There are only two

Was the name 'schwarzenegger' already famous when T1 was produced or did they just think it would be cool to put it on the poster like that?

I just can't get over how lame John Connor is in T3. I know Eddie Furlong isn't universally popular, but JC in T2 displayed more resourcefulness, growth, bravery, and potential to be a great leader as a kid than adult JC came even close to in T3. T3 should have given us a younger version of pic related, instead we got AJ from Sopranos.

Dark Fate is canon
T1 > T3 > T2

John Connor being a blackpilled incel is so kino

famous after Commando. iirc that was the first movie to headline his name like that.

Dark fate is actually alright. Also it can be accepted as an alternate timeline if you don't want it to be canon

Conan made him famous.

mexican replaces john connor AND sarah connor

only fake normie terminator fans like it

YES. John Conner sucked. He was tough but complained a lot and had no agency or leadership. He should have been mysterious and seem to understand things that the audience doesn't, and the terminator doesn't. The thing where he ignores John and follows her orders was early woke slop. Probably to get whats her ass in the movie.

Salvation was good though

Even T2 doesn't really need to exist. With the flashbacks in T1 we already knew what happens and since it's a time paradox nothing will ever change that. Sarah will always birth Connor and raise him to become the leader of the resistence and Skynet will always launch the nukes. The only part of that story that we can't fill in is what happens leading up to the assault on the Skynet facility. That is what T2 should have been. Show us how the resistance becomes a legit threat to the machines and how they eventually win the war.

i liked it.

That is correct.

Indeed. If anything, a young John Connor should be able to hold his own against a terminator, even in present day with primitive weapons. Kyle Reese could do so in the 80s, and according to himself, Reese is nothing next to Connor. I honestly think T1 shaped my image of masculinity as a kid. T2 was the pinnacle of motherhood and coming-of-age. T3 was just a humiliation ritual, which would set the trajectory for the rest of the series, though it's all just glorified fanfiction, so it doesn't really matter.

Film I don't like is not canon

Literal babies.

No. The whole point of T2 is that the future is not set in stone, and that there is no fate other than the one we make ourselves. T3 blows chunks not just because it's a bad sequel in its own right, but that by its mere existence, it undermines T2, the single greatest sequel in all of cinematic history, except for maybe Paddington 2.

I would imagine he's a derelict in 3 from both losing his mom and August 29, 1997 coming and going without incident. He didn't know yet that judgment day is inevitable and maybe just lost his sense of purpose in life, cause you gotta remember his whole life up until that point revolved around becoming the great military leader. Still he couldn't let it go and was paranoid so he lived off the grid. And he was probably good at being homeless with all the skills he gained as a troublemaker teen

not rhe same John though. Each change to the timeline made him more fucked up. Actually like that

The whole point of T2 is that the future is not set in stone

Which is why time paradox/travel movies are dogshit by design. If there was a way to change the future it would already have happened. T1 ends with the unavoidable coming storm and all Sarah could do was prepare for it. The movie ends there and T2 should literally begin with a 5 minute training montage of John and it directly leads into one of Kyles flashbacks.

And Star Wars

inb4 grow up

His mom was locked up in a mental institution for years, older in T2 than JC was in T3, and a woman, and yet she was still far more capable in T2 than JC in T3, despite Sarah teaching him to be a soldier since before he could even walk. Shit does not add up. Humiliation ritual, plain and simple.

they're all canon, you don't get to decide sorry

A lot of the tech stuff in T3 seemed way too futuristic and goofy in 2003 but seems a lot more plausible now.

the tank and aircraft hunter killer drones basically exist in real life now, they’re not totally autonomous but they easily could be

The existence of an AI that could potentially run America’s nuclear forces wasn’t even remotely plausible back then, it is now

Alignment of AI is starting to seem like a real concern now

Unfortunately the Shia LeBouf “An Idiot Saves the President” archetype was really popular back when T3 was made.

