A Terminator Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

Uggh.

It's not that this is a feminist Terminator -- most Terminator movies (and most James Cameron movies, period) have a feminist agitprop message.

It just looks so, so dull and so done to death.

Haven't we seen a version of this several times before? Versions that didn't suck?

T2 was a good movie, but it did something that wasn't good for a Terminator series: By remaking T1's chase plot, it established the template, the rule really, that all Terminator movies must be chase movies where the Good Terminator wants to save the person and the Bad Terminator wants to kill the person.

All T2 did was add a short sidequest about killing some black asthmatic.

If T2 pushed a different kind of plot, it would have established that a lot of different things can happen in the Terminator universe, apart from one Terminator chasing a somewhat older and more Arnoldian Terminator.

Running the chase plot twice in a row set in stone the Terminator formula, and that formula, while great for two movies, gets really old and played out after six.

It was the right decision for a one-shot sequel, but the wrong decision for an ongoing series.

So here we go again. Thirty five years on, and we have another Good Terminator trying to save a person from a Bad Terminator in a chase plot.

Oh, and this Terminator can do New Tricks -- another part of the formula established with T2 and slavishly held to every since.

This one seems to be completely serious and humorless. A "dark and gritty" reboot of the Terminator franchise.

Ugh. No one wants to see that. This is all dumb lowest-common-denominator chase plot nonsense. It's basically a superhero movie, but with plainclothes.

You really think you call sell us on a "dark and gritty" nonsense superhero chase plot movie just by having an old woman growl something about "fate" every three minutes?

Hey, Terminator: The DCEU called. It says it wants its disappointing box office back.

posted by Ace of Spades at 01:03 PM

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