Snap!
That's the sound of a concept being stretched too far...
Terminator will be back in 2009
Shooting will begin in 2008 on Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, which promises to "reinvent the cyborg saga with a storyline to be told over a three-pic span". Production company Halcyon is keen to stress that the movie will indeed be a "reinvention", as executive producer Moritz Borman told Variety: "The third film was …
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 13:23 GMT Ash
Failure from the start
You all remember the eyeball-raping you received from Terminator 3?
"Terminator 3 writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris have already completed the Terminator Salvation screenplay...". Never mind lightning, looks like a big fat corporate c*ck can strike twice, three times, maybe even four.
Your last effort maimed the horse; please don't flog it to death.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 13:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Your clothes
This is going to be so terrible. The second in the trilogy will go straight to DVD and the third might end up as an unsuccessful television pilot. It'll be sold as an edgy reinvention of the Terminator franchise, as if the original was not edgy enough.
"Charlie's Angels director McG is hotly tipped to take the helm."
I can picture the opening credits in my head. The music will pound and roar, the title will mesh together with a big clanking noise, the director credit will come up, and the audience will burst into laughter.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 13:48 GMT Misha Gale
Starting to know how Star Wars geeks feel...
If they wanted to do a[nother] post-apocalyptic, man vs machines movie, why bother with the Terminator franchise? If they'd come up with some generic rip-off storyline, at least I wouldn't feel like my childhood dreams are being horrifically raped. The camp Arnie in T3 was bad enough, I shudder to think what outrages are still to come.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 14:10 GMT Rob
Greed the sequel
... Just goes to show what happens when hollywedge folk get desperate for money, writers probably picked up the comic books one day and thought they could spin more money out of the franchise without doing any work. There's enough comic books in the series to hack together a storyline without actually thinking of anything, give me a day or so, I'm sure I could write a triliogy of Terminator films of the same quality.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 14:36 GMT Pascal Monett
No way
It is impossible that the T-fest be as sloppy and cuddly as SW 1-3 was. If this is supposed to told from the Terminator side, it could be refreshingly devoid of useless love subplots. Cold, calculating machine is what it should be. None of the "but OHDOIWQ6732fi3r was my CPU-mate ! And now she's deactivated ! I will BRK/WAIT(2000000000000000) in dispair !" nonsense.
We just might have a true action film, could even be as good as Die Hard 2 or 3. No mushy scenes in those films. And I could concievably win €100 million next week in the EuroLottery.
Yeah, it's possible. Just not something you want to bet your future on.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 14:36 GMT Kane
The Paris Hilton Angle?
Surely it's obvious? She will play the saviour of the human race after Skynet nearly wipes the humans out with a 10,000 strong platoon of PDA wielding SlingBots©, capable of throwing the latest in personal communications technology devices a distance of 17cB (or in prefered Vulture Central Standards, 3,927lg).
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 14:51 GMT Matt Haswell
Sarah Conner Chronicles
Actually - as someone who has (legally) watched the pilot of Sarah Conner Chronicles, I think it could work.
It's pretty grim (including the bit that's now infamously been dropped from the pilot when the substitute teacher in school turns out to be a terminator) and gritty. Some tongue in cheek too though (thank the gods). Very cool time travel stuff from both sides - anyone can be prepared if they send agents back in time with enough years to build more time machines and resources.
Apparently they spent about $8m on the pilot - only a small jump more to having a film especially with the pace the pilot sets.
However the one sticking point is if they can keep up the plot quality. This could be the problem with the films too of course.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 14:58 GMT Tim
All a front
This is just a smokescreen isn't it. After all we already know that the machines are rising, what with the US building flying killbots, Samsung drones in the DMZ and giant 747-borne superlasers. Not to mention the hybrid army of cyborg parking wardens covered in cameras and sensors and their Taser-packing allies in the Police.
Far from being an action move, T4 will be a Michael Moore documentary about the shocking injustice suffered by the downtrodden automatons forced to war for the benefit of Boeing's shareholders. Not that anyone will watch it, of course, because we'll all be huddled up in deep caves where 3G signals don't penetrate.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 15:06 GMT Martin Gibbs
@ Brent
>smacks himself on the forehead<
Didn't think of that Brent...
It would redeem it's self slightly, if The Paris angle was her being the first human ripped to shreds in the opening scene? Or if Arnie was to cameo as the human template for the Terminator and be a wimpy, blubbery, geek of a politician....
Nah.. getting to much into this now....
Where's my coat?
