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

DARK_KNIGHT

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Which Terminator movie is the best??

I think Terminator 2,here are the reasons...

1.Its the funniest,unlike the other two films which were more serious(I know that T3 is funny in some places but in T2 the gags seem to be more natural)

2.It has the best quotes..."Come with me if you want to live","Ill be back","Hasta La Vista ...Baby" ect.

3.It actually ended the story(There was NO reason why T3 shoudve been made!)

4.It has the best action sequences and fight scenes (all done without the aid of CGI unlike the third movie)

5.The T-1000 is way cooler than the TX( why???....Just because!

6.It still looks good today even after 16 years(even with all the advancements in CGI the shots of the T-1000 shapeshifting still measure up today thanks to their simplistic design)

7.The whole bad guy becomes the good guy thing was first done in T2, so it feels more original and suprising than in T3 when they just do the same thing.To spice things up a little they couldve brought Arnie back as the bad guy again....

Overall I think that Terminator 3 is the weakest of the trilogy(although dont get me wrong I dont have a hate campaign against this movie, because I quite like it,its just that compared with the other two I dont think it stands up as well).The first movie is a close second but by far the best is T2

Well thats my opinion....What are your thoughts on the subject??
 
I have to go with original Terminator.

1.Its the funniest

I thought some of the gags in the other 2 movies were funny, but I never really watch any of them in order to laugh. I can take the first one more seriously. The characters seem like they are in a more dire situation, and that the future really is at stake. so I chalk the first one up for a more believable performance.

3.It actually ended the story(There was NO reason why T3 shoudve been made!)
It is very debatable as to whether or not the first one ended the story. There possibly shouldn't have been a second movie.

4.It has the best action sequences and fight scenes (all done without the aid of CGI unlike the third movie)
It definitely has bigger action sequences than the first, but then, Arnold's life is never in danger. That fact takes away from a lot of the suspense. Kyle Reece, on the other hand, was just as mortal as Sarah Conner. That made the action in the first one a lot better, imho.

7.The whole bad guy becomes the good guy thing was first done in T2, so it feels more original and suprising than in T3 when they just do the same thing.To spice things up a little they couldve brought Arnie back as the bad guy again....
I didn't really like this. That's another reason why they possibly shouldn't have made a second. Seeing it a second time, in the third movie, made it even worse. Arnold was the best machine bad guy, imo. He rarely said anything. The T - 1000 seemed to hob nob with regular passerby a little more. (Arnold didn't do this. Reference the scene where he throws the guy off the pay phone. His job was to kill people, and it showed.) Plus Arnold actually showed the effects of the damage he took, and that was really cool. When they turned Arnie good, even he was talking too much.

As I stated above, I think the strongest point to the first movie (and subsequently, the point that puts the first up over the others) is that Kyle, the protector, was mortal. The audience feared for his life along with Sarah's, and he could have died at any point in that movie. With the other movies, everyone was quite certain that Arnie would live to the end. So basically you're guaranteed almost two hours of super action as one Terminator protects the humans against another.

Had they been able to separate Arnold from the humans a lot more, I think the suspense would have been better.
 
i preferred t1, for several reason -
1. t1 was extremely funny, in an ironic and satirical way - t2 & 3 were just 'gags' playing on humor set up in the original
2. 'i'll be back' is from the first film, and i think so is 'come with me if you wanna live'. i've never felt the need to say 'hasta la vista baby' and felt it was said to be quoted.
3. t1 ended the film, with the photograph, it once again established the time continum that sent the terminator back in the first place. 2 just threw the time thing into a wierd paralell universe: ie if sarah connors had stopped the terminator being built and really started on a new road, there would have been no need for 3 (which i think can be convincingly argued in any case), also reese wouldn't have been sent back and john would never have been born, in which case the machines would have risen etc... (headache time)
4. i found the sequences in 2 & 3 overdone
5. cough, um, how can the terminator who was the principal subject of three films and defeated all opponents not be the coolest?
6. so does the tx
7. i hated that the terminator became good. why? so unnnescessary to the original storyline. one of the key themes of the original was that human kind can overcome astounding odds to survive - why waste it?
sorry, forgot - mr scwartzenegger wanted to be the good guy. yawn, sorry, govenor scwartzenegger, my bad.

i loved the original and was horrified when they made the sequel - even more so when i had seen it. it was a great story - with a begining, a middle and an end - that finished the time loop. i feel it should have been left alone.
 
