Third 'Terminator' Reboot Bombs at Box Office (forbes.com) 243
"Terminator: Dark Fate once again failed to avoid Judgment Day because audiences just don't care about the Terminator as a brand, an IP or a franchise," writes a box office pundit at Forbes.
He points out the newly-released film earned just $10.6 million on its opening day: The sci-fi sequel, directed by Tim Miller, produced by James Cameron, and starring franchise vets Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside newbies Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna, was the third attempt to revive the Terminator series in a decade... Terminator has become a metaphor for itself, with filmmakers trying different things only to face the same outcome: Judgment Day is inevitable.
Hollywood may yet figure out that audiences who aren't die-hard sci-fi geeks have little interest in additional Terminator movies... The pitches change, the hooks differ, but the result is always the same. Just because folks liked The Terminator in 1984 and lost their minds over Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 does not mean they have any interest in additional Terminator movies. Just because something was once popular doesn't mean audiences care for a new iteration.
The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling. The "this time folks will bite" attitude is what has left theatrical moviegoing in grave peril as streaming and television networks have filled the gap for something beyond cover records of yesterday's former glories. It is one thing to try a reboot, strike out and move on... It is another entirely to take the same dead franchise and presume that the same audiences who said "No, thank you" not once but twice will somehow magically embrace it on the third try.
The article harshly concludes that Terminator: Dark Fate is bombing in North America "because audiences didn't want to see it."
He points out the newly-released film earned just $10.6 million on its opening day: The sci-fi sequel, directed by Tim Miller, produced by James Cameron, and starring franchise vets Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger alongside newbies Mackenzie Davis, Natalia Reyes and Gabriel Luna, was the third attempt to revive the Terminator series in a decade... Terminator has become a metaphor for itself, with filmmakers trying different things only to face the same outcome: Judgment Day is inevitable.
Hollywood may yet figure out that audiences who aren't die-hard sci-fi geeks have little interest in additional Terminator movies... The pitches change, the hooks differ, but the result is always the same. Just because folks liked The Terminator in 1984 and lost their minds over Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991 does not mean they have any interest in additional Terminator movies. Just because something was once popular doesn't mean audiences care for a new iteration.
The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling. The "this time folks will bite" attitude is what has left theatrical moviegoing in grave peril as streaming and television networks have filled the gap for something beyond cover records of yesterday's former glories. It is one thing to try a reboot, strike out and move on... It is another entirely to take the same dead franchise and presume that the same audiences who said "No, thank you" not once but twice will somehow magically embrace it on the third try.
The article harshly concludes that Terminator: Dark Fate is bombing in North America "because audiences didn't want to see it."
Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
After I read about the major plot point of the first few minutes, I had zero interest in ever seeing this movie.
I think there probably is room in the world for a Terminator reboot, but not one that is pushing an external agenda.
Or even just other Terminator world movies, set in the same world where time travel is possible and at some point machines become truly intelligent. You can imagine a lot of alternate world scenarios that could be pretty interesting.
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
But this movie has nothing to do with Terminator. It's a woke social justice steaming pile of crap. And what Hollywood is too mentally incompetent to understand is that actual Terminator and Sci-Fi fans will just be disgusted by this abomination and avoid it by the plague that it is. And the social justice nutjobs who are applauding this "woke" monstrosity have zero interest in the genre at all, so as much as they want to laud it, they're not actually going to go out and watch it. And so they have an audience left of approximately zero. They made a movie targeted at people who don't like the genre and burned the people who do like the genre.
And why I call them social justice nutjobs is because ironically the original terminator movies were actually muck more "woke" than this steaming pile. The originals had a powerful female lead character who was just a wonderful character and that was great for promoting women as empowered people. Now they make female characters that are just bad cliches of male characters.
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Informative)
It's a woke social justice steaming pile of crap.
