Terminator: Dark Fate

[Thom]

Finally saw this today, and it wasn't that bad. It could have used a more original plot, but for what it was I was entertained. Really liked Mackenzie Davis in this.

Unfortunately, it falls into the category of Limbo movies. There won't be another one to continue the story, and even if they did it would more than likely follow similar themes to all the other false-starts that have followed T2. Which leaves Terminator and T2 as really the only true Terminator movies, similar to Alien and Aliens as being the only ones you really need to watch.

Though, I did like Genysis and its time-bent take on the plot. That was trying something different which I enjoyed. Best part, Emilia Clark!

Edited February 11, 2020 by Thom

[pengbuzz]

On 2/11/2020 at 6:29 PM, Thom said:

Finally saw this today, and it wasn't that bad. It could have used a more original plot, but for what it was I was entertained. Really liked Mackenzie Davis in this.

Unfortunately, it falls into the category of Limbo movies. There won't be another one to continue the story, and even if they did it would more than likely follow similar themes to all the other false-starts that have followed T2. Which leaves Terminator and T2 as really the only true Terminator movies, similar to Alien and Aliens as being the only ones you really need to watch.

Though, I did like Genysis and its time-bent take on the plot. That was trying something different which I enjoyed. Best part, Emilia Clark!

Agreed; they need to take all the movies after T2 and simply relegate them to a type of "legends'" grouping like Star Wars has.

If they ever want to do another Terminator movie, they really need to give the fans what they have been asking for and just do the "Future War" as depicted in the snippets from Terminator 1 and 2. Make "daytime" like night, night as practically pitch dark (nuclear winter effects), and humanity on the brink. I didn't get that sense from T:S at all, so they really need the Future War fleshed out a bit better (complete with special effects, HK's out the wazoo, and enough plasma rifle fire to light up good-sized city.

[sqidd]

Saw this last night. I was expecting a dumpster fire, but it wasn't too bad. Certainly entertaining and sometime pretty funny. my quick review:

-I find it incredibly annoying when the main protagonist turns "bad a$$" in the matter of moments. Can't shoot a gun? No problem, here is a nasty 12ga about half your size. Protagonist blasts watermelons like John Wick. "Bad a$$" transformation complete.  The hero needs to overcome adversity to grow. Not master stuff first try. That is what makes the "hero" a hero. And, I'm am sick to my back teeth of this completely ridiculous trend of pitting 110lb women against multiple full grown men in hand to hand combat and the women come out on top. The best women fighters in the world will tell you that it doesn't matter how much skill they have, they're rag dolls when going up against men. Firstly it's ridiculous and lazy writing. And two it sets fantasy level expectations for young impressionable women. There have been big outcry's in the past of how the female body type/beauty sets an unreasonable standard for young women and is therefore damaging to them. This is exactly the same except in this case these young women are now emboldened and think they can come out on top in a physical confrontation with a man. I have seen a LOT of clips of women/girls taking sucker punches at guys/men and then the woman/girl gets knocked out in one punch. Maybe if that woman/girl didn't have the expectation that she stood any chance at all she never would have taken that swing.

-The story line was actually not too bad and it explained everything with enough detail to make it stick.

-The polite bad guy Terminator was fantastic. I loved that twist.

-The OG Terminator (Arnie) doing drapes for a living and then the scene where he was explaining why you can't do solid colors in a little girls room was priceless. I was laughing my tail off!

-The action stuff was pretty good. Standard Terminator stuff. I did get a bit over the top toward the end. But I can deal with it. The Hummer under water working out how it did was well...........well into the realm of fantasy.

-This is me nit picking but It's because one of my hobbies is bio-hacking be it through what sort of foods you're eating, when/how you eat them, etc to manipulate your hormones to do what you want them too do. There is also an entire level of supplements (natural stuff) that is stacked on top of that. I think Eve (was that girl from the futures name?) would have been a lot more fleshed out and interesting as a character is she had to eat mass quantities of food (and maybe a few "meds") to keep herself powered up. They explained her crashing problem with "ramped up metabolizm" but she never injected herself with anything that would help with that. Actually the insulin injections would have killed her if she didn't immediately follow the shot up with ingesting a massive amount of carbs/sugar. Her constantly stuffing her face with food would have made for a neat facet to her character. And would have made more sense.

