Terminator III: Dark Fate

[Neon Ignition]

That would sound likely... but again very Genisys

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/terminator-dark-fate-rated-r-eddie-furlong-back-as-john-connor.html

Terminator: Dark Fate will be R-rated and Edward Furlong has been confirmed to be returning as John Connor

[Yakumo]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/term...hn-connor.html

Terminator: Dark Fate will be R-rated and Edward Furlong has been confirmed to be returning as John Connor

Nice. R rated means we should see some quality action.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Last time I saw Edward Furlong, it was some pap pictures of him looking like an overweight hobo.

[QualityChimp]

Is that being heavily promoted, or is that a massive spoiler?
It would've been a nice surprise.
I'm going to have to stop reading this thread, I think.

[Neon Ignition]

Seems to be getting heavily promoted but they're not stating the context that he appears in the film

[fishbowlhead]

Last time I saw Edward Furlong, it was some pap pictures of him looking like an overweight hobo.

Why bother? He looks like an absolute mess. A poster child for child stars that are just done and dusted.

[Zaki]

Why bother? He looks like an absolute mess. A poster child for child stars that are just done and dusted.

"come wid me, if you want to lose weight"

[Neon Ignition]

The full trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate

[Dogg Thang]

I feel like this should build so much goodwill with Linda Hamilton back and that familiar music but I just find it so hard to care. Nothing in the trailer grabs me.

[Cassius_Smoke]

That looks ****

[Neon Ignition]

http://www.darkhorizons.com/new-terminator-aims-at-decent-launch/

Early projections have this tracking to open in the US to the tune of $35-$45m. This would be an improvement on Genysis and places it in line with the performance of T3. Chances of getting a direct sequel to this one? Well, here's the figures:

Terminator 3 - Budget: $200m - Takings: $433m
Terminator 4 - Budget: $200m - Takings: $377m
Terminator 5 - Budget: $155m - Takings: $440m

This means that as the most recent and (inflation aside) most successful of the three previous sequels, Genysis and its failure to generate a sequel seems to be the measuring stick for success. Searching around it seems that Dark Fate is budgeted between $160m and $200m which means without clearer information on financing it seems hard to work out how the new film is expected to fare any better than the last few.

T2 remains the biggest success making around $500m against a ballpark $100m budget in the early 90's

[QualityChimp]

Is it out?

[Neon Ignition]

Late Oct/Early Nov depending on where you live. Early reactions seem positive but I feel it's impossible to grow the franchise at this point so much of the failure of these comes to not keeping them economical

[Dogg Thang]

I know we've covered T2 as a sequel but I'm also going to say that T2 has effectively scuppered every Terminator sequel. It was, in essence, the death of Terminator. Sounds dramatic I know but consider what was in the movie and what it meant for any film following it.

1) It followed the exact same premise as Terminator 1. It's very different in other ways (I'll get to that) but it is essentially the same story - Terminator comes to end Connor before he grows up to save humans, relentlessly tracking him until a big fight. This solidified a format. Unlike Aliens, which opened the series out to a different genre and widened the options, T2 basically determined that a Terminator film is: Terminator comes to end Connor before he grows up to save humans. This is very limiting because you either tell the same story again (T3, Genysis) and it feels tired or you break out of that and it doesn't feel like a Terminator film (Salvation).

2) It changed the tone to light funny family action. All the goofiness of T3? And Genysis? Its roots are in T2. The grittiness of Terminator was replaced and that worked well for that one movie but carrying that into other movies has just made them worse each time.

3) It made Arnie the hero. This was actually very cool. That turnaround of concept worked really well, I think. But the flipside is that it then meant that people feel that Terminator equals Arnie. And that's a real struggle given the concept of the movies. To have him back once was okay but to keep having him back actually doesn't quite work with the whole concept set up in Terminator. And yet the other side of that is that it meant recasting an antagonist every time. Robert Patrick happened to be great. It has been a massive struggle ever since. Who can live up to Arnie in the first one? Not many people.

4) It turned into magic. This is the killer right here. Terminator 1 is near future. It is crude machines with meat grown around them. It is big weighty (okay, kind of Thunderbirds) ships and clanging metal. It's all easy to buy. We all loved the effects of the liquid metal Terminator, right? Yeah but it's magic. It is so far removed from near future that how it works is unfathomable to us. Where is its brain? What gives it strength? How does it change colour? Who knows? But the effect on any sequel was this: no tech could really build on this. It has nowhere to go. No way to get better. Even the one in the new film looks like the same again only black and stringy. No sequel could build on the T-1000.

And so in these ways, I reckon T2 has meant that a great Terminator sequel just can't happen. It killed them before they even existed, just like a Terminator.