I saw the movie last night, and I didn't detect this. I'm quite sensitive to and highly annoyed by the media's current hypersensitivity to all things that used to be mainstream, and this movie did not illicit any of that to me. For a comparison, I nearly did not make it through the first few episodes of Star Trek: Discovery due to the over-the-top, beating-us-in-the-head with all women in powerful positions, the male roles relegated to homosexual couples or the very weak male alien who has a prey mentality that is naturally subversive and weak. It was all far too overt in Discovery, at least at first.
Terminator Dark Fate merely had a couple women as powerful characters. Of course Sarah Connor is... well, she's Sarah Connor. Probably one of the first powerful, strong female leads in an action movie. And that hasn't changed. There is an augmented woman sent from the future who is of course powerful because she's augmented. Then there is a female lead who starts out as a weak female victim who becomes a powerful leader. There were powerful men of course - Arnold as the original Terminator series plus a new male terminator assassin.
Now, there was a scene at a border processing facility, and when they said they were sneaking across the border, I was just waiting for the political commentary. Yeah, it kinda seemed like a prison type holding place for illegal immigrants, but there wasn't any screaming children pried away from their parents or anything else like that at all. It seemed totally reasonable to me. I don't think anyone expects illegal immigrants to be housed in 5 star hotels, and this was what one would expect.
Besides that one processing facility, there was nothing whatsoever "woke" about this movie. There wasn't even one homosexual person in the whole movie, or at least no reason to think anyone was. There was one token black guy (he died) too. Hardly woke...
The good... I thought Arnold's character, and how he had integrated into society over the last couple decades, was interesting, amusing and fitting.
The bad... major plot holes (SPOILER- what was used to destroy the new Rev-9 terminator at the end? The power source in Grace, who also was sent back from the future. Why wasn't she simply sent back with embedded weapons that could have destroyed the enemy they knew she was going to face in the past? Why didn't she immediately set out to create a weapon to destroy the Rev-9? Dumb).
The movie was on the long side - some action sequences could have been trimmed down or cut entirely.
Finally, the amount of time between the "past" and the "future" was way, way too short. We really expect humanity to have developed technology that could be to augment humans in a mere 20 years, AFTER society had collapsed due to AI and war? Time travel invented 20 years from now? Etc. No way.
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I completely agree with you. I'm equally hypersensitive to this PC crap that we have today and didn't really have too many issues with the movie. My biggest one was the replacement of John Connor with Dani's new female John Connor, I didn't have too many issues. That said, I thought that Natalia was a pretty bad actress, so I automatically disliked her in all scenes. I loved Grace, however.
Overall, the only part that really irked me was the death of John Connor. Fuck that.
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My biggest one was the replacement of John Connor with Dani's new female John Connor
That was where they lost me, I don't mind movies about other characters but it seemed like him going was gratuitous.
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I suppose the idea that all the good guys are women, and all the bad ones men is a bit woke?
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose the idea that all the good guys are women, and all the bad ones men is a bit woke?
Maybe if it was a movie with a statistically significant number of protagonists and antagonists. But not this one. As I understand it, there are three female leads, one of whom is "the victim", and two male leads, one of whom is "the bad guy" and the other is one of the heroes. Basically five major cast members, two males, and a grand total of one villain. Doesn't even almost qualify as sending some sort of gender message.
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Ah sorry - I thought the other male lead was also a bad guy.
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It's a woke social justice steaming pile of crap.
I saw the movie last night, and I didn't detect this.
All the cool kids get themselves worked up with indignation before seeing a movie. Having an informed opinion isn't cool in 2019.
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I was probably going to go and see it until I saw a trailer and read the plot outline online.
It looks to me that Hollywood is doing what McDonalds do, churn out the same stuff over and over because that is what people want. Except it looks like people fancy a taco instead of this.
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I saw the movie last night and I agree with you on most of your points.
Of the plot holes, I expect T movies to have plot holes, however it was very easy for me to put them aside and enjoy this movie.