For me it's T1>T3>T2. Yep, that's right. I thought T3 handled the emotional aspects of the story better, with a nice touch of wry humor, than Cameron's ham-handed approach to sentimentality (his DC of T2 is insufferable in these scenes IMO). And I laughed louder at the jokes in T3.

I do agree entirely with what people have said about the faults of T2&T3. Yes, they're a lot less involving as a survival action because a big star is on the good side.
 
I agree witrh DARK_KNIGHT, T2 is the best movie, then T1 then T3...T3 comes last because whereas T2 just did CGI to complete the movie, T3 was flashy and just used it because it could be used imo...I also think there was more story in T2; both terminators look for JC, then they help free SC and high tail it to Mexico, then the turn around that sends them to destroy Skynet, thus ensuring T3 shouldn't exist...also, the TX taking on a female form didn't really have an impact on me
 
T2 may have had more story than T3. It's difficult to judge. In T3 the terminatrix was looking for JC's generals, and just happened to come across JC in the process. Then there was the whole thing with KB's dad overseeing the skynet project, and the virus that actually was skynet! And finally the impossible attempt to try and destroy skynet.

If anything, I think T2 took the whole story off course. Princess Ivy made a good point here...

t1 ended the film, with the photograph, it once again established the time continum that sent the terminator back in the first place. 2 just threw the time thing into a wierd paralell universe: ie if sarah connors had stopped the terminator being built and really started on a new road, there would have been no need for 3 (which i think can be convincingly argued in any case), also reese wouldn't have been sent back and john would never have been born, in which case the machines would have risen etc... (headache time)
The original story was never to stop Judgment Day. It was to save John Conner from death, and that is basically the whole story in its simplest form. Trying to stop Judgment Day in T2 only sets the story on an impossible course. John Connor was born because Judgment Day happened. That is why T3 had to be made after T2. John Connor couldn't exist if Judgment Day was stopped in T2

Cause and effect, action/reaction and all that jazz. This story can only make sense if Judgment Day is carried out to a decisive ending, and I think whoever wrote T3 understood that.
 
But the Judgement Day that happened in #3 is not the one that had happened in #1; it created yet another new contradictory story instead of restoring the original.
 
It sounds like most people here enjoyed all three to an extent, as did I. My favorite is T2, however T1 is definitly the best. T1 is the least contradictory, (besides the fact that time travel is impossible). It is the best for all the reasons given above. Arnie being 'good' was an interesting plot twist for the characters, though. They really did want to make his role seem more---human. I think what would have been really cool, if terminator Arnie would have fought terminator Arnie, one good and one bad, or, whatever terminator Arnie was fighting, managed to reprogram Arnie back to a bad terminator during the film so there would be 2 hunting the Connors. However human they might have portrayed him, he was still a machine, Sarah was right. Inconsistancies aside, each film was really well done and I completly enjoy each one on its own merits, style and story.

Query: If skynet would have made a terminator dog series, would they have been called T-Rex? (da-dun tche!)
 
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But the Judgement Day that happened in #3 is not the one that had happened in #1; it created yet another new contradictory story instead of restoring the original.

Hm. Interesting. I'd like to know what was contradictory, because it seems I've missed something if it was. (Hate it when that happens, ya know?)
 
I believe the contradiction Delvo is refering to is when it happens(ed). Not 100% sure of the date here, but I think in T1 and maybe T2 Judgement Day it was August XX, 1997(?) In T3 of course that day past by with no nuclear holocaust but was just delayed a decade or so. That is the only thing I can think of that is contradictory, although it is explained in the T3 story, it gets in to time travel dynamics at that point by the fans. When that happens, I go back to my default opinion expressed just above...
 
