I love the brutality of the first film, the way the terminator goes through the phonebook killing any woman called Sarah Connor, or shooting everyone in the nightclub who happens to be in the way, or wiping out an entire police station – there's something incredibly vicious and 80s about it all. Though I do still enjoy Terminator 2, it feels as if the 90s' 'new man' idea has crept in, so that Arnie balances his ruthless killing instinct with tender concern for whales and dolphins and the decline of the rainforest. It's still a very entertaining film, but it doesn't have the terrifying purity of the idea of T1, where the focus is entirely on this machine from the future which absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
The father/son bond between Arnie and John Connor gives the movie more heart than all the others though.
Don't you think that borders, or even tips right over into schmaltz though. Terminator's don't have a heart, they're killing machines, and the idea of one bonding with an irritating child goes against everything a Terminator is for me. That characterisitic of the Ternminators was the most unbelievable element of T2 onwards and also what spoiled them.
Don't you think that borders, or even tips right over into schmaltz though. Terminator's don't have a heart, they're killing machines, and the idea of one bonding with an irritating child goes against everything a Terminator is for me. That characterisitic of the Ternminators was the most unbelievable element of T2 onwards and also what spoiled them.
Agree.
That was what I was trying to say in post 44. Adding emotion in T2 goes against everything a Terminator is as you said.
In a nutshell T2 is basically a violent version of Short Circuit with special effects.
well that's the basic question all stories about robots asks : can they have emotions / what are emotions / consciousness etc. ?
Any perceived emotional attachment to JC was part the machine's programming to protect and follow his orders, that's it (IMO). The main purpose of the attachment imo was to highlight the wider and more important narrative that was mentioned earlier in the thread, Sarah Connor losing her humanity; acting more like machine and becoming emotionaly distant whilst having the machine act more like a human and JC developing a bond with it. That could certainly tie into those questions (which only highlights the stupidity of the OP's point). In any case, are there people out there who really think the machine had feelings?
In any case, are there people out there who really think the machine had feelings?
I wouldn't rule it out. Although the T-1000 is perhaps a more persuasive example. I agree with what ChristopherJ says, that it isn't as efficient as the evil terminator of the first film. It is often slow to kill, as if it wanted its victims to suffer and enjoyed that suffering. In some scenes there may have been a mission-related need for the victim to be made scared, but I don't see any such need when it kills the hospital guard. It's simply sadistic.
The T-1000 is more advanced than in the first film because it is a different model, and the T-800 becomes more advanced because John enables its learning feature. So I don't think the limitations of the first film need apply to either. More generally, the notion that an AI can't have human emotions is a prejudice akin to vitalism, in my view.
Don't you think that borders, or even tips right over into schmaltz though. Terminator's don't have a heart, they're killing machines, and the idea of one bonding with an irritating child goes against everything a Terminator is for me. That characterisitic of the Ternminators was the most unbelievable element of T2 onwards and also what spoiled them.
It works within the context of the story they are trying to tell. The whole point of sequels is not to slavishly adhere to what came before but to progress.
I can believe - again, within the context of T2 - that a Terminator can want to evolve beyond it's original programming.
And a movie has to be more than just gunshots and explosions and the Terminator/John Connor father/son dynamic is not only their own personal character arc but it's also vital to Sarah's as well.
The only thing that really bugs me about T2 is the genesis of bigger! badder! Terminator trope which the sequels do slavishly adhere to and it's proven to be detrimental to the franchise.
I actually didn't mind the Arnie as robot Father business in T2. In fact the whole nuclear family idea was one of its more interesting aspects. It's blackly comic in a way, but thankfully never winks at the camera. Shame Cameron can't do that much with it though, because here's another drawn-out action sequence.
It's very much in keeping with Cameron's way. All his films are built around strong personal ties and relationships (something he's far better at than others in the blockbuster field), always making them intrinsic to the plot. Even amidst the headlong drive of T1 he takes as creaky a convention as the hero/damsel sex scene and turns it on its head, making it the whole point of the film.
It works within the context of the story they are trying to tell. The whole point of sequels is not to slavishly adhere to what came before but to progress.
Yes, I appreciate that, but the progression made to the T800, even before the bonding with JC, seemed unbelievable. Arnie imbued the T2, the same model as that in T1, with a sense of humour amongst other human traits - the knowing looks when aquiring clothes, boots & motorcycle, etc. So for me it didn't work all that well.
I can believe - again, within the context of T2 - that a Terminator can want to evolve beyond it's original programming.
