I just finished watched T4 on HBO and am looking forward to T5, sometime next year.  I don't have any inside information about this movie, but I hope it's the last one.  The series is beginning to run itself into the ground.

I would like the franchise to end with John Connor trying to stop the Terminator from going to the past, only the fail. As a result, he has no other choice but to send Kyle Reese back in time.

This, if handled properly, would cause the five movies to turn into one long loop.  The story wouldn't end as it wouldn't for John Connor.


Phil

Quoted from dogglebe I would like the franchise to end with John Connor trying to stop the Terminator from going to the past, only the fail. As a result, he has no other choice but to send Kyle Reese back in time.

Well, he has to, don't he? Otherwise he won't get conceived - that is, if you go by the Back-To-The-Future-Time-Travel-Logic (which contradicts itself).

Regardless of whether the writer of T4 believed in a singular timeline or the multiverse theory - T4 doesn't make any sense.

Quoted from dogglebe I hope it's the last one.  The series is beginning to run itself into the ground.

I thought it already ran itself into the ground with 3.


Breanne

One of the big problems I had with T: Salvation was the guy not realizing he was a terminator.  Just made no sense to me.  And, when he got into a fight with those old bums, his punches would have taken their heads off.  Instead, it just looked like a bad barfight.  It should have ended with T2, but I found T3 a lot more tolerable that this last one.  T5 can only disappoint further, especially if it's McG at the helm.

T3 might be my favorite of the series.  I believe in multiple timelines and felt that John Connor couldn't hold off his destiny, only postpone it.  Each time he pushed it back, he changed the future by only a little bit.  That's why T2 had that incredible liquid metal Terminator and T3 had a Terminator who could only change her breast-size at will (I'll not complaining, mind you).

By changing his present, each time he fought the Terminators, the changed. With T5, we are at the point where JC defeats Skynet, or mankind dies.  The fighting can't continue.

I'd like to see Arnold in T5.  His 'cameo' in T4 was pretty cool.


Phil

T3 is hugely under-rated I think. Leonard Maltin gives it 3 stars in his annual movie book and considers it the most entertaining of the first 3.

I wasn't interested in T4 cos of Bale being in it - I read the movie tie- in novel and found it not bad.

I still remember fondly seeing T2 at the cinema in 1991; it was like this huge event and everyone was hanging to see it. No one was disappointed.

My big problem with T4 was that it took the threat of the Terminator out of the equation.  All of the other movies dealt with one robot trying to kill John Connor (or Sarah).  With T4, it was an army of robots.  Adding a resistance army did the same thing.  It was no longer a one-on-one battle but a war.


Phil

Yeah, good point, Phil. I think they thought the audiences would be sick of the same premise as the others.
I've read a couple other T spec books, and they were better than the T4 story.

After I saw T2 years ago, I had a great idea for T3: a third T comes back, looking like Sarah. Just as she catches Sarah and John, Judgement Day happens and the nuclear blast sends them all into the future via the time machine. Then you would've had Arnie there, Kyle, etc. My mate told me to write it and send it to Hollywood but I wasn't into scripts then and was too drunk to write the novel.

There's a website that details all the paradoxes of time travel in films and books, and the Terminator series gets a great going over. i think it was MJ young's site. Very interesting stuff and handy if you're writing a time travel story.

God, I could talk about this series for days. I think T4 was the flattest. Lacked any light side. Same could be said about the first, but it was so mind blowing it didn't matter.

To end It... Wow! First, nobody ever made the first CPU. Miles Dyson didn't. All his work was based on first one sent back. Without it, he was nothing. Then they destory the lab in T2.

Then the only 2 CPUs remaining go into lava pit. Right then and there, if it worked, Sarah's current realities should've ceased to exist. John, probably not ever born. Having not changed this, they left door open for T3.

Which basically states man will inevitably destroy himself from technology. Can't change it. But can learn from it.

I can't see how T5 will make any sense in unless it's ended in a future battle. But they'll probably go back in time. Cuz wtf do I know.

James

Quoted from dogglebe My big problem with T4 was that it took the threat of the Terminator out of the equation.  All of the other movies dealt with one robot trying to kill John Connor (or Sarah).  With T4, it was an army of robots.  Adding a resistance army did the same thing.  It was no longer a one-on-one battle but a war. Phil

True.  I think one of the things that made the Terminator franchise unique was the structure of the stories.  Terminator arrives.  Pursuit begins.  Salvation changed it to a much more standard, boring structure.

It sort of becomes a catch-22, doesn't it? The filmmakers know what made the first movie(s) work, but they're afraid of doing it again or risk becoming bland. But by not doing it again, they take away what made the first ones work. That's the trouble of forming an entire series around a plot structure instead of a story. Sure, Terminator has a "story", but the story is more completely titled Terminator Chases Connor.

Then Terminator Chases Connor 2 (Ha! "2" Get it?)
Then Terminator Chases Connor 3

Oh, but then Terminator Chases Connor 4 doesn't fit the title anymore. Dang it.

The trouble with whatever they make the end one as, we know how it ends because of 3. That is, if they don't change the "logic" of the series.

3 tells us that John kicks ass until the Schwarzenegger terminator kills him but they realize it does nothing because by then, Claire Danes kicks ass to the point where the terminators can't win. So, they send the terminators back to kill him and they all fail. The end.

P.S. As cool as Robert Patrick was in 2, the original idea for T2, I thought, was amazing. You guys have probably heard this but the idea was Schwarzenegger would be sent back as the good terminator and a terminator that looks like Reese would be the bad one.

Trouble is, Cameron had used Biehn so many times that he really didn't want to turn this partnership into a crutch. Same reason why he didn't put Biehn in Avatar but that's a side-story thing.

Quoted from stevie There's a website that details all the paradoxes of time travel in films and books, and the Terminator series gets a great going over. i think it was MJ young's site. Very interesting stuff and handy if you're writing a time travel story.

What site is this, Stevie?


Phil

http://www.mjyoung.net/time/

Its a fairly old site - i found it a few years back.


The most intruguing way he looks at the T series is that you have to look at different angles:
In the 'normal' timeline, Sarah has a child named John Connor, not to Reese, but a normal guy. This has to happen before anything else in the T universe, or else John isn't in the future to send Reese back. That is the backbone of it all, IMO anyway.

Who will be directing T5?

~Zack~