Which movie is the best??.....

T1 was good.
The scene in the mental hospital when Sarah is trying to flee and then she sees Terminator for the first time, the way she reacts, the music,the slow motion. That scene is one of the best i have seen in an action movie.

I have to agree that this scene was good. However, I like the scene at the Technoir club in T1 better. It was perfect, originated the slow motion sequences used in Terminator movies, and it was when the Terminator methos started really coming to a head for the characters.

Sarah meets Kyle, who she think is trying to kill her (because of two previous reports of Sarah Connors mentioned in the media) until he performs his last second save which result in a night club shoot out.

He blasts the Terminator out the window, coins the, "Come with me if you want to live," dialogue, and then the Terminator rises up for the first time to instigate one of the most suspenseful chase scenes in film history.
 
No question in my mind, T2 one of the top 10 best sci fi movies of the last 50 years.
 
T1.

T2 is very much Ooh look at the special affects, the tension is lacking. For all the abilities of the shapeshifting Terminator it never come close to dealing out the damage we know a normal human can put out and a T101 can shake off until the very end in a contrived scene. Some very bad comedy, philosophy about fate straight from a 16 year old Goth which contradicts the 1st film (but now must be taken as faith when complaining about the other films) and Linda Hamilton never takes her top off. Very disapointing.

The shock of seeing Arnie shruging off shotgun rounds and a fuel tanker exploding are distinctly lacking. But that might just be my age having seen the original on bootleg video before it was released in the UK.
 
T1 was also really great because it was really new and groundbreaking at the time.
 
I too would go for the original Terminator. Whilst i do think that T2 was a technically better film, at the time i found the idea of an unstoppable machine was quite frightening.
 
For me, the biggest flaw in T-2 and T-3 is the fact that Arnold always survived the length of the film, and helped our heroes along for the entirety of it. Machine versus machine is nowhere near as suspenseful as man versus machine.

Kyle Reese was a far more compelling protagonist than Arnold could ever be. Arnold was like an indestructible shield, and as long as he was functioning, nothing bad could happen. Reese was like a net, capable of catching our damsel when she falls, but there is always that chance that he would break under the strain of her weight, and leave her to care for her own damage at any point in the film.

That kind of dynamic goes a long way toward deciding the superior film for me.
 
Hate me if you want, but I think the order should be:

1. Terminator
2. Terminator: Salvation
3. Terminator 2
4. The Sarah Connor Chronicles
5. Terminator 5
6. Terminator 3

And here's why. First of all, the whole concept of 'Terminator' was killer robots from the future. I don't care much about Arnold as an actor, but he's the perfect Terminator. Many people don't understand why I hate the new Friday 13th movie, and especially that version of Jason. Jason never talks, so isn't it enough to have someone put on a mask to be Jason? Wrong. Jason never speaks with his mouth, but he certainly speaks with his body language. Compare Kane Hodder as Jason vs anyone else as Jason, and you'll see it right away. Kane Hodder is the master of being scary without actually saying anything. The same goes for Arnold. The Terminator never really speaks much, and when it does, it's only short lines. ("Sarah Connor?" "Yes?" Boooom!) :D But Arnold also speaks with his body language a lot during the movies. Take the scene in the nightclub, for instance. There's a lot of stuff going on, but the Terminator clearly doesn't give a crap. It's there to kill Sarah Connor, and that's it. Everything and everyone else is unimportant.

Then we have Terminator 2, and Arnold is suddenly the good guy? And although he's a killer robot from the future, he has no problem avoiding killing anyone at all? That part just felt wrong. And what about the Sarah Connor / John Connor / Terminator relationship? The Terminator is supposed to be a killer robot, but it acts more like John Connor's father. On top of it, the movie feels too similar to the first one. (and btw, it's been ages since I saw the first one, but didn't Reese have the line "Come with me if you want to live?") Sure it's more of it, but it's more of the same.

That's why the second place goes to Terminator Salvation on my list. Salvation has a lot of problems, but it feels like it belongs in the Terminator-universe and is more "grown up" than the last two, and it feels very different than the first three. We finally have a new story, and not just the old one on repeat again. Sure it has problems, but so does all the other movies, including the first one. But unlike the third and parts of the second, it's very enjoyable. I had a lot of fun watching it.

My fourth goes to The Sarah Connor Chronicles. True, that show did have a lot of problems, and since it's based entirely in the present, it was bound to get boring quickly if all they did was have Sarah and John Connor on the run with a terminator after them. I think they solved it perfectly, but even so, it was going to get boring soon. But until then, it was very interesting with lots of action and terminators. Even terminators sent back to the present on different missions other than the usual killings.