Yes, I can believe that too, but the portrayal of that evolution just seemed schmaltzy to me.
And a movie has to be more than just gunshots and explosions and the Terminator/John Connor father/son dynamic is not only their own personal character arc but it's also vital to Sarah's as well.
Obviously, in the context of the story, a Terminator is more efficient if it can pass for human more convincingly so there is an impetus for them to evolve, even to create bonds, I'm just not sure the father/son bond in particular would be necessary for this story. It just seemed tacked on in an attempt to add a layer of depth, but it came across as very contrived and showed T1 and T2 Terminators in too stark a contrast to be believable. There's no way the T800 in T1 would have bonded with anything, yet we'ere expected to beleive the same model sent back to a few years later with a different mission could become a surragate father to JC?
The only thing that really bugs me about T2 is the genesis of bigger! badder! Terminator trope which the sequels do slavishly adhere to and it's proven to be detrimental to the franchise.
i think that's a problem with sequels in general, there always seems to be the need to outdo the previous one, rather than build on what made them popular in the first place. For me, T1's big appeal was the suspense and sense of danger it built, the nature of the Terminator as unstoppable, irrepressible, unfeeling, dead eye'd killing machine. It's the stuff of nightmares, a threat that just will not stop coming for you. For me, that's what T2 lost. It had the bigger, badder Terminator, but the good guys had one too. they were still the underdogs, but it shifted the focus of the action to a predictable showdown betrween the two Terminators rather than creating unrelenting peril for John Connor that worked so well with Sarah connor in T1.
Perhaps it's just degrees of "working"? And different people get different things from films.
But Terminator films are most effective (and get a wider potential audience) when they are set in a scenario that most people are familiar with. Like the "present day" and a domestic environment.
Then it all seems more horrifying than something set in the future or something...
That's how I feel about sci-fi films in general: I tend to prefer the first films – T1, The Matrix, say – over the sequels because they present the excitement of the original idea and its first intrusions into ordinary life (a killing-machine from the future arrives in a contemporary city; the normal everyday world is discovered to be an illusion). The sequels are often entertaining but lack that adventure out of everyday ordinariness because the original idea is treated as being already understood, and so they begin on a sort of plateau, or present variations of the first film.
Real sci-fi fans tend to disagree with me as they find the further developments just as interesting, if not more so – from which I conclude I'm really only partially interested in sci-fi (I never read science fiction, for example) and feel less interested once the exciting contrast with normal everyday life has been exhausted.
I would think that the vast majority prefer the first Matrix to the sequels
So would I, but that wasn't the only response I got when I made the same point in a thread about The Matrix. I got the impression some sci-fi fans found the development of the worlds in the sequels just as interesting, whereas the problem for me was that the most exciting revelation had already been made in the first film, and you can't make it twice.
So would I, but that wasn't the only response I got when I made the same point in a thread about The Matrix. I got the impression some sci-fi fans found the development of the worlds in the sequels just as interesting, whereas the problem for me was that the most exciting revelation had already been made in the first film, and you can't make it twice.
The fist one would probably be my preference, but I'm not that fussed about any of them. I do give the writers some credit for taking the old and recycled concept that was presented in the first one and at least trying to expand on it in the sequels.
The entire franchise is about the folly of man creating more and more powerful hardware to fights our battles and then how that folly ends up being our downfall. I think that scene highlights that beautifully by showing contemporary weapons of mass devastation and planting the seed that we don't have to wait for the advent of an artificially intelligent computer - we already have an abundance of dangerous weapons that can be used against the innocent.
He's the goody but he's shooting people who are only trying to protect the public but it's ok because he's only doing A-Team type shooting where nobody gets hurt because Brand Arnie doesn't want to be seen to kill people.
Wasn't the point about the struggle between his original programming to kill and the programming he had subsequently been given to protect. This is a running theme in the film.
It's just a shit knock-off of a great scene from Predator...
There's no way the T800 in T1 would have bonded with anything, yet we'ere expected to beleive the same model sent back to a few years later with a different mission could become a surragate father to JC?
The same model, programmed differently. The programming is important. Also, there was a scene missing from the theatrical release in which they open up his head, take his chip out, and modify it so that he is able to learn dynamically. That helps explain why his abilities increase.
So would I, but that wasn't the only response I got when I made the same point in a thread about The Matrix. I got the impression some sci-fi fans found the development of the worlds in the sequels just as interesting, whereas the problem for me was that the most exciting revelation had already been made in the first film, and you can't make it twice.
