agree. If it had come out in 2009, instead of Salvation, I doubt reactions would have been so harsh.

But there's just no getting over 3 bad Terminator movies in a row.
If it came out in 2009 it wouldn't have to retcon John Connor to replace him with some latina chick or turn Arnie's character into a pussy to make room for a man-looking chick.

Personally I enjoyed all Terminators (of course the ones after T2 much less) until Dark Fate came out. I wish I could erase it from my memory.
 
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UnNamed

Banned
My take:
-T3 was not bad since it was a carbon copy from T2, but the final part was good.
-T:S was a good idea but only on paper, also bad execution and a very thin plot. Sara Connor's Chronicles had better episodes than this movie. The original ending was scrapped 'cause it was leaked months before the release. The only good thing in this movie, removed.
-T:Genysis wasn't bad in theory, but it's entire plot had its foundation on something we will never see in another movie. A very stupid idea. But not so stupid as spoiling the plot twist in the movie poster. The second part wasn't that bad after all, Jason Clarke was a good villain.
-TDF, or write a the movie with every single idea fans hated from the previous movies.
 
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INC

Member
Dark Fate is misunderstood. It was phenomenal at punching fans in the gut to make sure they get the franchise was futile all along.
Stopping Skynet doesn't change the inevitability of humanity creating a doomsday device.

Story we all "get it", its the horrific execution of everyhting else in the film thats the problem
 
S

Shodan09

Unconfirmed Member
The only thing this series has left to give is a proper future war film. I didn't hate dark fate but it really feels like that's all that's left to see now.
 
Dark Fate is misunderstood. It was phenomenal at punching fans in the gut to make sure they get the franchise was futile all along.
Stopping Skynet doesn't change the inevitability of humanity creating a doomsday device.
People understood “this is pointless” only too well. You don’t start a movie with that lol.

It is a lame defense I see over and over again. People used it with Last Jedi too. “This is pointless” is not a theme that inspires viewer confidence in the material. It has nothing to do with people “misunderstanding” it. They understand it is pointless. Why would anyone want to listen to a story that starts off with “this story is pointless”?
 
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INC

Member
People understood “this is pointless” only too well. You don’t start a movie with that lol.

It is a lame defense I see over and over again. People used it with Last Jedi too. “This is pointless” is not a theme that inspires viewer confidence in the material. It has nothing to do with people “misunderstanding” it. They understand it is pointless. Why would anyone want to listen to a story that starts off with “this story is pointless”?

It was enough for James Cameron to sell out and promote it lol
 

Chiggs

Member
My take:
-T3 was not bad since it was a carbon copy from T2, but the final part was good.

Yeah, "talk to the hand" was sooooooo cool.

If it came out in 2009 it wouldn't have to retcon John Connor to replace him with some latina chick or turn Arnie's character into a pussy to make room for a man-looking chick.

Not sure if we watched the same movie. I understand not liking the drapes angle, but Arnie repeatedly pummeled the Rev-9, so was there a key scene in which you felt Grace stole the show? I was honestly surprised she didn't do more.
 
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INC

Member
Yeah, "talk to the hand" was sooooooo cool.

Indeed, or the female terminator making her tits bigger to dodge a speeding ticket, instead of ripping his heart out, like previous terminators

Utter trash
 
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SafeOrAlone

Banned
Or

Reboot it, go back to its underline stalker sci-fi slasher film vibe.
This is absolutely what they should have done, imo. Maybe it's not too late, but hard to say.
Bring the budget way down. Neil Blomkamp would have been a very promising choice, honestly. He'd had his flops, but I think he'd do well with a small film like this.
 
This is absolutely what they should have done, imo. Maybe it's not too late, but hard to say.
Bring the budget way down. Neil Blomkamp would have been a very promising choice, honestly. He'd had his flops, but I think he'd do well with a small film like this.

Whats the point though? They've already done that.

I don't see much of a point continuing this franchise. T1 was a great sci fi thriller and T2 is one of the greatest action movies of all time but the concept doesn't have the legs that Fox continues to think it does. Of course Hollywood doesnt work that way and they will keep trying to squeeze blood from the Terminator stone until one movie tanks so bad that it hits their bottom line.

Same thing with Aliens, just let it die.
 

SafeOrAlone

Banned
Whats the point though? They've already done that.

I don't see much of a point continuing this franchise. T1 was a great sci fi thriller and T2 is one of the greatest action movies of all time but the concept doesn't have the legs that Fox continues to think it does. Of course Hollywood doesnt work that way and they will keep trying to squeeze blood from the Terminator stone until one movie tanks so bad that it hits their bottom line.

Same thing with Aliens, just let it die.
I guess the idea is based on the grounds that Hollywood will continue to make Terminator films.
If they are to do it, this would be the route I'd like to see them go.

As for more original sci-fi/action ideas, sure, I'd rather see that.
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
The malignant incels are wrong. This Terminator was a good Terminator movie, just like all of them have been.

Well, except for that Christian Bale piece of shit.
 

theclaw135

Banned
People understood “this is pointless” only too well. You don’t start a movie with that lol.

It is a lame defense I see over and over again. People used it with Last Jedi too. “This is pointless” is not a theme that inspires viewer confidence in the material. It has nothing to do with people “misunderstanding” it. They understand it is pointless. Why would anyone want to listen to a story that starts off with “this story is pointless”?

I meant I admire the writer's determination to tell audiences to go away.
 
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