Canon-Strike: The Terminator

[Neon Ignition]

Franchise canon, typically a fairly straightforward thing but the modern era of films has made them increasingly complicated through storyline contortionism, semi-reboots and audiences showing they'll follow stories across a multitude of films.

Here's an occasional run of threads where we can discuss, tear apart, clarify or get lost in the sheer mess of a franchises canon. We start with one of the most broken and messy canon's around:

The Terminator

Beyond a certain point the film makers started planning trilogies that never happened and saw their film as a fresh restart of the franchise. Yet, the films themselves never directly stated their connectivity or opposite to the audience meaning casual viewers would take them as canonically linked. Let's see what that creates:

(Assuming Fate is not fixed as the films have long since moved to)

Timeline A
Sarah Connor gets pregnant and gives birth to a son she calls John. Judgment Day occurs and John leads mankind to victory against Skynet. As a last ditch effort it sends a T-800 back in time to kill Sarah and prevent John's birth. John sends Kyle Reese to protect her and this creates...

Timeline B
The T-800 arrives in the past and kills Sarah Connor.

Timeline C - The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Sent shortly after the T-800 from Timeline A, Reese now is the one who impregnates Sarah creating John-B. Events unfold as per the film and the T-800 is stopped. The events of this timeline feed into T2 as Skynet knows the T-800 fails, therefore sending the T-1000 back in time.

Timeline D
The same as Timeline C but John is killed by the T-1000 at the Mall

Timeline E - The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
The same as Timeline C but factoring in shortly after the T-1000 is sent back when the T-800 is also sent back by the Rebels. The T-1000 is defeated and years pass in present day. Skynet in this timeline would know the second attempt failed and sends back the T-X with a different plan to kill John's generals.

Timeline F - The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation
The same as Timeline E but the generals are almost all killed except for Katherine who sends back another T-800 to protect them. The events of T3 unfold and Judgment Day occurs. Due to some unavoidable General deaths some elements of this timeline deviate from what Sarah originally told John as T-800 creation is accelerated etc. Sometime after Salvation, Skynet sends a T-800 back to kill Sarah as a child

Timeline G - The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation, Terminator: Genisys
Presumably the T-800 fails either way to kill Sarah for some reason but the changes in the timeline for her still lead to a loop resulting in a T-800 being sent back to the same point to protect her and restore the previous timeline.

Timeline H - The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation, Terminator: Genisys
Arriving back but failing to stop her parents being killed this creates another Timeline in which the T-800 protects and trains Sarah as she grows up, giving her advanced knowledge until she syncs up with Kyle Reese. Armed with so much advanced knowledge they concoct a plan to travel forward in time to change events creating...

Timeline I - The Terminator, Terminator: Genisys
The characters go to stop Skynet having completely disrupted events by jumping beyond the birth of John. In this timeline though, with events postponed, Skynet sends itself back to capture John at the time machine.

Timeline J - The Terminator, Terminator: Genisys
Skynet captures John and converts him to part Terminator. It then sends him and itself back to present day to meet up with the also travelled T-800, Sarah and Kyle

Timeline K - The Terminator, Terminator: Genisys
All meet and face off as per the events of the film. At the end Skynet's alternate timeline version is stopped and Judgement Day is further delayed with Sarah and Kyle thinking it has been averted mistakingly.

This isn't even complete, relies on timelines working in parallel to each other and doesn't even factor in the upcoming trilogy which aims to sever three of the films. It also discounts the series and no doubt contains many faults. Is it right or wrong though? And how so?

[Asura]

I haven't seen Genisys yet. Should I? I think it's on Netflix.

[kryss]

Kyle Reese was always John's father, as the existence of time travel technology proves time is not linear, so causality still holds despite the temporal confusion.

TImeline M: Marty and the Doc go back to 1955 to fix Alt 1985.

[Neon Ignition]

I haven't seen Genisys yet. Should I? I think it's on Netflix.