There's also the physical nature of the technology/network that created the disaster, its development/creation, and what its actions were leading up to the war.

T2 said it started with the creation of a new type of CPU by Miles Bennett Dyson, which was to be used in individual buildings/compounds and to run independent machines like airplanes and tanks. Only after doing so "with a perfect operational record" for some time did such machines inspire Congress to pass a bill to use those multiple independent CPUs as the basis of a network. And that was done according to plan because they did the job better than humans. That network's development of sentience was an accident resulting from the advanced hardware of the CPUs that had been networked.

T3 accepts that that all got stopped and that the CPU wasn't invented at all; it has the military network "Skynet" (different thing, same name) as the first step in the story, created as a "dumb" network from the start without anything special about the separate parts within it, using regular modern computers, instead of being a derivative of Dyson's CPU because that didn't exist. Lacking that advanced hardware and its inherent ability to become sentient by itself, T3's "Skynet" was only rendered sentient by something from the outside: the TX's invasive software and nanobots. And in T3 the network was activated by humans in a moment of sudden desperation when all else seemed to be failing (due to the TX's interference), not on a schedule as planned while things were going fine as in T2.

There might also be a difference in how the two different "Skynet"s got the idea that humans are the enemy. In T2, it was self-defense because humans tried to turn it off when they realized it was more than they'd bargained for. I don't recall how it came to that conclusion in T3, but it doesn't seem like it could be self-defense; did it actually come from the TX?
 
Yes. But this quote

But the Judgment Day that happened in #3 is not the one that had happened in #1; it created yet another new contradictory story instead of restoring the original.

says that T3 contradicts T1. As far as I know (unless there is another version of the movie floating around somewhere) there was never a specific date given for Judgment Day in T1. The 1997 date was given in T2.

In T1 the process concerning Skynet's super intelligence was only explained on a broad scale. I don't believe Dyson was ever mentioned in that movie, and Reese says that "it was new, hooked into everything, and then it got smart." the nature of the technology as explained in T1 was a computer defense system, built by cyberdine systems. that's pretty much all they told the audience about it.

As far as T3 goes, I see a contradiction of T1 nowhere in all of that. It does contradict T2, but T2 contradicts T1. That is why I say T2 veered off course, and T3 put the story back on course. T1 was never about stopping Judgment Day like T2 was. John Connor couldn't exist if Judgment Day never happed.
 
I don't recall how it came to that conclusion in T3, but it doesn't seem like it could be self-defense; did it actually come from the TX?

Remember when the TX was in the car she stole, and she accessed the internet? She basically uploaded the Skynet programming from the future. Skynet was the virus. Once General Brewster activated the Skynet computer the virus took over, and began carrying out the programing that made it so infamous in the future, the destruction of organized human society. I'm uncertain how much of an affect (if any) the TX's ability to control machines had over this.
 
I've seen T3 several times, and as I noticed the TX going to the internet, I guess I don't recall that she uploaded something. Interesting, I'll have to look closer next time. That does, however, create a problem in my mind. There could never have been a Skynet 'virus' to load and create this set of circumstances if it was sent back from it's future self, to create itself. Does that make sense? It sounds to me like the old, which came first, the chicken or the egg? (the chicken did) At least we have a logical basis for that query, but one can not be the father and the son also, literally with the same woman. What do you think?
 
In T3, the terminatrix accessed the internet to discover the locations of John Connor's future generals. The very next scene (I believe) cuts to Kate Brewster in the store with her Fiance, and the checkout machine isn't working. Her father, the General, calls her and mentions something about a problem virus that causes him to cancel his plans to meet Scott.

