New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Leaving the popularity of the core concept aside for a moment, Skynet as an antagonist has become wheezy and tired and resolutely non-intimidating. The T-1000 liquid-metal concept is 24 years old and still has no worthy successor (mad props to Kristanna Loken for making an absolutely splendid Terminator, but I still don't understand how its architecture is an advancement over the T-1000). The characters involved have been back and forth through time so often and Judgment Day has been retconned enough times that there's precious little meat left on this particular storytelling bone.

Kim Hollis: I’d echo the sadness that people are feeling here. The Terminator (1984) is one of my favorite films. I saw it in the theater at the time, and it blew me away. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I vividly remember my movie-going experience for both Terminator and T2. I know who I saw them with and remember quoting lines from the film for weeks (years?) afterward. They were pivotal experiences in my becoming a fan of cinema.

Fast forward to 2015 and I can’t even be bothered to go see the latest Terminator in theaters. That’s depressing, because even if Rise of the Machines and Salvation were lesser films, I still was excited to see them on opening night (and agree with Reagen that 3 is an underrated flick). I’d even call this result shameful. It’s going to be a disaster, especially as it falls off the face of the Earth over the next couple of weeks.

David Mumpower Let's call this performance the anti-Mad Max. Whereas that moribund franchise rose from the grave to demonstrate verve and energy, Terminator V failed to move the dial in any sense. I've openly mocked the trailers, which go a long way in making me love Khaleesi less, and I maintain that if they had it to do all over again, they would have cast Orphan Black in the Sarah Connor role instead. It wouldn't have mattered, though. The crazy-ass plot for this movie combined with the stubborn decision to include the utterly irrelevant Governator put this project behind the 8-ball long before principal photography began.

I agree with the consensus here that Terminator matters as a brand. It could excel if the right director breathed new life into the project, but I don't even see James Cameron as a savior at this point. It needs to go away for half a dozen years before another reboot attempt. By then, home robotics will be ubiquitous, so the revolutionary idea of Skynet may seem perfunctory and dull. It was imperative for this reboot to succeed to avoid the issue. Instead, we're talking about a least case scenario result. As someone who considers Terminator 2: Judgment Day one of the seminal action films of all-time, that breaks my heart.

Continued:       1       2       3