Terminator 1 is my favourite movie ever. I’m not sure why, but everything in that film works for me.
Terminator 2 is a film I like a lot. I’ve seen it more than once. (T1, I’ve seen about twenty times).
Terminator 3 was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I really did feel sick when watching it - nothing to do with any blood and gore, just because one of my favourite films was being gutted and used for scraps.
What I’ve seen of the Sarah Connor Chronicles has been very enjoyable; I’d have seen more if it were available to me at the time. My GF and I are now working slowly through the whole lot.
I like big shoot-em-up action movies, but I also really like a plot that makes sense in at least some respects. With this movie, I’d like it to not be as bad as T3, basically.
I really liked T1. Loved T2. Was bleh on T3. Loved the first season of TSCC. Was meh-ish on the second, but it picked up at the end.
You won’t like T4. I’m pretty sure of that. However, Anton Yelchin does a really, really good Kyle Reese, and it’s worth it for that. Just don’t expect the plot to make any sense.
I loved both T1 and T2 (I saw T2 at a drive-in on opening day - awesome!) and have seen both dozens of times. I never saw T3. Watched an episode or two of T:TSCC and thought it was OK. I didn’t expect to like T4 but my boyfriend and I really enjoyed it. In retrospect I suppose the plot didn’t make a ton of sense, but it kept us interested and all the performances were really good, especially Sam Worthington (is that his name?) and Anton Yelchin. I loved all the call-backs to the first two movies. I haven’t read all the criticisms in the other thread(s) but I thought it was well worth seeing and we left the theater happy. shrug
I remember watching T2 and thinking “There is no way on earth this film will be bettered”
eta:I used to like Christian Bale, but more and more these days he’s seeming like a dick. He ALMOST ruined the Dark Night. It was saved by Heath.
His STUPID batman voice is almost unbearable.
eta: I also liked T3. It was a bit of a joke film, but jokes are good sometimes.
I spent most of Terminator 4 thinking about the first movie and how much I’d rather be watching that. Hell, I’d much rather be watching the segments about the future in that movie then terminator 4.
Personally, I can’t comprehend how someone could like T2 better than T3. To me, it seems like with T2, they came up with a spiffy new special effects technology that wasn’t quite ready for prime time yet, and then sat down and figured out how they could contrive to vaguely sort of wrap a plot around it. Then, by the time the movie actually came out, the effects were already dated, and it was two hours of “Ooh, I’m looking at fancy computer graphics!”. T3 is the movie that T2 should have been: The special effects technology was mature by that time, and all of the things that didn’t make sense in the second one, did in the third.
T3 was goofy entertainment, not worthy of it’s predecesors.
T4 doesn’t care if you’re entertained. Once you’ve paid to see it, it will happily punch you in the reproductive organs over and over and over again. Don’t allow it to hurt you the way it hurt me. In a more concrete example - twice in this movie, I thought, unbidden and without mallace, “Wouldn’t it be great if the machines ripped that guy apart?” Both times, it was one of the heroes up against a terminator.
T2’s effects weren’t dated when it came out - everyone raved about how amazing they were. I’ve heard people say it hasn’t aged well but IMO it holds up pretty well.
T2 had a fine story. It fit in well with the first one. The time travel aspect was logical enough to fit in with the first one. The action sequences were well designed. The plot made sense.
The main reason I hate T3 personally is that it invokes the use of magical fate faeries as part of the plot. The universe “self correcting” and all that nonsense. I think that’s the weakest, lamest convention anyone writing about time travel can use and it instantly ruins a story for me.
The chick terminator in T3 wasn’t 1/8th as menacing as Robert Patrick was in T2, and given that what really drove T1 and T2 was the awesomely scary bad guy, the whole movie didn’t have the right feel.
T3’s John Connor was a pathetic snivelling weakling - simply not believable as the future leader of mankind. The villain wasn’t scary, Sarah Connor was dead, and the love interest was irritating. All good reasons to dislike the film.
If someone really likes that film, then that makes them a good person to ask about whether I should watch other films - if they say yes, that means I’ll hate it.
Could you explain that? It’s a serious question. T3 isn’t so bad, I have even begun to appreciate it, in a fashion, after T4 and it does indeed answer some of the open questions. But I’m not sure, why you think it makes more sense than T2?