Looking for screencaps.

Terminator Genisys spoiler warning!

:)

...might not be up yet. Anyway, you remember this?

yep

It's the final shot of the first film. "There's a storm coming."

As much as that line is a cliché, it works here.

literally & figuratively

It's a powerful closing statement for the film. It leaves room for a sequel, obviously, but it's also perfect as a finishing move if that film is all you see.

Sarah Connor, driving into the storm. In a single moment we see the woman she's become over the course of the film, and we know that she's the woman John Connor spoke so highly of to Kyle Reese.

It sums up her character arc, and gives us confidence that she will be able to make the future happen the way it should.

The closing shot in Genisys?

It's also the surviving protagonists driving toward the horizon, toward the future.

It also focuses more on the landscape ahead of them than on the protagonists and their vehicle.

And it also has a phrase about the nature of the future they're driving toward, for us to think about.

But the phrase is a bit of faceless narration by one of the protagonists, speaking from an unknown time and place.

And the landscape is... pretty, but unremarkable.

It hits the same cues, but has no substance, no weight. Partly this is because the protagonists had little to no character arc.

The T-800 had more character growth than either of the human protagonists.

Well, he is the real star ;) But yes you've got some points there

But yanno, the film's concluding theme is "We don't know what's going to happen next." Interesting things could have been done with that, visually, with the road.

...except then the mid-credit reveal is "...actually, you haven't really changed anything, the same thing's going to happen that always did happen, and your hard-won freedom from causality loops is a lie."

[slowclap]

The Terminator franchise always had a strange relationship with causality and paradox. That's one of its explicit themes: free will vs predestination. And each film has had a slightly different take on those themes.

I suppose it makes sense that the film which has a T-800 talking like Doc Brown from Back to the Future would cast Matt Smith as an antagonist.

I think the film's main problem, like I said before, was having too many good ideas and not being able to kill any of them.

"What if John Connor became a villain after the robot wars were over?" is a good idea, you can hang a film on that.

"What if Sarah Connor learned about her destiny as a kid and Kyle Reese shows up knowing less than she does?" is another cool idea, and the alternate timeline thing is a great way to handwave the actor changes.

I just realised another paradox/loop - TerminatorJohn created Skynet, which created TerminatorJohn

"What if Skynet had a humanoid avatar so we can talk with the story's big bad villain?" is... an okay idea, but you need to actually talk to him if you do that, not just have everyone clicking "Decline" whenever he wants to chat. ("What if Skynet were a synchronicity app?" is a tired cliché by now, and did not need to happen.)

Yeah, T3 already sort-of did that (except I think it was, Skynet is a virus)

Seriously though. You cast Matt Smith and a third of his screen time is basically "No, wait, I've got this villain monologue all prepared--" [avatar gets shot]

"We meet at last Mr Bon-" bang

We never did get Skynet's motives explained, so why did you give it a mouth?

Also they missed the best, most awesome conclusion they could have had.

Hopefully they do something more with it in the next film. I'm assuming by how much of a setup that mid-credits scene was, that they've already got the sequel planned, if not already filming

When TermiConnor grabs Sarah and has his metal finger in her clavicle, he could have infected her the way TermiDoctor infected him.

Then they defeat TermiConnor, get their real victory over the Genisys version of Skynet... and Sarah becomes the antagonist in the last moments of the film.

Yes, I was half expecting that. I think it was mostly a parallel to T2

'cause, see, here's another major problem I have with Genisys as part of the Terminator franchise: Skynet always loses, or wins.

Skynet is never slowed down.

Either Skynet makes the world go THOOOM and skulls go crunch, or it's nuked from orbit until the timeline finds a totally new way for Skynet to happen.

The scariest part of Skynet is that you can stomp it into dust before it ever takes off, but the universe will orchestrate a new Skynet a few years later.

Skynet doesn't hunker down and recuperate.

Skynet wins, or it gets blasted to smithereens and then forged anew in some other way.

Destroying Genisys but leaving the seed of Skynet in Sarah Connor would be more in line with that tradition: the Skynet of 2017 is utterly destroyed, but the Skynet of the future lives to try engendering itself again.

And, well, we just spent a whole film seeing the New Improved Butt-Kicking Sarah Connor, raised by a Terminator. Turning her into a Terminator at the end of that? Now you've changed the game, established a villain we're going to respect in the sequel.

(And jeopardised the timeline even further, exploring those themes of "time orphans," by making Sarah a robot before she's given birth to the John Connor who will infect her.)

That would have been good. But, you already had the Terminator becoming more human, and the human (John) becoming Terminator

Which would've been interesting to explore in the next film: "T-800 is the machine that raised her like a daughter. Kyle Reese is the man willing to die for her. They fight Sarah Connor."

Buddy cop action film, Terminator-style.

I would watch that.

Schwarzenegger and Clarke actually had good chemistry in the gun-loading scene.

They'd do well as a duo struggling to figure out what to do about the Saranator.

And, given how much of John's personality seemed intact--albeit twisted--in the TermiConnor, the Saranator might be fun to spend time with too.

Some of the most fun films are the ones where we get to see the struggles of the villain as well as the heroes.

'cause we still like her and want to root for her.

So... yeah, missed opportunities. A lot of great ideas, but they couldn't all fit together in one film.

A film about John Connor become a Terminator so Sarah and Kyle have to hunt him down, OR a film about Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese having their roles reversed, OR a film about Skynet seeking to become more human and instead going crazy. Not all three at once.

(Personally the last is the weakest link. "AI seeks to become more human" is not a BAD story, but it's been done so many times, and almost always exactly the same way. Skynet is not Pinocchio.)

Hmm. New idea for a trilogy:

- First film is Sarah and Kyle with roles reversed. Old T-800 is her father figure, they stop Terminators and prevent Skynet, it's all fun and games in a glorious homage to the original films.... and in the midroll credits John Connor time-travels in, all Terminator-y.

- Second film, John TermiConnor shows up to protect the nascent newest iteration of Skynet from Sarah and Kyle. The reunions are tearjerking, and maybe TermiConnor kills Kiddie Kyle to show how he's a bastard who's immune to timeline change. They trash him and stop Skynet again! ... but Sarah is infected and it closes with T-800 and Kyle searching for her to try and stop her. Midroll credits: Sarah starts building a new Skynet.

- Third film: T-800 and Kyle on a hunt through time and around the world for Sarah Connor, while also trying not to get killed by her agents. They team up with a pre-infection John Connor and causality goes to cry in a corner when they're unable to stop Sarah from causing the Skynet Singularity, but they purge the pre-Skynet past of Terminators and travel to the future where they destroy the time machine so the victory over Skynet is complete.

Humanity will be subjugated by robots, but will triumph in the end.