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 15:38 GMT Phil Rigby
Possible storylines
As someone who got the comics 15 years ago, Terminator v Robocop was a plotline that interested me... but so did Aliens v Predator, and we know how that turned out :(
Oh and Arnie can't be cloned as a Terminator, because in the first movie Reese told Conner that the first series of Terminators had rubber skin and were easily spotted...
Oh God, I'll get my coat.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 15:57 GMT Paul Talbot
Could work
I think this has some promise, as long as the godawful McG isn't directing. The ending of T3 was the best part of the movie, the future war sequences have always been interesting so it'll be nice to see movies based on those. Arnie cameoing means they're not going to try putting him centre stage as a terminatior - I agree the best thing to get him there would be as a template for that model of terminator.
Of course, they could mess it up, big time. But, compared to the crop of big Hollywood fare recently, the concept alone is better than some entire movies.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 18:24 GMT Tim Butterworth
Priorities
Hollywood priorities:
1) Will it make money.
2) Will the merchandising make money.
3) Will it stop people seeing other studios' movies.
4) Will it allow us to make more money out of re-issuing the old movies.
5) ...etc
...
197) Will it make the original fans happy.
198) Will it be any good.
P.S. The film plot will revolve around who has the intellectual property rights to the original Terminator films. John Connor will argue that humans made the films, whilst Skynet will argue that, as the sole providor of all media content, the original human makers have surrendered their rights (did no one read Skynet's small print?).
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 18:24 GMT Tony
@Paul: I hate to be a pedant but...
"Skynet is far to sain for there R&D." argh, my eyes are bleeding... Skynet is far too sane for their R&D!
Tis a fair comment - but given the US history of shooting their own troops, why does it come as a surprise that an automated system for shooting their own troops might be in development?
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 18:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Misha Gale
" [ ... ] why bother with the Terminator franchise? If they'd come up with some generic rip-off storyline, at least I wouldn't feel like my childhood dreams are being horrifically raped. [ ... ] "
Waittaminnit! Most people's childhood dreams are of being an astronaut, popstar or footballer when they grow up, or of falling in love and getting married, or changing the world for the better. Your childhood dream was to hope that the entire human race would be slaughtered by artificially intelligent killing machines who travel back in time? You're weird!
But on the other hand, if you ever wrote it down, you've probably got a good copyright claim for back-royalties on the entire series. Hang on, maybe you aren't quite so crazy after all....!
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 19:20 GMT David Wilkinson
Not so much bad movies as a marketing problem.
Hollywood is addicted to overselling. For them marketing is about raising expectations to an impossibly high level for a quick cash in.
People see a good movie, but because they lead to believe it was going to be one of the greatest movies ever, they leave profoundly disappointed.
The key to enjoying movies is not to buy into the hype.
Right now my expectations are for the new movies to provide nothing more than great action and greater special effects, but with a tired unoriginal plot.
I will probably leave the theater happy, while other people are complaining about how it wasn't as good as the first two.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 20:18 GMT Jon Tocker
Arnie taught me a lot...
for a start, I've learned that when Terminator models start getting past their prime and have to be replaced by newer models, they actually age like real humans as well - living skin outer camouflage begins to wrinkle and get pouchy, mechanical muscles turn to flab and internal components shift around...
If Skynet could get them to fart, belch and blob out on the couch stuffing their faces with junk food, watching pay-per-view and scratching their nuts we'd never suspect it was really a lethal killing machine.
Sheesh, we'd be fucked then.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 21:33 GMT Bernadette Newburg
Sigh
Battlestar Galactica - watched the pilot. 'Nuff said
Charlies Angels - rolls eyes
The Brady Bunch - refused to see
The Bionic Woman...without Steve Austin, the $6M Man? Are you kidding?
Predator went two movies too long (should have ended with the first)
Aliens should have stopped with the second
Terminator should have stopped with the second
Star Wars.... not going there.
Superman should have ended at #2
Batman should have ended at #3 (okay, I do like Robin, but...until Christian Bale...should not have been touched)
Where are the original ideas in Hollywood? Can we do nothing but retreads?
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 21:33 GMT Mike Lovell
Erm
"Oh and Arnie can't be cloned as a Terminator, because in the first movie Reese told Conner that the first series of Terminators had rubber skin and were easily spotted..."
Must have super human intelligence in the future, personally when I see a 6 foot tall rubber trojan with a plasma rifle it its hands I invite him in for tea.
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Wednesday 10th October 2007 21:33 GMT Mike Hocker
Saberhagen
The last of the 2nd of 3 (last of the 2nd trilogy of a Kachina of 3 trilogies) could be a rip of Saberhagen's _Brother Assasin_.
If we install enough machine bits in ourselves, and they install enough wetware bits in themselves, we converge on... being the same. Mudball's getting crowded, but I'll meet you there anyway.