Trying too hard

Neurodivergent take. Time-travel is inherently incomprehensible, and Sarah even spells this out for the viewer at the end of T1, yet people still don't get it, and are still droning on about the logisitics of time-travel 30 years later, while completely missing the forest for the trees. T1 and T2 are both fundamentally about hope, and the belief in our own ability to shape the world of the future. The nuts and bolts of time travel is not the point whatsoever. Interstellar is a better movie in that regard, but ONLY in that regard.

Alien 3 was the best one, anyone claiming otherwise is a retard meming about space marines
Conversely, Aliens 2 is everything wrong with Hollywood horror sequels

Let's take a tense, high-concept horror

Now let's throw into it loads of guns, one-liners and cheesy action sequences

This will elevate the material!

No Cameron, not canon. Not sorry.

My whole point is that it's a bad movie that is made looking way better than it actually is due to god-awful sequels that followed

He doesn't know

Kill yourself.

Conversely, Aliens 2 is everything wrong with Hollywood horror sequels

Nah, Aliens gets a pass for taking the series in a totally different direction. It's fine if you don't like it, but Alien and Aliens both stand alone on their own merits. T3 is far worse, as it is both extremely derivative of T2, at the same time as it undermines T2. It is the absolute worst of both worlds.

Google "Pumping Iron", you fucking zoomers.
He was HYUUUGE back then already, Conan Barbarian is what got him into movies for real (rather than the debacle with Hercules and that bit part in The Long Goodbye), and T1 along with Conan Destroyer cemented his star status.
Commando came out long after it all, when he had enough material to joke about his own image (and he did it along with Red Sonja, which was also relying on his presence, fame and meme status).

If you don't know how awful those movies are - be fucking glad.
Also, two of them de-canonised other of them, so go fucking figure: it's a canon that cancels itself

T1 and T2 are both fundamentally about hope, and the belief in our own ability to shape the world of the future.

Of course but that message is so surface level that i have to ignore it to enjoy even just T1. That is exactly why i'm focusing on the execution of the premise. Tone, atmosphere, cinematography, characters, acting. T1 in and of itself is a finished and self contained story. The only thing a sequel could have done is flesh out the events that we know are coming. And that is exactly why i wanted a sequel about the human spirit. This spite driven perseverance of the resistance in their war against the machines. The ruins filled with starving and desperate people who are just one slightly worse day away from dragging a razor across their own throat. Basically Alber Pyuns Cyborg but in a world that is actually interesting and made by a competent crew.

T3

xtremely derivative of T2

Was that a typo, or you are trying to be serious here?

Never mind, I re-read your post
I now agree

Okay, fair enough. I concede that a sequel focusing on the actual war could be interesting, which is why Salvation is the least offensive post-T2 entry, though I consider that one more of a spin-off rather than a sequel. The atmosphere in the future war scenes from T1 and T2 are absolutely fantastic, so I can understand wanting more of that good stuff.

Dark Fate is. Cry more

I finally saw The Terminator earlier this week. It was pure kino. I've heard that Terminator 2: Judgment Day is just as good as the original film and intended by Cameron himself to be the final Terminator film, so I think I'll stop with Terminator 2: Judgment Day and maybe Terminator Zero, the anime series that came out last year. I'll watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day later this week. The first two Terminator films and Terminator Zero will be my canon, with all of the Terminator films after Terminator 2: Judgment Day being non-canon to me. Canon is whatever we the fans say it is. Actually, canon is whatever anyone says it is. I believe in the supremacy of subjectivity. Death of the author and all that.

And compared with what's follow, it's like a half-decent movie. It's STILL shit, it's just how awful the next three are

It was shit even for the time and it's on'y gotten worse as it aged. Everything that came after that was better.

Alien > Romulus > Prometheus > everything else

Salvation

Just completely misses the tonal mark tho. It just doesn't have that same grimey look and feel. I only seen it once when it came out but i remember it being very polished high production value. Like if someone was going to remake The New York Ripper with $300mil budget and a pg-13 rating.