 

[Thom]

Grace was her name. I did like the crashing part, as in paying a price for being amped up to face a terminator, but having her have to stuff her face, while staying rail thin, would have been interesting and a route for some humorous moments.

As to women beating men, it is fantasy. There is something to be said about knowing what you are doing however. A correct application of force against a vulnerable spot and the accurate use of leverage can go a long way. But yes, once, in a lot of cases once the guy has landed a good punch or caught a good grip, it's all about brute force and most women don't have enough pound for pound. In the case of Grace though, she was heavily augmented.

[sqidd]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

 

As to women beating men, it is fantasy. There is something to be said about knowing what you are doing however. A correct application of force against a vulnerable spot and the accurate use of leverage can go a long way. But yes, once, in a lot of cases once the guy has landed a good punch or caught a good grip, it's all about brute force and most women don't have enough pound for pound. In the case of Grace though, she was heavily augmented.

I was referring to Dani. Specifically in the future where she took those three guys down. And the aforementioned shotgun scene.

I don't buy the whole "fantasy" reason for this sort of thing. Yes, it's a fantasy. But grounded in reality/technology. Even if it's "future" tech. A 100lb girl that works at the Ford plant? Nope, not buying it. One, it's annoying because it's not at all believable. Two, for the incorrect message it sends to girls/women.

I agree that having a ton of skills goes a long way. But, at the end of the day size (and sex 90% of the time, sorry ladies) is a big factor. Going up or down two weight classes in MMA is a big deal. A whole 20lb. We're talking about situations where the body weight is double. I can tell you from experience, when I was heavy into judo when I was a kid there was a point where technique stopped working. That was long before you got to double your body weight.

Look up the video's of Rhonda Rousey talking about guuurrrlll power. She shut that crap down real quick when the guuuurrll power people tried to make her their poster girl. She was the best female fighter on the planet (and used the style you see in movies) and she will be the first to tell you that men have a huge advantage. Even the ones that weigh the same.

[Hikuro]

So I noticed something while watching the film again, they used the Genisys T-800 CG model as you can clearly see the most distinctive change between it and the original T-800 design, and that was the chest region carrying the Cyberdyne aesthetic. Which to me says 1 of 2 possible things. 1) Laziness on the visual effects team for incorporating something from a now un-cannon movie. 2) This version of the T-800 originally is from the Genisys timeline or parallel. 
And the reason I say Number 2 is because IF the death of John causes the reset moving from Skynet to Legion and an alternate timeline exists, then Sarah Connor would not of been killing T-800's over the next 20 years as that design technically would never of existed. This movie seems to suggest that Rev 9 equivalent Terminators were the standard norm during the war in 2040's.  This also to me seems solid as the Rev9 and Carl have a conversation of being from two different timelines.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Hikuro

[Hikuro]

Oh, and here's another thing, I was researching a bit about Legion, and the Terminator Wiki which has got some stuff wrong in it......mentions that Tim Miller provided his voice as Legion suggesting there's some kind of a scene....but I'm not finding anything like that to see where in the world that information came from. Nothing on youtube or anything to confirm this.

[Thom]

On 2/15/2020 at 7:52 PM, sqidd said:

I was referring to Dani. Specifically in the future where she took those three guys down. And the aforementioned shotgun scene.

I don't buy the whole "fantasy" reason for this sort of thing. Yes, it's a fantasy. But grounded in reality/technology. Even if it's "future" tech. A 100lb girl that works at the Ford plant? Nope, not buying it. One, it's annoying because it's not at all believable. Two, for the incorrect message it sends to girls/women.

I agree that having a ton of skills goes a long way. But, at the end of the day size (and sex 90% of the time, sorry ladies) is a big factor. Going up or down two weight classes in MMA is a big deal. A whole 20lb. We're talking about situations where the body weight is double. I can tell you from experience, when I was heavy into judo when I was a kid there was a point where technique stopped working. That was long before you got to double your body weight.