I loved the action scenes, esp the first sequence, just awesome.
I thought Mackenzie Davis was fantastic to look at and to watch, she was amazing.
I thought Sarah Connor character was just ok, but Linda Hamilton seems to be not that good of an actor.
Maybe I had low expectations but I really enjoyed the movie. To i
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:4, Insightful)
Holy shit. Next thing you know, Trek will have a Russian and a Chinese and an interracial kiss!
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:2)
Thanks for saving me some cash and my time.
+1, informative to your post.
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
Gender-bending established characters (such as making a female 007) is "women slotted into the man's role." An original character (Connor, Ripley, etc) is not.
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:2)
Actually, Ripley was originally a man.
Always thought Sigourney was a bit too dudely; that explains it.
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that would have worked in the first Alien movie. But once you got to Aliens, the entire film became about motherhood, and the violence of childbirth. It would not have worked, and her relationship with Newt wouldn't have worked, and "get away from her you bitch" wouldn't have worked with a male character.
The fact is, that for all today's rhetoric about meaningful female characters, Aliens and Terminator 2 are still unequalled in the sci-fi world today.
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I had forgotten about that (I do remember now having heard before that Ripley started development as a male character). However changing something during development is not the same as changing a publicly-established character.
As for Woke Fate, the male protagonist of the entire series gets offed in the opening scene. Arnold T-800 has become a househusband. The T-1000 or whatever sent back to kill the new female John Connor character looks more effeminate than the highly masculine new female protector
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zidium enthused:
That movie actually exists!!
It's called Predestination (2014) with Ethan Hawke. It's FANTASTIC time travel, too!!!
Well, no. Not even.
Mind you, I could not more thoroughly agree that Predestination [magnet] is perhaps the best time-travel movie ever made - given the source material (Robert A. Heinlein's very short story All You Zombies), it could hardly be otherwise - but it's not at all a Terminator movie.
That's okay, though. After the past couple of decades or so of bad Terminator sequels/reboots/failed franchise attempts, I'm about Terminator-ed out.
I'll probably watch this one, though, once it's available as
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See, Sarah Connor (and Ripley) aren't really examples of strong women. They're just women slotted into the man's role, so hate on you
exactly, that's why they're strong women characters - they're just people like everyone else. Usually the female parts are there to provide something for the men to look at, protect, suppoprt or otherwise form plot storylines for the men.
These showed that women could be exactly like the men. There - equality in all its rawness. That's what the woke lot want, isn't it... they s
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:3, Interesting)
(I apologize for my phone-induced speech impediment.)
No, I donâ(TM)t buy the story that âoeif Aliens or T2 were shown again today, youâ(TM)d complain about soc-jus.â
Examples:
* The people I know who complain about Soc-Jus overreach in moviesâ" LOVED Into the Spiderverse.
* We also loved Arrival.
* Wonder Woman was alright, but Captain Marvel is right out.
* Black Panther was alright too, it just felt a little shallow to me. I wanted more complexity around blackness in America, which is
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:2, Offtopic)
A strong women is the glue that binds the family.
Not a testosterone junky hooked on masochism.
Re: True for "real men" too. (Score:2)
nothing wrong with being a beta male.
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Also, it's not testosterone, but comfusing toughness with manlyness.
This. This is why I despise third-wave feminists with a passion that burns deep inside: because they actually devalue women by insisting that if a woman isn't acting like man, she's weak. Some of the strongest people I've ever known were women, and feminine women at that. Strength doesn't have to mean stoicism, or kicking people's ass. Sometimes just persevering under the most horrific circumstances, like carrying a family while the husband/father is off at war, exhibits a strength far beyond the capabiliti
There are more choices than that, you know? (Score:2)
Like not acting like pubescent boy in a grown man's body, who confuses toughness with manliness. Be it in a female or a male body, amd compensating touggness or not.