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Thursday 11th October 2007 07:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Luke Wells
> Why can't they stop when they make a good film (Terminator 2) they always
> have to go too far.
Because the test screeners hated the good ending (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2#Versions_of_the_film, I recall hearing on a TV show that the good ending was ditched because of poor response from the test screeners).
Yes, It's Virginia's fault. Had they been happy with the good ending, there won't be any more Terminator movies after T2.
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Thursday 11th October 2007 09:33 GMT S-MC
Yet Again They Cannot Think Up Something New !
Why make a new Terminator ?
They wasted it when they made the third. The Original 2 Terminators kicked ass and as per usual sequals are wasted with little boys new in the film industry who have nothing better to do than rip the pish out of orginal and classic movies.
To hell with the new Terminator !
With regards,
S-MC
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Thursday 11th October 2007 10:07 GMT Graham Bartlett
Shoot the writers!
Some of T3 actually worked. The concept worked, and some of the plotting dovetailed with T1 and T2 rather cleverly to fill the holes left in those.
But the direction was lousy (having the whole film done in daylight completely erased the grittiness of the previous ones), the script was mostly dreadful, the Terminatrix was a stupidly overpowered opponent which had to behave unrealistically (why jump on top of a car and try to get them with your bare hands, if you've got a laser rifle up your sleeve?), and the fight scenes were plain dumb.
So yes, this will likely join SW3 and both Matrix sequels as big-budget films I've managed to avoid.
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Thursday 11th October 2007 10:33 GMT Finn
Hollywood = Money
Reason why they really make all these sequels to everything from Terminator to Matrix or franchise movies from Fantastic Four to the Spiderman and Batman and million others is simple: You invest $50 - 100 million on movie, you really, really want to get the money back.
Four most certain ways to make the money back are:
A) make a sequel to a box-office hit. Something that made money first time and created an audience that will go and see the second runner. like Police Academy or Terminator or Matrix.
B) Make a movie about something already famous, like TV-show, or comicbook character (Charlie's Angels, Fantastic Four etc.).
C) Make a re-make of an old box-office hit.
D) Use a super-star. Either director like Tarantino and few others or world class leading man/woman. But even these tank sometimes, so even this is rarely used anymore.
There are thousands of good scripts bought by Paramount, MGM, Dreamworks etc. each year. They are hidden into huge files as they are usually paper copies and there they stay, until the world ends or CGI makes photorealism affordable on full legth movies.
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Thursday 11th October 2007 13:35 GMT Nick
Terminator: The Musical!
I get the feeling there's going to be a very large James Cameron-shaped hole in this production. Without him directing, this upcoming raft of titles featuring psychotic killing machines with rich, Germanic accents is likely to be an entirely limp affair, with none of the intensity and balls-out action of the first two.
I mean, the nutter also directed The Abyss and Aliens - the latter of which still has the capacity to scare the living piss out of me to this day.
Also, action movies like this aren't gory and violent enough these days. Hollywood chumps realised the age of people who could afford to go to the cinema was going down, so they started making movies that would at least scrape a 12 certificate (I'm from the UK, films are classified a bit differently) or be guaranteed a 15 so as to capture the largest possible audience.
So what we've ended up with are tame shit-flicks like T3 and AVP that reel in the kids, and piss off the grown-ups.
Think back to the '80s and early '90s, when going to the movies was something adults did more often, then think of the frankly awesome violent action movies we had:
Aliens
Terminator
Robocop
Total Recall
Lethal Weapon
Die Hard
Commando
First Blood, and all the Rambo stuff
Predator
Mad Max films
Universal Soldier
Under Siege
Anything featuring Chuck Norris
And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.
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Friday 12th October 2007 04:50 GMT Finn
Love laced non-violence.
@Nick, you are right.
But second problem arising from this never ending search of audience is unisex-movies. There must be a love-intrest in the movie in interestin for both genders. Even war movies!
Can you imagine, what would happen, if they would take The Longest Day and remake it today? Every single one of the main characters would have a girl (or at least one girl per two characters) and then there would be endless parade of kissing scenes and heartbreak and betrayal. Damn movie would be truly 24 hours experience and half of it placed in rural Kansas.
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Friday 12th October 2007 09:08 GMT Robert Harrison
BSG
I notice a couple of comments having a bash at the new BSG series and wanted to put a stop to it. Are you mad? The recent Battlestar Galactica shown on sci-fi channel has been a refreshing gritty science fiction in the face of a lack of good sci fi recently. Star Trek Enterprise anyone? urrrgh. *gag*
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