Look up the video's of Rhonda Rousey talking about guuurrrlll power. She shut that crap down real quick when the guuuurrll power people tried to make her their poster girl. She was the best female fighter on the planet (and used the style you see in movies) and she will be the first to tell you that men have a huge advantage. Even the ones that weigh the same.

Definitely does take more than a pep talk to shoot a gun straight.

As to the rest, we don't know what kind of training Dani had between 2020 and 2040, but it was clear she was going up against a few scavengers (to put a 'nice' term on them) who didn't know how to fight. 

I do agree that having a small women taking down several larger men needs to be shown as being done by the application of skill. Utilizing as staff or other kind of bludgeon would have been good.

Other than that, I'll put it down to fantasy and leave it there.

[sqidd]

9 hours ago, Thom said:

Definitely does take more than a pep talk to shoot a gun straight.

As to the rest, we don't know what kind of training Dani had between 2020 and 2040, but it was clear she was going up against a few scavengers (to put a 'nice' term on them) who didn't know how to fight. 

I do agree that having a small women taking down several larger men needs to be shown as being done by the application of skill. Utilizing as staff or other kind of bludgeon would have been good.

Other than that, I'll put it down to fantasy and leave it there.

Fair enough. Maybe I would be more content if entertainment did just the littlest things to explain why their female protagonist is capable of what they're doing. Again, for me it's a messaging thing. If I had a daughter I would explain to her what she is seeing is fantasy and why it's fantasy. I wouldn't my daughter finding herself in a bad situation because she was under the mistaken impression that her size, strength and skill level could handle it. I think I had mentioned previously that a lot of people say that the "supermodel" ideal that is girls are bombarded with is not healthy for them. Somewhere on the spectrum of "it's not an issue" to "it's a big problem" is where I lie on that. I don't see the unrealistic physical capabilities are any different.

And just because I like to debate. Explain Black Widow. She frequently takes down multiple trained killers that are double her size. That is fantasy on the level of magic it's so absurd. The extreme example to "prove the rule". That is absolutely sending the wrong message.

[pengbuzz]

6 hours ago, sqidd said:

Fair enough. Maybe I would be more content if entertainment did just the littlest things to explain why their female protagonist is capable of what they're doing. Again, for me it's a messaging thing. If I had a daughter I would explain to her what she is seeing is fantasy and why it's fantasy. I wouldn't my daughter finding herself in a bad situation because she was under the mistaken impression that her size, strength and skill level could handle it. I think I had mentioned previously that a lot of people say that the "supermodel" ideal that is girls are bombarded with is not healthy for them. Somewhere on the spectrum of "it's not an issue" to "it's a big problem" is where I lie on that. I don't see the unrealistic physical capabilities are any different.

And just because I like to debate. Explain Black Widow. She frequently takes down multiple trained killers that are double her size. That is fantasy on the level of magic it's so absurd. The extreme example to "prove the rule". That is absolutely sending the wrong message.

Explanation for Black Widow: plot armor.

[Thom]

We are also shown that she was highly trained, so they didn't skimp on that. But yes, she was also one of the heroes so plot armor does rear its head.

[Dynaman]

I've also heard from a lot of martial artists - don't go up against a person with a knife with your bare hands unless you absolutely have to.  Movies are not reality and anyone thinking they can learn from them is seriously mistaken.  Boys, Girls, Men, Women all included.  To pick out any particular film these days where Superhero heroics are required even for James Bond (jumping around like Mario in Casino Royale for instance) is silly.

EDIT - it is far more fun to pick out the ones that DON'T overdo it these days.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Dynaman

[Lolicon]

If you're the kind of person who tries to do what's seen in the movies, then you are a Darwin award waiting to happen.

If you see a 6'2" tower of muscle walking naked through the streets at night, don't go messing with that person like someone in the movies would. You get away and call the police. 

[electric indigo]

Spoiler alert: Physics do not apply...

[Dynaman]

6 hours ago, Lolicon said:

If you see a 6'2" tower of muscle walking naked through the streets at night, don't go messing with that person like someone in the movies would. You get away and call the police. 

I don't know if Arnold is 6'2" but Bill Paxton did learn that messing with a naked muscle man is not a good idea.  So chalk one up to the Terminator movies.