Trust me, I've had women who were definitely the leader type, and respected simply for being very good at it. My last ex was an amazing organizer, and did a great job as the boss of a business, so the experts (like engineers) could actually do their jobs.
I'd take her over some tough-acting pseudo-manly loser of either gender, any day of the year
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:2, Informative)
I watched it.
Couple of comments.
Its a pretty good terminator movie tbh. "woke" is more comedy value than pushed agenda.
It actually makes the point that the agenda of the woke movement is really all about the destruction of the family unit to leave people isolated and vulnerable.
The main plot line that the whole human race can only be saved by a mexican woman that cant drive at the start of the movie living to tell a rich white girl she doesn't have to survive by selling her body was the best laugh ive had i
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:2)
I don't think you needed to throw "American" in your last sentence. Yeah, maybe in Europe you do have men who are more confident, enough to wear little backpacks and form-fitting track suits, but the rest of the world is a big place with billions of insecure people. Great comment otherwise, thank you.
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Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
I just watched the trailer. I didn't even know the movie was coming out. I don't know if I would call this movie woke... Like, maybe if Native Americans ended up being the heros. But this movie just looks like a boring rehash of the previous episodes. Call me when they reveal that the machines were really liberating the working class from the wealthy elite, bringing human kind back into harmony with nature, or are the eventual outcome of failing to reign in corporations and their environmental recklessness, oppression of the working class and of private liberty. As is, it's not woke, it's more neoliberal one-elite-man/woman-saves-the-world bullshit.
So yeah, there's woke, like CNN-neoliberal-HRC-woke, and then there's woke like anti-fascist/anti-capitalist/anti-colonial/class consciousness/eat-the-rich/acab/BLM/NLM type woke, which is actually something working class people can connect with. Unfortunately, the majority of Hollywood is too interested in making a buck for themselves and too invested in business as usual to fund a movie like that. I have no idea how the new Joker came into existence, but that's the kind of woke I want to go see.
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Like, maybe if Native Americans ended up being the heros.
That movie, I would watch. But I think we're decades away from it.
Re: Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:3)
The way you think is exactly why we might get a second round of Donald Trump at the end of 2020. The working class, and by working, I mean anyone who still has to work to live, is largely fed up with seeing the game rigged against them. The ACA was a big thumb in the eye to the middle class, it was promised to fix healthcare. While the ACA got some people insurance, what it really accomplished was lining the pockets of insurance providers with government funding at a time when more than $5T was pumped into
The first Terminator movies were "woke", too (Score:3, Insightful)
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Somehow I don't think that the movie being "woke" is what killed it at the box office. My guess is that this Terminator movie comes as the 6th of the series where 3, 4, and 5 were pretty bad.
Frankly I haven't even looked at a trailer or read a synopsis. I decided not to watch the movie in the theater when the movie was announced. Only an amazing word of mouth would have changed my mind.
The deck was stacked against this movie to begin with. Though I'll probably watch it on streaming when it gets there.
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Frankly I haven't even looked at a trailer or read a synopsis...
I have. Let me save you some time:
The same as the previous movies.
You're welcome.
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:5, Insightful)
How is making 2.5-3.5x your production costs at the box office, before home video sales/streaming a 'failure'?
I'd love to have invested in those 'failures', but I would need a great lawyer to not get screwed by famous 'Hollywood Accounting'.
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How is making 2.5-3.5x your production costs at the box office, before home video sales/streaming a 'failure'? I'd love to have invested in those 'failures', but I would need a great lawyer to not get screwed by famous 'Hollywood Accounting'.
There are also marketing and distribution costs to consider, but that not really the point. As with the pharmaceutical industry developing medicines, the success / return-on-investment (ROI) for a film is compared against what an investor *could* have earned simply investing in the Market instead. If investing in the product (film / medicine) returns less than investing in the market, then it's a failure.