Really depends on how you got along with T3, that's the entry it probably shares the most DNA with. Genisys abandons any ambitions of loftier themes and goes full on popcorn action bubblegum movie with the franchise.


Assuming then that Reese always was John's father it largely makes the films events more fixed which would mean timelines A and B merge. Genisys does properly mix the pot though given they face a son who is no longer ever born

[QualityChimp]

I haven't seen Genisys yet. Should I? I think it's on Netflix.

Terminator: Genysis (known in the UK as Terminator: Mega Dryve) is a fun film.
I thought T3 was a real nothing film that was pretty forgettable apart from undoing the work of T2.
In Genysis, I particularly enjoyed the opening section that copied the start of T1 and was so convincing (garbage lorry driver: "wuht the hell?") that I thought they'd re-used the first film until the "nice night for a wok" part and it wasn't Bill Paxton.

Amazing CGI. Completely convincing, even to this cynical eye.

After that, it's just popcorn movie japes, as Supes says.
None of the darkness in the first two films.
I might get the 3D version eventually, but I need to watch the 3D T2 I have first.
I did quite like where the story was going too, with a nice mystery of who placed "Pops" in the timeline and how a T-1000 got to the 80s. I also liked how it wiped out the events of T3, because of that ending I disliked.

It sounds like Cameron's new "Terminator" will take place after T2, which I'm also fine with.
Like the new Alien film by Neill Blomkamp ditched everything after Aliens and carried on that timeline.

We had a debate on this recently and I basically asked why they didn't just coat a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range in human skin too and make the Terminator's job of termination a lot easier.
It was suggested that they did something in the Dark Horse comics:

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081002044230/terminator/images/3/33/Organic_Weapon_Case.JPG

However, ultimately, we decided that if you analyse the film too much, it starts falling apart.
It's a simple elevator pitch (possibly based on an Outer Limits episode, which Cameron denies), that struck a chord with viewers and has grown a bit out of control.

I'm really pleased Cameron is coming back to this, but I think I like the first film the most because it's such a great breakout movie and is so damn emotional.

Any excuse to watch this lovely analysis of the film by Alex Cox is fine by me.

[Dogg Thang]

I didn't like it but I would still agree with QC that you should give Genisys a watch for the opening section, which is pretty great in spite of the casting. It also has some great ideas, although doesn't quite realise them and a lot of the film is pretty awful. Having recently rewatched T2 though, I'd make the case that everything wrong with 3 and Genisys carried on from 2 - cheese, a sentimental robot who learns to love and some big explosiony action one-liner stuff.

Also, Kryss is right. I haven't seen anything in the movies to imply that there was ever a John Connor who didn't have Reese as a father.

[QualityChimp]

I think you and I both agreed that growing up we loved T2 the most, but more recently, we appreciate T1 a lot more.

[Neon Ignition]

The idea of a John Connor who doesn't have Kyle as his father comes purely from the linear approach of there being an original timeline that lead Skynet to the decision to send a T-800 back in time in the first place thereby creating the need for Kyle to go back. The first two films negate that approach by making the entire storyline a closed loop where Kyle always went back in time so it works great. The issue is when you introduce Genisys into the mix where it's entire storyline basis is that the there are changeable timelines, something Skynet is attempting to manipulate to its own advantage (that's before the paradox of John's birth being undone comes in).

With T3, I never minded its story undoing T2's ending. T2's ending never particularly held up to scrutiny so the idea that Judgment Day was still coming made more sense and I liked that the film had the nuts to deliver on it as well. T3's ending remains one of the highlights of the entire franchise. The films issues more so come from its tone, it would have benefitted from being more T2-like in that regard and would have probably been quite well thought of it had done so. Plus, the crane chase

Genisys feels like T3 in so many places but never has the gall to pack some weight to it like T3 does once or twice.

On the flip side, it's all much better than Salvation, the franchises low point.

