The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

(Warning - Spoilers galore!)

I can only imagine the pre-production meetings that took place when the studio heads were trying to figure out how to rejuvenate the Terminator franchise:

"LET'S MAKE JOHN CONNOR A ROBOT!"

"ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AS A T-1000?  OH HELLLLLLLLLL YEAH!"

I'm not made of stone.  The Terminator movies hold a place in my nostalgic heart.  I first saw the original Terminator on TV as a kid, recording it on a blank Beta videotape.  They took out a bunch of swearing and some of the violence (as you have to do on broadcast television) but man did I think it was awesome.  Terminator 2 is up there as one of my all time favourites: I saw it with a video store colleague, Travis, who just worked his last shift and was moving elsewhere.  We saw it at a late night advanced screening, completely sold out, and I left the theatre thinking it was perhaps the best movie ever (I was 16 at that time...but it is still pretty awesome).

Since then, there hasn't been too much to brag about with the Terminator movies.  I actually thought part 3 was okay, while Terminator: Salvation was an installment that was depressing and rather forgettable.  When they announced a fifth movie and that Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to be in it, I thought, "Hmmm, well at least Arnold is starring, so maybe they're on the right track".  Then they showed the first trailer, which just made me doubt the project even more.  The next trailer was even worse, as the whole "John Connor is a robot" plot element was revealed.  In hindsight, I think the studio heads figured it was probably best to let the cat out of the bag now so the built-in paying audience can digest that fact first before going to see it,  I figured if they were revealing that plot point now...well I actually thought it might be a red herring or something.  Surely they wouldn't go in that direction, would they?  Despite all these doubts, I knew I was still going to see it and they would get my money.

Well, it's $13.99 I'm never going to get back.  At the beginning of the movie when they go to 1984 where it all began, it was just a big exercise in getting rid of the huge inconvenience of the plot, heart and the whole reason why the Terminator movies are well-liked by the general public.  It's like they took a big collective dump on everything that was established by the James Cameron-directed films because they were incapable of coming up with something coherent that still respects the canon previously established.

So Arnold Schwarzenegger's "new" terminator goes back earlier in time to the mid-70's to protect Sarah Connor as a child, against something that is not explained very well in the flashback scenes.  They don't know who sent him back though because his memory was erased before heading back through the time machine.  So in other words, the writers couldn't think of another character that may have sent him back.  This is explained after the 1984 scenes when they show the original (in CGI form anyway) terminator sent back to kill the 19 year old Sarah Connor, followed by a T-1000 also sent back to kill what I assume is the Kyle Reese character, who was sent back to save Sarah Connor.  This takes place before the unmentioned plot of Terminator 2 of a different T-1000 sent back to kill young John Connor, followed by part 3's story of a T-X (from memory, I'm too lazy to Google it as my hand is falling off typing all this) sent back to kill all of John Connor's "lieutenants" and John Connor himself, if you're lucky enough to find him.

Am I the only one who thought the time travel plot device had run it's course?  The one thing that I thought Salvation had right was that it looked like they were ready to build towards the big battle between the humans and machines over Earth.  I mean, how AWESOME would that have been?  And you can still pay homage to the original movies by showing how the time travelers were sent back, how they figured out it was going to happen, etc.  Alas, Salvation was poorly executed, and the current creative minds behind Genisys decided John Connor becoming a bad robot was the way to go, while still incorporating time travel in the script.  What is the movie trying to say when it does that?  John Connor was a hero, his backstory of rallying the humans to fight back against the machines was one of the main reasons the audience was drawn to the story in the first place!  But it looks like they're headed towards a big confrontation between, according to the credits, a "T-5000" (John Connor was apparently a "T-3000"), the artificial intelligence spawned by the creation of Skynet who turns John Connor into the robot (but as the box office numbers have been disappointing, the sequels are in jeopardy).  The end of the movie is actually the group of Sarah Connor, Reese and Arnold trying to stop him from being formed, and you think they pulled it off, but, well, I won't spoil everything but stick around for the credits so you can roll your eyes another time.

And by the way, my earlier comment about Arnold becoming a T-1000 DOES actually happen, when he is accidentally dumped into prototype "liquid metal" in the final minutes of the movie and his brain chip, I guess, falls into it.  And much like when you pull out a CPU processor from your Xbox and stick into your iPhone motherboard, it will immediately adapt and work properly.

But if you think that's plausible, maybe you will enjoy Terminator: Genisys.