Re:Get Woke, Go Broke (Score:4, Informative)
Gibberish. Economics 101 is math for people who prefer to forget they are working inside an abstract model; so long as there exists at least one realization (e.g. a large stock exchange) where the model is realistic in all major dimensions, we'll just sit back and confidently apply it to all things, without so much as activating a single, marginal brain cell.
In an economic process governed by a Pareto return function, at the very least you can only compare strategies, not products.
I could say more, but I don't presently have time to bang out an entire companion volume to Taleb's five-volume magnum opus titled Incerto: High Anxiety.
Thanks for reminding me about TV show (Score:3)
I also thought the TV show was really good, sad to see that cancelled... I think that's where Terminator should have evolved into with them leaving off making more moves.
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Drop the time traveling robots and it's a Friday the 13th movie.
No it isn't. It's a lovely circular story, with a beautiful ending. I think you might need to go back and watch it again. It's definitely not a slasher film.
Funny... (Score:4, Interesting)
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TFA just wants to dump on it. People do care about Terminator, they want another good Terminator movie.
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Had this not been a "Terminator" movie, it could have been OK as a low-budget action movie. But time and time again we see that taking a shit all over the lore of an established franchise is no way to make a movie.
The original Terminator was mad with an inflation-adjusted budget of $15 million. Had this one been made for that budget (i.e., with a focus on story more than car chases, endless freaking car chases), plus the usual double for marketing, it would have done fine financially.
For example, the Rock
Brand (Score:5, Insightful)
People didn't care about Avatar, Titanic, A New Hope, or most other record breaking movies as brands, IP, or franchises either. They saw them because they were good, interesting, or both.
Disney's Star Wars is learning the same lesson: if you depend on your "brand" to get people to come and watch your movies, you're going to get burned sooner or later.
How is Disney learning that exactly... (Score:2)
Disney's Star Wars is learning the same lesson: if you depend on your "brand" to get people to come and watch your movies, you're going to get burned sooner or later.
I'm not sure about that. It's a really mixed bag with Star Wars - I mean, you could say Solo was the movie they learned that lesson with (it didn't do very well) but I'm not sure why, when the movie itself was actually OK, it was perhaps just too much along the same lines as the other newer Star Wars movies, too soon.
The thing is Star Wars is
Re:How is Disney learning that exactly... (Score:5, Informative)
Solo had two sort of external problems stemming from Disney's often deliberate mishandling of the franchise: it came after The Last Straw, err Jedi, and incompetence in producing it. The script was by Kasdan and son, the former famous along with Leigh Brackett for the best written ESB. plus many other screenplays, so it ought to have been good, but the first set of directors had to be fired, and 70% of the film reshot, with compromises like having to cut out one character who's actor was booked in another film.
This made it so expensive it probably had no chance of making much money, and screening after The Last Straw....
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I dunno why people think TLJ bombed. It did so badly they gave the director another trilogy of Star Wars movies.
Solo bombed because it was bad, that's all.
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AmiMoJo snorted:,/p>
Solo bombed because it was bad, that's all.
It wasn't bad. Alden Ehrenreich was bad.
When a movie is all about its protagonist, that protagonist had better damned well be compelling - and the actor who plays that protagonist had better be riveting.
Unfortunately, while Harrison Ford dominates the screen, Alden Ehrenreich merely occupies it ...
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People complain about the I-II-III trilogy, but still watched it.
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I actually didn't think the 1-2-3 trilogy was a bad story, it just needed to pick it up and be told in one movie. If it had to be a little long so be it, but I'm not even sure that would be required with some artful storytelling.
Re: How is Disney learning that exactly... (Score:2)
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I watched the first 2, waited till 3 was out on dvd, then fell asleep during the first viewing of a movie for the first time in my life. Went back years later and did not have a better opinion about it.
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I was mostly referring to what's going on now. Disney/Lucasarts floated along with Force Awakens and Last Jedi on the brand. The problem is, the die hards who actually care about the franchise mostly didn't like them much, and the people who don't particularly care about Star Wars didn't really like them much either. Solo didn't help. As a result, Disney seems to be reconsidering some of their spinoff plans going forward.
