Terminator: Dark Fate: Almost Great (Spoilers)

[Winter]

So, I got to see Terminator: Dark Fate when it came out and I have to say that I actually really liked it! The action was good, the characters were likeable, no one is stupid for the sake of the plot and the plot is easy to follow instead of the convoluted messes we got in the last 3 Terminator films (and even the Sarah Connor Chronicles in my honest opinion).

However, it's still not as good as T1 or T2 as there's one thing holding it from reaching the same heights, the film needed more time. More time with Dani's family, more time with Carl's family, more time between Sarah, Dani, Grace & Carl interacting and more time with each character.TDF running time is 2 hours and 8 minutes but I really think this should have been 2 hours and 30 to 35 minutes because as is, it's good. But with just a little more time it could have been Amazing.

It's not like The Last Jedi where I spend more time yelling at the characters for acting stupid or forcing relationships that I find stupid. Again everyone here Is avoiding doing stupid things and the relationships feel real thanks in part to the cast's chemistry. I honestly didn't want to see anything bad happen to the characters and felt bad when things didn't go their way.

I honestly say check it out if you get the chance, it's a fun ride start to finish.

[Madner Kami]

I completely agree. The movie needed more downtime between the action scenes, but is otherwise the true successor to T1 and T2.

The only thing that really bothers me so far is, how Carl managed to switch from Assassinbot to Familybot without having his CPU's learning capabilities unlocked. But since that is from a deleted scene in T2, I can overlook that plothole. In fact, I actually liked that development, because it also continues the theme of "we can learn to understand each other and not be natural enemies" from T2.

[Winter]

Carl really is DF in a nutshell. A solid idea that builds on the foundation of the first two films while still being it's own thing. We just needed to see him interact with his family more and spend more time with him on the way to the final fight. It's actually rather sad that this may very well be the last Terminator film, at least for a while, as I would have loved to see where the story went after this. I do hope that this film has or gets an Extended Cut that gives the downtime the characters need as that would help elevate this film from good to the classic it has the potential to be.

[Admiral X]

Everything I've heard about this movie is horrible and makes it sound like it craps all over the movie it's trying to ride the coattails of. The closest I've heard to praise for this movie outside of people fanboying for it is that it's better than Genesys, which was just completely off the rails.

[Yukaphile]

This franchise has been dead for a long time now, even ignoring my own reevaluation of T2 for a while now. And yes, I'll admit, I loved T3. I think T2 and T3 were fun eye-candy spectacles. But T4 is, eh... where it really went downhill. They didn't do as good a job they could in showing a future war story, so they don't know where to go now. Of course, having to build on the flaws of T3 did not help, where Skynet was a computer virus rather than a very sophisticated supercomputer buried under Cheyenne Mountain. Such a shame.

[clearspira]

Cool. You want spoilers. OK.

They kill John Connor just so they can replace him with a female version who never feels like she earns her position and they made The Terminator into a f**king drape salesman who has problems having sex with his wife.

This bombed for a reason. What a load of woke crap. I would say this is the worst slaughter of a famous franchise since The Last Jedi and they did so for the exact same reasons. Oh, and all of that outrage marketing where the producers were shitting on the old fans can go to Hell. We don't hate your film because we are all sexists, we hate it because your film is terrible.

[Mecha82]

If Winter likes the movie then that's good sign that it's worth time and money to go to watch. Based on that DF is actually good attempt to give franchise 3rd entry.

[Yukaphile]

Maybe Hollywood is finally getting its game together after the string of shit we've had in the past few years. Even so, it's not long before the movie theater as an institution is dissolved and paves the way for home and online entertainment. Lord knows I'm biased against them for my own reasons, as we all know. And hey, if Winter likes it, more power to him. If somebody gets joy out of "Threshold," for God's sake, well, that's a good thing.

[Beastro]

This franchise has been dead for a long time now, even ignoring my own reevaluation of T2 for a while now.

Terminator didn't die, it resolved its story with T2, which is a good example of a sequel because it naturally built from the first film, yet it's resolution left no way for continuance.

The problem is that second word in your sentence, franchise. Franchises, like popular comic book heroes, aren't allowed to rest even if they naturally resolve themselves. No, they must continue until they're no longer profitable and then discarded to lay fallow for a awhile if lucky.

Some are built for that, Star Trek allows room to expand and grow beyond Enterprise and Kirk, and is why it's had multiple perspectives. The scope of Terminator is too narrow for that, especially with the ending of T2.

T3's "Judgement Day is inevitable" was the producerese for "Disregard everything previously said to the contrary! There's much too potential profit to allow a simple thing like a story's resolution to get in the way of making more money!!!"

[Yukaphile]

That story was already closed with T1. It was a stable time loop. The logical story to tell was a future war story done properly, not building off the flaws of T2 and T3. And making time travel be the last battle that both sets it off and concludes it.