And developed a skepticism of A.I.

Regular viewers will know that in the animanga space, I’m fairly okay with keeping up with series, especially when they merchandise and franchise out like Naruto or Dragon Ball. In the west, however, this gets trickier and more challenging for a number of reasons. Reboots/remakes/retcons, etc., screw with canon so much that it starts to look like a hentai doujin with some of the most accursed tags. Franchising itself, I highlighted just now, but it’s not always done neatly or with a solid plan. For example, Star Wars is the champion and great-grandfather of all references. People are insane enough to catalog every single reference to George Lucas’ brainchild, but what makes this an insane task specifically for this franchise is George Lucas getting in the way of his own vision by constantly remaking everything. Creatives tend to be this way, as I would know, but I’d probably not be this uptight about my own projects.

There are a few series whose franchises I’ve followed with full or near-consistency to say that I approach expert level knowledge. Those three are Deadpool, the reboot Planet of the Apes trilogy, and the topic of this post, Terminator. But while Merc with a Mouth and Upright Apes were more gradual, I started to follow the Terminator franchise more closely around 2014.

I don’t recall specifically what brought this on, but I think it might have been a rumor of sorts of an upcoming movie at the time, the fifth one in the franchise and on reflection one of the least warmly received sequels probably since 2009’s Salvation, Terminator: Genisys.

If I was a cynical asshole, I’d probably write up a snarky review about how the franchise only exists because Arnold made it so in the 1980s, his absence in Salvation proves that he was the adhesive holding it all together, and his return in this one is both a proof of concept while also reminding us that glue eventually ages too. Both harsh and what it would look like if not written by a fan but a critic looking to get paid for every character in their document. But I’m vaulting over the USS Theodore Roosevelt on this one.

The sudden confirmation of another movie made me want to play catch-ups, hold the mustard, on the franchise and I did so in an era prior to my current methods of pirating. Pre-adpocalypse, YouTube let you get away with nearly anything visual media-wise though some artists’ estates and family were hook-deep into the copyright claim booth (or I’d remember being able to listen to Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing at the time), but my first way to look into the franchise was on YouTube, right next to a now deleted channel that had the full length version of Saving Private Ryan. It’s still possible even now to find channels daring to upload full- or seemingly full-length versions of the original 1984 movie, but be careful. Sometimes editing tricks are used to get past the censorship and burn away minutes of your life.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day couldn’t be found on YouTube so I went to a now-defunct torrenting site to watch it. The fate of that site is one shared by several, taken down in a global effort to crack down on piracy. Did it lead to arrests? I didn’t care honestly. Watching movies without spending the pennies to do so was still a challenge for me personally, but I kept trying. I did it with 300 and would nonetheless keep doing it until I discovered services like Tubi and was able to pay for Netflix.

Then of course there was Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines which came out when I was about 4 years old. So technically, this was my introduction to the series, considering I watched it at a babysitter’s house at the time. Rewatching it at 16 and comparing it to the last two films, it was a decent addition to the series as a whole, but not as good as 1 or Judgment Day.

All things considered, I think the third film is looked on two harshly. Dark Fate tried to rewrite it starting here and personally I don’t think Rise of the Machines deserved that. Salvation, however…

I’m exaggerating, but if I had to use a metaphor, if Terminators 1 and 2 were the exciting points, 3 is the midpoint before Salvation starts going down hill, and gradually. I admit that I’m a bit biased here largely because I was watching them all in rapid succession in the lead up to Genisys. Hell, I’d caught up to all the movies long before it was ready for a theatrical release and by the time it released, I once again relied on the dark powers of piracy.

I saw it the following year when I was 17. I don’t remember the trailers spoiling it for me as much, but putting the major plot points, twist included, is almost never a good sign. But I pushed on through and to recap all the movies (spoilers, but it shouldn’t matter anymore):

1. Terminator 1: cyborg is sent back to kill the mother of the resistance. The resistance has the same idea and sends an agent back to save the mother (and also father the leader of the resistance)
2. Terminator 2: cyborg is captured and reprogrammed by the resistance to save the leader as a child when the same thing is tried again with an even deadlier model. Mom is also there, in an asylum, “why are you booing me, I’m right” style.
3. Terminator 3: leader of the resistance afflicted with trauma at the killer cyborgs trying to kill him all his life, another one is his guardian and they try to destroy SkyNet at the source. Love story subplot, chased by Terminatrix, Terminatrix fails, but SkyNet lives on in backup hard drives (I can’t remember it that well)
4. Terminator 4: full-blown war, leader of resistance sees to combat meanwhile death row inmate is lethal injectioned and transformed unknowingly into a cyborg to get close to the leader but deviates from its mission purpose, leader almost dies but the deviant cyborg/ex-death row inmate saves him at the eleventh hour, SkyNet is disturbingly patient
5. Terminator 5: resistance ongoing, SkyNet’s next trick is to kill the leader and make a cyborg of him, meanwhile father of the resistance goes back to 1984 as usual (fanservice detected) to find that the timeline’s been f[dial-up modem]ked very thoroughly, they go back to the present (2017) to fight with better weaponry (I think), the Golden Gate Bridge falls for the millionth time in history (it happens a lot in action movies for some reason), cyborg leader of the resistance is defeated, SkyNet still operates…

…and thus was born an effort to rewrite the damn movies. Or at least that’s what the media thought at the time. Dark Fate was the franchise’s last ditch effort at recapturing the magic and to do the third movie justice since it doesn’t fit as neatly into canon as one would’ve hoped pre-release, but the efforts were in vain.

As a fan of the series, Genisys was the let-down that keeps on letting down. It started out well but the grave got so deep, Satan needed to come up and tell the funeral directors that that’s not how grave digging works. I don’t wanna be harsh on the Terminator franchise, the concept does still play on a lot of fears and anxieties, many of which are becoming true 40 years later, but to see where it is now is disappointing. The only thing I have to show for it now is an uncanny apprehension for anything A.I. It took me longer than normal to even try using chatbots and I treat them like Wikipedia or r/AskReddit most of the time. I guess I’m just still testing it. For what it’s worth, if you’re going to go into the franchise yourself, watch the first 3 movies and then maybe go watch the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV series.

And then finish it off with the R-rated uncut version of Robocop 1 and 2 for more sci-fi action gore.