I preferred the second Matrix film, but I know I'm unusual. Part of the reason is that I read SF, and the first film's "exciting revelation" that reality is a dream from which we may awaken, was old hat to me. It's in Alice Through the Looking Glass, for example. And then it portrayed a simple, black-and-white world in which humans=good, machines=bad. The second film opened it out more, made the primary conflict three-way (humans versus machines versus Smith), and added side-factions who had their own agendas. It also dropped the notion that humans were being used as batteries, which is so dumb. It made it clear that Morpheus was a religious terrorist nut-job. The philosophy was a bit more interesting.
That said, I accept the first film has better cinematography. The second one tends to alternate talky scenes with action scenes.
More generally, I often prefer sequels, especially if I see them before the original. For example, Hellraiser II has pretty much all the ideas from the first film, plus a bunch of new ideas eg about where Cenobites live and how they are created.
I preferred the second Matrix film, but I know I'm unusual. Part of the reason is that I read SF, and the first film's "exciting revelation" that reality is a dream from which we may awaken, was old hat to me. It's in Alice Through the Looking Glass, for example. And then it portrayed a simple, black-and-white world in which humans=good, machines=bad. The second film opened it out more, made the primary conflict three-way (humans versus machines versus Smith), and added side-factions who had their own agendas. It also dropped the notion that humans were being used as batteries, which is so dumb. It made it clear that Morpheus was a religious terrorist nut-job. The philosophy was a bit more interesting.
More generally, I often prefer sequels, especially if I see them before the original. For example, Hellraiser II has pretty much all the ideas from the first film, plus a bunch of new ideas eg about where Cenobites live and how they are created.
The Matrix's great revelation isn't just that we may all live in a dream but that we may all simply be brains existing in test tubes or barrels. That the whole edifice of reality doesn't actually exist. The waking up scene in the human battery factory is breathtaking in its imagery and the ideas and analogies it suggests. There isn't anything in the second or third movies which comes close to that revelation.
The entire franchise is about the folly of man creating more and more powerful hardware to fights our battles and then how that folly ends up being our downfall. I think that scene highlights that beautifully by showing contemporary weapons of mass devastation and planting the seed that we don't have to wait for the advent of an artificially intelligent computer - we already have an abundance of dangerous weapons that can be used against the innocent.
The original Terminator is a knock-off of a 1957 short story called Solider From Tomorrow (there was even an out of court settlement).
I think you are right the franchise does develop into a story at least partially about man's relationship with machines, particularly killing technologies. However T1's nightmare was the unrelenting killing machine and the better analogy would be killer diseases like HIV (which was an issue at the time of release), cancer or Ebola. These are the unrelenting, uncompromising killers that we often seem helpless in the face of. T1 tuned into that human fear much better than the later movies.
I think the Terminator franchise has the same problem that's affected the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise as well.
The problem is, they don't seem able to strike a balance between creating a plausible fantasy and keeping things interesting.
The first film worked simply because it was a good idea.
The second film worked because it added new things BUT it also stood firmly by the basic premise of the first film.
After that, things all got a bit wobbly.
They added so much random new stuff that the audience couldn't help thinking "So, how come that didn't happen before?" but they didn't really do much to flesh-out the basic universe that it's all supposed to be happening in.
If you look at why a franchise such as Star Wars is so successful it's because they've built an entire universe that feels credible and which the audience always wants to "return" to in order to see what's happening next.
In the Terminator films all you've got is, basically, evil machines from the future that keep on hatching dastardly plots which often has the audience (even people who enjoyed the previous films) rolling their eyes at the plausibility of it all.
I think the Terminator franchise has the same problem that's affected the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise as well.
The problem is, they don't seem able to strike a balance between creating a plausible fantasy and keeping things interesting.
The first film worked simply because it was a good idea.
The second film worked because it added new things BUT it also stood firmly by the basic premise of the first film.
I think it's just inevitable diminishing returns, characteristic of many sequels. Unlike, say, The Godfather, Part 2, where the next generation in a family saga is naturally suited to a second installment, sci-fi films tend to revolve around ideas, and T2 was a variation on the the ideas of T1. And so in T2 a robot from the future is sent back in time to kill John Connor when he was a boy so he doesn't reach adulthood. Not a bad variation, but not as strong as T1's original idea of a robot sent back in time to kill his mother so he is never born in the first place. There's something disturbingly absolute about that, the idea taken to the nth degree, and it's typical of the ruthless logic of the first film.
The Matrix's great revelation isn't just that we may all live in a dream but that we may all simply be brains existing in test tubes or barrels.
