New "Terminator" Trilogy Planned

Ant writes "Dark Horizons reports after much talk and posturing over the future of "The Terminator" franchise/series in recent years, something surprising has happened: The Halcyon Company has acquired the franchise rights to the popular movie series and intends to make a new trilogy that would anchor their movie company..."

What I really want

[clickclickdrone]

Isn't more Terminator but another Alien movie based on the book that should have been Alien 3 i.e. Alien Earth Hive. That would seriously kick ass.

Re:Who needs Arnold?

[eli pabst]

I agree. As much as I enjoyed the original Terminator movies, the background plot of John Connor always seemed more interesting to me and I always felt a bit disappointed that it wasn't developed further. The part in T1 when Michael Biehn's character (Reese) falls asleep under the bridge and has a flashback dream was an incredibly cool sequence.

Re:Great

[Doc Lazarus]

Agreed. The Hollywood trend is to secure money by rehashing proven hits of the past. This company could do something unique with the Terminator movies. But then again, they could also do something completely unique and possibly create a new franchise as well.

I hope they make it a love story chick flick

[gelfling]

With vaguely homoerotic overtones, like Spiderman. Because Hollywood hasn't turned everything into shit just yet.

But to be fair, T-3 was pretty close to that. All that they need to do is fill the cast with whatever interchangeable hunks and chicks are in whatever is hot on the WB at that time.

Oh yeah and did I mention that Sarah Conners has to be black?

Re:OMG is the George Lucas Effect!

[Dr. Eggman]

I know this is a joke, but still I'd bet a George Lucas style Terminator would turn out pretty awesome. The francise is coming off of a low note, ie T3, and with nothing but the future war setting left, it would look pretty sweet. All the battle sequences from episode II and III were rather spectacular in my opinion, and a future war Terminator movie done in the same style might be the kind of new direction the francise needs. It's not like there needs to be much character story, everyone's pretty much setup in their relations to the main players, and its not as if a political side story would appear in the middle an extinction war. So, that means, no romance plot, no starchy politics, and a freaking pre-destined on-the-rails plotline (thanks a lot T3.) So what's left to make the movie? SFX, explosions, creative war machines, more explosions, fancy CGI/models, and zetaflops worth of more explosions! A George Lucas style Terminator 4 would rock!

What a stupid idea

[jollyreaper]

Personally, I love the first two. They're impressive, action-packed, and scary. I never even bothered to see the third one because it looked like it was going to suck right out of the gate. Turns out I was right.

The problem with T3 and any future project is that they're doing it for the bucks, not because there's any story worth telling. When it's about the money, the entire project will be permeated with a workman-like attitude. "Hey, don't complain, you're getting paid." "It doesn't have to get good, it just has to be finished." "Why invest any of myself in this? Nobody cares anyway."

So anything the studios put out will suck, suck, suck. But there's a theoretical question, is there anything left to explore in the Terminator universe? To that I would have to say yes: the machine war. They already did time travel in the first two movies. Doing it again in the third was a stupid and hackneyed idea. So, what stories are there to tell in the future? This guy has some ideas.

http://www.goingfaster.com/term2029/contents.html [goingfaster.com]

His birth of skynet story here is suitably terrifying and well-written. You could just imagine what something like this would look like on film.

http://www.goingfaster.com/term2029/skynet.html [goingfaster.com]

Any future Terminator storyline should discard T3, start with a new numbering scheme, and go with all new characters. The Machine War. The rise of the human resistence. The eventual defeat of Skynet. Not even a hint of time travel until the end of the third movie where John Connor leads the assault on the Skynet time portal. Use some CGI to make a new actor's face look like Kyle Reese from the first film. They enter the portal room. The instruments say that something has already gone back. Kyle strips down and goes through the portal. Connor orders the device reset for another transfer. "Wait, we're still here, aren't we? Didn't Kyle save you?" "Yeah, but Skynet sent two back. Prep the T800 we captured." Why only send one each time? Why not send more soldiers? They have the facility, they could send back an army. "Because only four were ever sent back in time, one human, three terminators. It worked out well enough for us then, I see no reason to risk changing things now."