But I agree. The way you get a great franchise is by making a great movie, and followin
Rotten Tomatos (Score:3)
says 69% fresh, same as Joker which is breaking records...
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Critical Drinkers review of Joker [youtube.com]
In spite of your desperation in equivocating, the tone is a wee bit different.
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My windows have pretty solid frames, and I can write a coherent sentence.
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My assessment? where?
it's actually good (Score:5, Insightful)
tried for tix on friday but it was sold out. got tix sat, also sold out, crowd seemed to like it. i liked it a lot actually. but yeah, admittedly i'm a "die hard sci-fi geek", so YMMV.
Re:it's actually good (Score:4, Informative)
I never thought the Terminator franchise was for "die hard scifi geeks." I always saw it as an action movie series with a veneer of scifi. Like the Matrix with a veneer of philosophy.
Don't care about one reviewers opinion (Score:3)
It's silly to rely on the early opinions of one or two people regarding a movie.
But I must admit the bar is lower for me. Nowadays I almost always wait until I can watch a movie in the comfort of my own home - so I sometimes give even mediocre movies a chance. And every once in a while I run across a movie which is objectively bad but, for some reason, I enjoy watching anyway.
Have fun with your own "judgement" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure that movie critic was well paid for his crafty snarky wordplay, but not everyone agrees with him. Some people do like it, not necessarily as a continuation but as a revisionist finale:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]
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Someone will always like something which is why we aggregate opinions. Interestingly on RT it's positive for critics, overwhelmingly positive for audience, and yet on Metacritic the critics are still showing it's positive to mixed response, while the audience reviews is absolutely panning the game.
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I think that's why people never got into the later Terminator movies. The series has fallen into the time travel trap of retconning everything. The opening of each new movie is basically: "Time has changed so everything you saw before doesn't matter anymore. You might as well not have even watched the previous movies." The Star Trek reboot fell into the same trap, and from what I understand it's pretty much dead in the water.
People want se
snore (Score:3)
I am a die-hard sci-fi geek, and I couldn't give two fucks about another terminator movie. I want to see something I haven't seen before, not more of the same tired old shit.
Even if they can't come up with any new ideas, there's tons of great sci-fi books which haven't been made into movies yet. Hollywank should do one of those.
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Same. Star Wars is hanging on by a thread, main storyline chars I like, but yanking the story around in clearly unplanned changes rubs wrongly.
Trek, been done with it for two movies. Same for gritty Superman, I'm out. This guy will never deserve the John Williams theme song.
Saw ww because it had great reviews, still plan to see Joker for ths same reason.
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I am a die-hard sci-fi geek too and I do care about any SF&F movie which is good. I understand "good" could mean anything because it's subjective, but here's some pointers:
1. The characters are well defined and well played, to the point that I no longer think of the actors as being anything else than the characters themselves. For example, in "Lucky Number Slevin" I got to a point where Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman disappeared and instead I was watching the lives of The Rabbi, The Boss and
Science Fiction fans won't watch this (Score:3)
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Yep, Terminator is a brand is about making people vaporize in interesting ways... no technology exploration there.
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Having robots and time travel doesn't make it science fiction.
I think by the very nature of what defines science fiction, yes having terminators and robots does make in fact make it science fiction. Just not your "true" Scottish version.
Re: Science Fiction fans won't watch this (Score:2)
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By that definition, Star Trek isn't sci-fi either? It's fantasy with spaceships?
Terminator might be bad science fiction, but it fits within every common definition of sci-fi out there.
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There are a lot of definitions of Science Fiction, but most of them involve realism, otherwise the "science" is lo
Common Movie (Score:2)
The first Terminator movie was a special-effects wonder, but with the advances in computer movie generation I think this brand has shrunk into a common movie, therefore it doesn't become a blockbuster, it just busts.