There was as lot of potential with Romulus. I feel they corrected the aesthetic mistakes made by Prometheus and Covenant but really blew it out their ass with the casting and writing.

how old are you?

Everything that came after that was better.

TSCC isn't quite canon, but it's better than any of the post-T2 movies.

My 37th birthday is next Saturday
And Pumping Iron was still big all the way till late 90s. It actually takes to be genuinely clueless to not know this is what made Arnie famous, not to mention completely fucking up chronology of his movies, when they have easy-to-check release dates.

An epilogue many years in the future of Sarah as an old woman in a playground, bookending the original, and confirming that Judgment Day was averted. It would have effectively cut off any chance of sequels.

T2 itself is a giant retcon.

I thought 3 and Salvation were alright. then they just didn't continue the story and did more time travel shenanigans so there's basically no end in sight for where the story could possibly go. It's really dumb.

How so?

It's got nothing to do with space marines. Do people bitch that the first Alien lacks space marines?

Alien 3 was a mess of patchworked script concepts that hinges on a plot hole (how the fuck did multiple eggs get aboard the Sulaco?), and has largely been disowned by essentially everyone involved, including the studio and Fincher himself. I would describe it the same way I would the Star Wars prequel trilogy: a flawed disappointment in comparison to what came before, but there are still great things about it.

The first Terminator confirmed that it was all a closed loop, and that any attempts to alter future events by affecting the past only ensure that those events will happen. Also, the impression that I got from Reese's description of events at the police station was that Skynet sending the T-800 back was a last-ditch effort done with seconds to spare as Connor's forces were storming the place, and that Kyle volunteered to go back as well by following the coordinates that Skynet had already entered in an equally desperate last ditch effort. He never mentioned anything else being sent back. I think he even said something like "It's just me...and him."

Then T2 kind of flipped the table and said that Skynet also had time to send back a T-1000 to another random period in time, and that Connor's people had time to capture and reprogram a T-800 and send that back too, and it also suddenly takes T1's approach to time travel, throws that out, and replaces it with Back to the Future logic. I'm not saying T2 is bad or anything, Cameron just had to bend some of his own rules to make it happen.

pretty goofy to complain about john connor not being the ultimate chad with abs and rambo gear in his 20s like hes leonardo in the ninja turtles

I respect Salvation for not doing another fucking time travel plot and instead trying to show the war with the machines. That alone makes it better than Genesis or Dark Fate

The first Terminator confirmed that it was all a closed loop, and that any attempts to alter future events by affecting the past only ensure that those events will happen.

It did? I don't remember the movie being unambiguous about our effect on the future. Even Sarah asks herself at the end whether or not she should tell John that Kyle was his father, knowing that it may affect his decision to send him back in the first place.

Then T2 kind of flipped the table and said that Skynet also had time to send back a T-1000 to another random period in time, and that Connor's people had time to capture and reprogram a T-800 and send that back too

This one is fair. I remember thinking this as a kid too. I wondered what would even stop Skynet from sending a battalion of T-1000s back to the past, or why they even bothered to send the inferior T-800 in the first place.

trvthnvke

Nothings canon but the first movie. The second one literally retconned its own lore, while trying to turn an action-horror into some weird family drama with an annoying kid a dumb robot and a die-hard feminist. The first movie is perfect. Every movie after that was just trying to ride the wave of the original, while failing in everything a terminator movie should be. Pic rel's story was the best thing since the first one.

Fixed

Salvation continues to be the superior sequel

Fixed

T1 literally says SkyNet lost in the future. And with the photo showing the time travel was looped all along, it's pretty much conclusive on how the story ends.

Too bad it didn't have an ending.

What movie did Shia save the president in again? I forgot the title and need something to watch tonight.

Alien 3 was the best one, anyone claiming otherwise is a retard meming about space marines

God the contrarianism around here is laughable
A3 had the coolest ideas in its production but the end result was a gutted mess that, while not terrible, is entirely forgettable