So the TX's uploading of the virus was basically subtext, as the story never attempted to mention where the virus came from. I don't believe it was coincidence that the TX shows up at the same time as the Skynet virus from the future. It could only come from one place, and since it was in cyberspace, and the movie actually made a thing out of her accessing the internet the way she did, and considering the very next scene, I'm pretty sure she uploaded the virus when she was in the car.

Of course, I believe Terminator has a way out of this "chicken and egg" thing, though the stories never specified it.

Consider T2 and Miles Dyson. His whole work was based off of the first terminator that was destroyed in T1, and his own modern understanding of science. His work was going to father Skynet if nothing was done about it. It would seem that this part of the story suffers from chicken/egg syndrome as well.

Of course we know what happened regarding Miles Dyson's research, but there were likely other effects of his research that couldn't be destroyed by blowing up a building.

Now consider that Skynet is a computer defense system. Nothing too fancy in that statement. But Skynet is the same type of thing that really exists today, only more advanced. So the point is that eventually the government would conceive something along the lines of Skynet's intelligence anyway, be it in 2005 or 2020. So lets say no terminator traveled through time and was destroyed. The government may have conceived Skynet 20 years later, without aid from the future.

So Skynet would eventually exist, and try to take over. Eventually it would send a terminator back in time. When that terminator was destroyed many technological advancements would come out of researching it. All of a sudden the technology to build Skynet is Conceived years, maybe decades earlier.

now the TX hits the scene, uploads the virus, and it seems that man is no longer AS responsible for his own downfall, since the machines from the future are intervening. But, let's not forget that Terminator is partially a story about what our curiosity, studies into science, and our inevitable advancement could cause to happen.

My theory here may have it's cracks, but I don't think it's anything that good writing and a lot of attention couldn't mend.
 
Wow, C of K, thank you. I did not think of the 'paradox' with Dyson's research in T2, but that is such a logical explanation for making it all work, I'm impressed. You could very well make anything work in life with that kind of reasoning power you have there. I'll bet any book you wrote would be good and well thought out, too, and I would enjoy it very much. You are a writer, aren't you? Thanks again!

Oh, just an after thought here about not being AS responsible. In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?
 
Thanks, Huttman, and you're welcome! Considering that Terminator is a series of three movies (thus far) concerned with time travel, it could have been full of plot holes. Thankfully there are relatively few of those that can't be readily answered at this time.

The one issue I have with the movies (and this springs from the first one, oddly enough) is that after judgment day, Reese claims that the machines kept survivors around to "work" loading bodies.

I have to wonder, what would machines need humans to do work for? especially when the machines could build more efficient means of doing the work. Then there's the probability that those machines would likely not even consider human bodies worth the attention. (although that's just speculation. Maybe they would consider it untidy.)

I'll bet any book you wrote would be good and well thought out, too, and I would enjoy it very much. You are a writer, aren't you?

Thanks! and I hope so, but don't overrate me yet. Sometimes I wonder if the book will ever get done. I'm learning all the time, and changing things constantly. The story grows, yet it often seems I'm getting nowhere fast.

Oh, just an after thought here about not being AS responsible. In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?
Heh. No doubt. In the world of Terminator, we can only blame ourselves for the fate of the world. Of course, this is not always the case with everything that befalls people, but it shows the power our actions have, and could have. No one can blame the machines for carrying out the programing power we gave them.
 
Much as I liked T2 for its sfx, robust characters and rip-roaring story I regard T1 as the best, given that it was made on a miniscule budget with a relatively unknown actor headlining.

T1 was a marvellously original film: T2 improved on that but only because the producers knew that the demand was there to do such a sequel and thus pulled out all the stops in terms of budget. Much in the same way that I prefer Alien over Aliens. Alien was the original concept that worked in a tight budget: Aliens, was the finished product.
 
T1 was good.

But T2 is a modern classic. One of the most perfect action movies i have seen. Not only for the action, some scenes was done perfectly with the music,the lines and everything.

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.

It also has one of the best villains i have seen. Robert Patric perfect for the role.

T2 i would rate as 10/10 for an action and T1 7/10 and T3 3/10
 

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