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?? There were almost no special effects in the first one until the very very end when the skeletal remains of the terminator stomped about for less than a minute. It was a good movie because it was an original story. Which is why "reboots" suck.
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... and pretty much all the actions taken by the characters made sense, given the characters personality and knowledge at the time of the action. In particular, the movie was very good at showing how Sarah Conner kept a cool head when under pressure. Starting with T2 this started to change, and later movies just ... didn't have a plot where the actions of the characters (or the plot itself for that matter) made much sense. Which was why we got one dung heap after another.
It would be nice to see a sequel to
Yes, but is is a good movie? (Score:2)
Obviously, quality and box-office return have nothing to do with actual quality these times, were the most abysmally idiotic crap makes great profits.
Yes, lets implicitly trash die-hard SciFi Geeks (Score:2)
Is this a good movie, or not? I had no desire to see it because, like Alien, the sequels have consistently disappointed.
Skynet is more relevant than ever (and it knows it). And the public is still interested in killer robots, and strong heroines are the thing to sell. I think you could make a Dr. Strangelove-esque action comedy in the Terminator universe—I think it would be good, but I don't know if it would earn enough money to justify a sequel.
At any rate, saying something only applies to SciFi gee
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Basically it's a cheapass Terminator remake with the serial numbers filed off.
Terminator Savior: John Connor
Terminator Protector: Kyle Reese
Terminator Target: Sarah Connor
Terminator Antagonist: T 800 (Terminator)
Terminator Big Bad: Omnicidal AI (Skynet)
DF Savior: Daniella
DF Protector: Grace/Sarah Connor/T800
DF Target: Daniella
DF Antagonist: Rev9 (Terminator)
DF Big Bad: Omincidal AI That Is Not Called Skynet but is indistinguishable from Skynet (Legion)
fake news (Score:3, Insightful)
$35-40 million projected but "only" $29M brought in domestic USA theaters. Everyone I know that saw it says it was good.
So, not as big as they thought for opening weekend, but good enough
Re:fake news (Score:5, Informative)
Not fake news. You're just out of tune with expected earnings. There's no need to put "only" in quotes. Go through the box office records for all movies released this month and you'll find it barely beat Abominable, a crappy kids movie. It was absolutely demolished by most other releases this month. We're on day 3 of release and it's not even in the top 10 earners which is dominated by movies that have already had their release weekend bump and are in tapering mode.
Sorry but that opening weekend is no where near good enough on the back of a $200m production budget. It is by Hollywood metrics already a flop, regardless of how good it may be. For an opening weekend on a $200m movie you need to pull in at least double what they did for it not to be considered a flop.
Re: (Score:2)
For an opening weekend on a $200m movie you need to pull in at least double what they did for it not to be considered a flop.
The $29 million figure is US only. Hollywood pays attention to the global gross because they don't care where their profit comes from. The global gross is sitting at $123.6 million right now, so it's made quadruple what you thought they did and will almost certainly earn back the production budget.
The only real question question is: are you going to retract your statement that it's a flop or are you going to move the goalposts?
Re: (Score:2)
yes fake news
Joker took some of the mind share, that's all.
the movie will make a big profit. people will just see it later is all.
fake news; stupid article. opening weekend good enough
Wait... (Score:2)
There was a 1st and 2nd reboot?
Re: (Score:2)
I also liked Genisys, it felt like it freshened things up without killing the Terminator vibe. I'll probably wait for video on this one.
Wow, Appalling.. (Score:2)
>> The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling.
This review is appalling.
Re: (Score:2)
>> The sheer hubris, to try to convince audiences three times in a row to want something that they clearly don't want, at great expense, is frankly appalling.
This review is appalling.
Exactly, and his his hubris makes me want to go see it just to spite him.