[Asura]

This thread makes me wish they'd made a movie based upon the premise of the videogame Terminator: Redemption. In that game, you play the T-800 from Terminator 2 who is fighting his way to a time machine so he can go back and save Connor from the T-1000.

[Dogg Thang]

On the flip side, it's all much better than Salvation, the franchises low point.

I only saw this for the first time very recently and did not hate it. Where T3 and Genisys are basically just trying to remake 2, Salvation had the guts to take Terminator somewhere else and do something different. It is far less formulaic than all the other sequels (2 included) and I thought it was realised pretty well, if not a fantastic movie. After hearing about how bad it was for so many years and avoiding it for that reason, I was surprised by the movie when I finally watched it.

[Neon Ignition]

I can watch Salvation easily enough but it fails to deliver the experience the other four films had promised from a future war. The T2-3D ride showed it how to portray it but instead we got a lot of brown, blandness and Sam Worthington. It has enough going on to keep the viewer engaged till the credits but in the end doesn't really contribute anything or worth to the storyline, it's more a day in the life job that relies on the T-800 sequence at the end to satisfy fans.

[Dogg Thang]

I don't agree with that. For me, it contributes much more than 3 or Genisys did and was one that more (better) movies could have built on. Whereas 2 makes 3 and Genisys pretty redundant as far as I'm concerned - 2 will always be a better version of what those two movies are, whereas Salvation at least stands alone as its own thing and a pretty decent sci-fi film too. Because I saw it much after the vocal dislike for the movie, I'm not entirely sure what didn't land for people but I'm hoping it's not just that it wasn't another T2.

[Neon Ignition]

I think it's the fact Salvation stands alone that was the beginning of the end of it (let alone how it was supposed to lead into two more films originally). The films focus on Worthington and the nature of his characters circumstances feel redundant to the franchises storyline, whilst T3 has issues it resolves plot issues from T2 and on its own somewhat delivers an ending that loops back onto the original film (Genisys less so as it just explodes the plot for the sake of undelivered sequels). Salvation's contribution to the overall series is meaningless even if it means it stands as a film you can easily watch in isolation and enjoy.

I think, as much as fans had wanted to see it, the reality of a future set Terminator film was always going to be a hard sell to audiences too. It's a good threat for the other films but too easily slips into being a war film set up which is less interesting for the series. That's not broaching how the film rarely looks like it should. Fans wanted:



But instead got



Instead of effectively delivering on what the audience would be most interested in (finally showing the future as depicted in the previous three movies and related merchandise, the fall of Skynet and the T-800 and Kyle being sent back) we got a film more focused on a character who carries no importance to the audience on a journey that adds nothing. It's effectively a lesson in teaching Connor something he already learnt in T2 and T3.

It's perhaps most telling that Genisys doesn't make any attempt to comment on Salvation or to continue its aesthetic depictions, instead reverting hard back to T1-3. Also, that they felt the need to have Cameron back it after Salvation.

Salvation certainly isn't a bad film, I never skip it when watching through the series, but it feels like more of a slog out of the four and certainly disconnected hard for audiences beyond it not being T2-like.

[Dogg Thang]

My acceptance of "fans wanted" as any kind of criticism for a movie is currently at an all-time low. It is the worst way to approach any movie. Nevertheless, when it comes to a series watch through, I will never watch 3 or Genysis again. If I was in the mood for that kind of movie, 2 serves the exact same need only better. The fact that they fall back on that makes me think Terminator really has nowhere to go as a franchise.

[Atticus]

It only needed the first film, which is still brilliant. I've always thought of T2 as overrated. I was properly hyped for it too ... but it was actually pretty dull, a special fx showcase and not a lot more.

I went to see The Terminator at the cinema last year and 20 minutes in the screen just went blank. Show over. Within 2 seconds someone in the audience said 'it's the machines'

That was the end of the show though. It was it's one and only showing too. Bah.