It's the same idea. It's a common place if you read novels by Greg Egan, such as Permutation City, or PK Dick, or much other SF.
One of the things I like about the first film is that it takes these old ideas and dresses them in new clothes. For example, oracles are very old. They are almost always female. Their prophecies are mis-understood. The Matrix's Oracle character would not have been out of place in The Odyssey. Her line about Neo not being The One, but maybe in his next life, still seems to be mis-understood even after people watched him die and be brought back at the end of the film. Speaking of which, Trinity bringing him back with a kiss was straight out of Sleeping Beauty.
Comments
So call me an idiot. Or, rather, call me a idiot.
Don't you think that borders, or even tips right over into schmaltz though. Terminator's don't have a heart, they're killing machines, and the idea of one bonding with an irritating child goes against everything a Terminator is for me. That characterisitic of the Ternminators was the most unbelievable element of T2 onwards and also what spoiled them.
That was what I was trying to say in post 44. Adding emotion in T2 goes against everything a Terminator is as you said.
In a nutshell T2 is basically a violent version of Short Circuit with special effects.
When you turn on your device and it greets you with a welcome message do you think it's actually happy to see you?
well that's the basic question all stories about robots asks : can they have emotions / what are emotions / consciousness etc. ?
Any perceived emotional attachment to JC was part the machine's programming to protect and follow his orders, that's it (IMO). The main purpose of the attachment imo was to highlight the wider and more important narrative that was mentioned earlier in the thread, Sarah Connor losing her humanity; acting more like machine and becoming emotionaly distant whilst having the machine act more like a human and JC developing a bond with it. That could certainly tie into those questions (which only highlights the stupidity of the OP's point). In any case, are there people out there who really think the machine had feelings?
The T-1000 is more advanced than in the first film because it is a different model, and the T-800 becomes more advanced because John enables its learning feature. So I don't think the limitations of the first film need apply to either. More generally, the notion that an AI can't have human emotions is a prejudice akin to vitalism, in my view.
I can believe - again, within the context of T2 - that a Terminator can want to evolve beyond it's original programming.
And a movie has to be more than just gunshots and explosions and the Terminator/John Connor father/son dynamic is not only their own personal character arc but it's also vital to Sarah's as well.
The only thing that really bugs me about T2 is the genesis of bigger! badder! Terminator trope which the sequels do slavishly adhere to and it's proven to be detrimental to the franchise.
It's very much in keeping with Cameron's way. All his films are built around strong personal ties and relationships (something he's far better at than others in the blockbuster field), always making them intrinsic to the plot. Even amidst the headlong drive of T1 he takes as creaky a convention as the hero/damsel sex scene and turns it on its head, making it the whole point of the film.
Yes, I appreciate that, but the progression made to the T800, even before the bonding with JC, seemed unbelievable. Arnie imbued the T2, the same model as that in T1, with a sense of humour amongst other human traits - the knowing looks when aquiring clothes, boots & motorcycle, etc. So for me it didn't work all that well.
Yes, I can believe that too, but the portrayal of that evolution just seemed schmaltzy to me.
Obviously, in the context of the story, a Terminator is more efficient if it can pass for human more convincingly so there is an impetus for them to evolve, even to create bonds, I'm just not sure the father/son bond in particular would be necessary for this story. It just seemed tacked on in an attempt to add a layer of depth, but it came across as very contrived and showed T1 and T2 Terminators in too stark a contrast to be believable. There's no way the T800 in T1 would have bonded with anything, yet we'ere expected to beleive the same model sent back to a few years later with a different mission could become a surragate father to JC?
i think that's a problem with sequels in general, there always seems to be the need to outdo the previous one, rather than build on what made them popular in the first place. For me, T1's big appeal was the suspense and sense of danger it built, the nature of the Terminator as unstoppable, irrepressible, unfeeling, dead eye'd killing machine. It's the stuff of nightmares, a threat that just will not stop coming for you. For me, that's what T2 lost. It had the bigger, badder Terminator, but the good guys had one too. they were still the underdogs, but it shifted the focus of the action to a predictable showdown betrween the two Terminators rather than creating unrelenting peril for John Connor that worked so well with Sarah connor in T1.
That's how I feel about sci-fi films in general: I tend to prefer the first films – T1, The Matrix, say – over the sequels because they present the excitement of the original idea and its first intrusions into ordinary life (a killing-machine from the future arrives in a contemporary city; the normal everyday world is discovered to be an illusion). The sequels are often entertaining but lack that adventure out of everyday ordinariness because the original idea is treated as being already understood, and so they begin on a sort of plateau, or present variations of the first film.