Then we have Terminator 5. Very little is known about it, other than it's in development. But then again Salvation was supposed to be the first in a new trilogy, so I guess that's not a shocker. But although we know nothing about it yet, it can't possibly be worse than the crapfest called Terminator 3. T3 was so bad even the tv-series ignored it. :D
 
I think the whole "chicken egg syndrome" thing is pretty cool. It adds to the movies. Makes you wonder, is such a never ending circle impossible? Is there really a paradox here at all? Or must it have happened as C Of K said, originating from a parallel universe in which skynet was independently invented?

In any case, the entire terminator series makes no sense whatsoever. There is always the fact that eventually, inevitably, Skynet would have killed John Connor or an ancestor. Skynet has infinite tries. In fact, why can't it just send itself back? Why can't it upload to some solar-powered computer it built and travel to prehistoric times? Even if Skynet didn't have infinite tries or the option to time travel itself, they should have kept sending Terminators farther back in time, to younger and younger Sarahs, so as to not loose the element of surprise.
 
For me T1 is still the best:

1) Best music - for me this is very important as the music carries out the most of the emotional aspect of a movie and usually first movies in a sequence have the most naturally created music, as Brad Fiedel says in an interview - the T1 theme was created for less than a day

2) Yes, less budget than any other T, but still very good looking, I personally don't mind it at all.

3) Best erotic scene ever - the T1 erotic scene is the most naturally created erotic scene in all movies I've ever saw (and I saw a lot)

4) Speaking of which, all characters look very natural and down-to-earth. Yes, Arnie is superhuman, but this is his character about. Linda Hamilton looks much more natural, than in T2 or any other action movie chick, with the exception of Cynthia Rothrock, but she's probably the only other one naturally-looking cutie in action movies. Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen - all characters look like faces from the everyday life. Nothing is exagerated.

5) Fight scenes and stunts looks natural. Sorry I am not a fan of the modern movies where they pick a 3D model of a car and make it flip and fly barely touching the hair of the main character to make it look more dramatic

Maybe I've missed something... that's for now.

Regards
 
I agree with those who say it ended with T2 in that I've never seen anything in the T franchise after that (except an episode or two of TSCC which I intensely disliked, Summer Glau or no).

As far as T1 or T2, I can't really say. They're both two of my very favorite movies. Basically, thanks to A.E. van Vogt ;), T2 has an even better Terminator. I like that Sarah Connor is further along the road away from the self-doubting waitress she begins moving from in T1. The playground-to-nuclear-holocaust scene is incredibly intense. And I think the reason T2 works so well is kind of why ST:TNG worked - it's actually closer to what the creator wanted to make in the first place. The first concept for the Terminator was as a blend-into-the-crowd guy like Reese and Arnie was supposed to play the hero. And like all filmmakers imagine, it was supposed to have a huge budget. But working within constraints and with stuff shuffled around worked brilliantly, too. So T1 and T2 are kind of two facets of one movie.

That said, T1 was the original, Reese was a great character played excellently and gave something to T1 that T2 lacked. The initial impact of the Terminator is in T1, of course, and there's something closer/tighter/more intense to it. T2 widens it out and adds a greater impression of what it's all about, in a way, but loses some of the grittiness.

Like I say, I can't really decide - I suppose I have more "fun" watching T2 but T1 is probably the "better" film, constraints notwithstanding.

It's a lot easier for me to decide between Alien and Aliens because they're very different sorts of movies, though all four films are fantastic. Alien is great but I'll take Aliens. But both those series stick together in my mind for not being designed as franchises, but having such fantastic sequels where it's at least arguable the sequel outstrips the original.

(Well, that and Reese/Hicks, whazzername/Vasquez, punker dude/Hudson, cop/Bishop, and so on were in both franchises.)
 
It got a lot of critism but i enjoyed it a lot. OK, they've removed the time paradox part but it's still an enjoyable action movie.
 
I think the whole "chicken egg syndrome" thing is pretty cool. It adds to the movies. Makes you wonder, is such a never ending circle impossible? Is there really a paradox here at all? Or must it have happened as C Of K said, originating from a parallel universe in which skynet was independently invented?

In any case, the entire terminator series makes no sense whatsoever. There is always the fact that eventually, inevitably, Skynet would have killed John Connor or an ancestor. Skynet has infinite tries. In fact, why can't it just send itself back? Why can't it upload to some solar-powered computer it built and travel to prehistoric times? Even if Skynet didn't have infinite tries or the option to time travel itself, they should have kept sending Terminators farther back in time, to younger and younger Sarahs, so as to not loose the element of surprise.

This is the problem with having the T2 and T3 sequels. In T1, there wasn't infinite do-overs for Skynet. Sending the Terminator back in time the first time was supposed to be their last chance. The machines had lost the war in the future, and the humans had destroyed the time machine after they sent Reese through.

They retconned that in order to make the next two sequels. That's perhaps the main reason why Terminator became completely illogical. Why send only one machine to kill Connors, when you can send unlimited amounts until you finally achieve your goal?
 
Terminator 2, hands down, no competition.

Bad to the Bone.

psik
 

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