Bah. The new Terminators are going to suck shit through a straw.

tell it from the point of view of sensenet

[damontal]

sensenet becoming self aware is what sets the whole shebang off in the first place right? that's always been the most interesting aspect of the story to me. why not tell the story from the point of view of the AI?

Re:Enough

[Opportunist]

*switching into my "old zen master" costume*

Movie is like tea. Script is for movie what leaf is for tea. You take idea and work on it for years, and it will make very good script. Same is for tea. You take garden and work on it for years, and you will have get very good leaf. Then you make movie with very good script. And tea with very good leaf.

And you will see, tea is wonderful, as is movie wonderful. So you say, those leaves made wonderful tea. And I want another wonderful tea. So they will make another wonderful tea. And you put them in the cup again, and then you fill the cup again with water and you wait for tea to brew.

But the tea is not wonderful. It tastes old, stale, without vigor. No life is left in leaves. It all went with the tea.

And scripts are like leaves. You should only brew one movie with one script. Not two. Not three. Or the movie is like tea. Old, stale, without vigor.

Terminator never explored the post-nuclear world

[xtal]

We don't know that much about what skynet did after it took over, how the humans fought, what happened elsewhere in the world.. this is what T3 should have been, but wasn't. There's probably enough there for at least one more movie, but I don't know about three.

Re:Great

[AdamThor]

Hollywood is totally about draining every last cent from anything that can be seen to have any potential. They won't stop. Ever. Until all love for the franchise is dead.

That being said, the conception of the terminator universe is still fertile, I think. Creative and productive people with a clear vision unfettered by corporate BS could probably do something pretty cool with the property. We've seen, as with LotR, if a company is staking it's existence on a property they can potentially realize that they need to work on making it good rather than making it profitable.

That being said, mention of a TV series does not give me much hope. =(

Re:Great

[AdamThor]

Hollywood is totally about draining every last cent from anything that can be seen to have any potential. They won't stop. Ever. Until all love for the franchise is dead.

Separate thought here. I wonder if it would prove fruitful to build a mental model of cultural properties something like this:

Audience Adoration = Potential Energy
Cash = Kinetic Energy

One can be converted to the other - with losses. But if you want to increase one without decreasing the other you need to add work to the system. Hmmm, maybe that doesn't provide any useful insight.

It doesn't seem wise, to me, to convert all of your Audience Adoration into Cash, EVERY TIME, and leave only the husks of entertainment ideas in your wake. Can we build an accessable mental model that explains why Hollywood types shouldn't convert every well regarded property into easy cash?

Re:Great

[flappinbooger]

Neither creator James Cameron or original star Arnold Schwarzenegger will be involved in the project, which picks up with John Connor in his 30s leading what's left of the human race against the machines.

Nah, man, the above is what will make this good. There's been what, 2 minutes, shown of this timeframe of the universe? That whole part of the terminator universe is the basis for all of the movies, yet it is largely left to our imagination. They are going to explore that. No dead horse. They're, uhh, beating a mostly new horse...

Re:Great

[SenseiLeNoir]

Actually, no, T2 did leave something, who anyone with a sense of logic would have picked on. Effectively a type of Grandfather Paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox [wikipedia.org]

In Terminator 1, a Robot was sent back in time, to kill Sarah Connor, preventing the birth of John Connor, leader of the resistance. The resistance sent a human back into time as well, who then impregnated Sarah, to create John Connor. Although the terminator is nearly destroyed, at the end of the film, Judgement day still was to exist. A paradox was formed in the sense that, Johns father is a person who only met Sarah because of judgement day, interesting, a circular action, technically should not be possible (imagine recursion)

In Terminator 2. supposedly all traces of the terminators were destroyed, and Judgement day was averted. But, if Judgement day was averted, then those terminators would have no longer existed and they would not have come back in time. Another paradox, or did the new universe that got formed at that instant, simply shift its path?

This is why there was a T3.