Real sci-fi fans tend to disagree with me as they find the further developments just as interesting, if not more so – from which I conclude I'm really only partially interested in sci-fi (I never read science fiction, for example) and feel less interested once the exciting contrast with normal everyday life has been exhausted.
I would think that the vast majority prefer the first Matrix to the sequels
So would I, but that wasn't the only response I got when I made the same point in a thread about The Matrix. I got the impression some sci-fi fans found the development of the worlds in the sequels just as interesting, whereas the problem for me was that the most exciting revelation had already been made in the first film, and you can't make it twice.
Wasn't the point about the struggle between his original programming to kill and the programming he had subsequently been given to protect. This is a running theme in the film.
The original Terminator is a knock-off of a 1957 short story called Solider From Tomorrow (there was even an out of court settlement).
I preferred the second Matrix film, but I know I'm unusual. Part of the reason is that I read SF, and the first film's "exciting revelation" that reality is a dream from which we may awaken, was old hat to me. It's in Alice Through the Looking Glass, for example. And then it portrayed a simple, black-and-white world in which humans=good, machines=bad. The second film opened it out more, made the primary conflict three-way (humans versus machines versus Smith), and added side-factions who had their own agendas. It also dropped the notion that humans were being used as batteries, which is so dumb. It made it clear that Morpheus was a religious terrorist nut-job. The philosophy was a bit more interesting.
That said, I accept the first film has better cinematography. The second one tends to alternate talky scenes with action scenes.
More generally, I often prefer sequels, especially if I see them before the original. For example, Hellraiser II has pretty much all the ideas from the first film, plus a bunch of new ideas eg about where Cenobites live and how they are created.
The Matrix's great revelation isn't just that we may all live in a dream but that we may all simply be brains existing in test tubes or barrels. That the whole edifice of reality doesn't actually exist. The waking up scene in the human battery factory is breathtaking in its imagery and the ideas and analogies it suggests. There isn't anything in the second or third movies which comes close to that revelation.
I think you are right the franchise does develop into a story at least partially about man's relationship with machines, particularly killing technologies. However T1's nightmare was the unrelenting killing machine and the better analogy would be killer diseases like HIV (which was an issue at the time of release), cancer or Ebola. These are the unrelenting, uncompromising killers that we often seem helpless in the face of. T1 tuned into that human fear much better than the later movies.
The problem is, they don't seem able to strike a balance between creating a plausible fantasy and keeping things interesting.
The first film worked simply because it was a good idea.
The second film worked because it added new things BUT it also stood firmly by the basic premise of the first film.
After that, things all got a bit wobbly.
They added so much random new stuff that the audience couldn't help thinking "So, how come that didn't happen before?" but they didn't really do much to flesh-out the basic universe that it's all supposed to be happening in.
If you look at why a franchise such as Star Wars is so successful it's because they've built an entire universe that feels credible and which the audience always wants to "return" to in order to see what's happening next.
In the Terminator films all you've got is, basically, evil machines from the future that keep on hatching dastardly plots which often has the audience (even people who enjoyed the previous films) rolling their eyes at the plausibility of it all.
I think it's just inevitable diminishing returns, characteristic of many sequels. Unlike, say, The Godfather, Part 2, where the next generation in a family saga is naturally suited to a second installment, sci-fi films tend to revolve around ideas, and T2 was a variation on the the ideas of T1. And so in T2 a robot from the future is sent back in time to kill John Connor when he was a boy so he doesn't reach adulthood. Not a bad variation, but not as strong as T1's original idea of a robot sent back in time to kill his mother so he is never born in the first place. There's something disturbingly absolute about that, the idea taken to the nth degree, and it's typical of the ruthless logic of the first film.
We had never heard of it, when the brother in law invited us round to watch a video. Just so gripping.
So much else followed T1, but I think the concept of T1 was completely original. Now someone will refer to some other film. but you know what I mean.
I actually think Riddick, and Vin Diesel is the natural successor for this franchise.
One of the things I like about the first film is that it takes these old ideas and dresses them in new clothes. For example, oracles are very old. They are almost always female. Their prophecies are mis-understood. The Matrix's Oracle character would not have been out of place in The Odyssey. Her line about Neo not being The One, but maybe in his next life, still seems to be mis-understood even after people watched him die and be brought back at the end of the film. Speaking of which, Trinity bringing him back with a kiss was straight out of Sleeping Beauty.