I want a Terminator movie shot by Robert Zemeckis (Score:2)
I want a Terminator movie shot by Robert Zemeckis, with his famous attention to detail and great directing. That, in my mind, is the only thing that could revive this franchise. And for the love of god, ditch the Ahnold already.
Why does the author consider the result "harsh" (Score:4, Interesting)
>> The article harshly concludes that Terminator: Dark Fate is bombing in North America "because audiences didn't want to see it."
Why is that harsh? That's always a potential outcome for any media product. It's, quite literally, the nature of the business.
How was it woke? (Score:3)
I already commented above with much more specifics about the plot and my thoughts on the movie. Reading through more comments, I see many people saying "I haven't seen this movie but it's go woke or go broke". Somehow this movie has been tainted or advocated in such a way as to turn away a lot of people, but I'm just not getting it, having seen the actual movie.
What about this movie are people hearing that is woke?
Here's my checklist:
1) Black characters: One, and he dies after about 2 minutes of screen time.
2) LGBT whatever: Zero.
3) Mexicans: Some of it takes place in Mexico... welcome back to Terminator 2 in 1991 which also had scenes that took place in fringe border areas with Mexico.
4) Border holding facility for illegal immigrants: Depicted totally reasonably. No children being ripped away from parents or other political commentary I could detect.
5) Lead females: Two strong women (again, welcome back to 1991 with Sarah Connor reprising her role), but there were also two strong male roles as well.
Exactly what am I missing here?
Re: (Score:3)
"Exactly what am I missing here?"
The woke anti-wokers. I do love the irony of people being so blindly worked up about other people being blindly worked up about.....something.
There's a fundamental end to the Terminator story (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is the story is a closed loop. The final act of the story is sending Reese back. You could definitely get a story out of that as John knows he really needs to sacrifice everything else in his life to make that happen. Logically Terminator 2 breaks the time loop and our characters can go to a new, one hopes happier fate. This is what happened.
Making John Connor irrelevant and saying it was all going to happen anyway makes all of the trouble and effort of Terminator and Terminator 2 irrelevant. It would be like bringing back the Emperor in Star Wars as it would make Luke's redemption of Vader in Return of the Jedi irrelevant.
While we're on the subject of irrelevant sequels, can we admit that there's no logical reason to have sequels to Jurassic Park? What made the Jurassic Park possible was a unique set of circumstances that made the park fail. If it happens every... single... time ... then the problem is not the dinosaurs it's the idiots you've hired and I'd imagine the insurance company and regulators would be screaming to shut it down.
No one wants more Terminator? (Score:2)
I call BS. I think lots of people want more. They just don't want more BS, rehashed, shitty plots. Which seems to be all they can deliver for MOST Hollywood movies these days.
I haven't seen it yet, but my friends tell me it was pretty good.
Corny (Score:2)
That's the wrong lesson (Score:2)
The lesson should be that maybe you can't keep milking a good film umpteen times: eventually the teats will always run dry. Geriatric stars, empty storylines, and a film made up mostly of sfx and deafening explosions is not a recipe for success.
Saw the Film; Ignore the Yammering (Score:3)
This film has a few problems, but not one involves what gender or role any of the actors are playing. For instance, I'll readily accept time travel, but some of what is done with military hardware, and the ease with which it is done, is just ludicrous. But that's typical of Terminator franchise movies. Others have discussed other issues with time travel paradoxes and other associated plot holes. Again, this is typical Terminator fare.
Unfortunately, this franchise now has so much baggage that it suffers, and the box office shows that. Fans of T1 and T2 got suckered by the next couple of sequels, and aren't interested in giving it another chance. After seeing this one, I have no need to see another, at least not another with Arnold and Linda. Both great parts, both great performances, but basically played out. The Terminator universe has a lot of potential for storytelling. Find new characters and tell us a great story and we'll come back!
Send a robot ... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It is the future. November, 2019, is when Blade Runner takes place. Back to the Future was last year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's the lesbian college girl terminator... (Score:4, Insightful)