We ask Terminator screenwriter Michael Ferris, is Skynet the good guy?

Hello, and welcome to The Popcorn Isn't Real. I'm Leif Ehrich, and I'm here with my co-host, Torvald. This is the podcast where we talk about fan theories, and we take deep dives into alternate interpretations of films. This time, we are continuing our epic breakdown of the Terminator series, and we are going to be talking about the last three movies, no, last four movies in the franchise. Terminator 3, Salvation, Genesis, and Dark Fate, and we're going to be talking to the writer, Michael Ferris, the man who wrote Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation. So you will be hearing portions of that interview throughout the course of this episode. We are pleased to welcome to our podcast, Michael Ferris. Hi. When we have someone on our podcast, I usually like to ask them, how did your career get started as a screenwriter? And how did you end up kind of coming to write things like The Net and Terminator Salvation?

My career did not start on my own. I worked with John Brancato for many, many years. We have a working relationship that lasted longer than most Hollywood marriages. He and I started off working for Roger Corman, actually, and did a number of low-budget movies for him, horror movies, The Unborn and Watchers 2. Corman doesn't change anything you write because he can't afford to. He's not going to pay for another draft. He's not going to hire another writer. Everything they say about him is true. gives me he has given so many people a break you know so you ended up writing terminator 3 and terminator salvation were you like a fan of the terminator series before that happened and if so was that like really cool everybody certainly of our you know generation was everyone yeah the first one just blew me away for installments ingenuity and managing to do all that data on a low budget too and obviously work with a less low budget but you know and it's easy for people to forget now

that we literally never seen anything like that before those those morphing effects the liquid metal guy and stuff was just brand new it was astonishing when john mostow came to us and said that they tapped him to direct the third one and do we want to write it we're like yeah obviously i mean it wasn't it wasn't like we had to scratch our heads and go this is a getting into the fan theory so skynet are actually the good guys their goal is and has always been to preserve humanity and that might mean destroying some of the more warlike humans but their goal is to preserve the most humans possible and make them live long happy lives we specifically wanted to talk to you about it because of course your original script for this kind of contains a lot of stuff of the skynet kind of being sort of the good guys skynet basically crunched the numbers and said humanity probably doesn't have 40 years left

at the rate that they're destroying the planet. So better to cull the species now. There's a TX in this that they also call the Terminatrix. I mean, I guess because it's female. Because she's a woman. I know, it's a little bit... What? A female Terminator? Not the best thing, but... It's so cringy, dude. Like, why would they call her that? John Connor is a strung out junkie in this movie. He breaks into a veterinary clinic just to steal their meds and get drugs. Like, he has no reason for it. He actually is just a junkie. No, he's a junkie. And his future wife, Kate Brewster, owns this place. Like, it turns out she knew him. They were childhood friends. And she asks him, like, why did he just, like, disappear in 1991, even though she knows his parents were murdered? Yeah, and also, like, probably would have seen the news report about those two who wrecked the mall chasing John Connor. Right.

In this one, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a T850. He's slightly upgraded. That never matters. I don't know why, but he's a T850. It was just to get people to buy the new model. Whoa, yes. It's like the iPhone. Incremental upgrades that don't do anything. So when he first meets John Connor in this movie, he walks up to John and says, John Connor, it is time. And John says, you're going to kill me? And then the T-850 walks forward menacingly and then stares at him for like a solid like two seconds of silence and says, no, you must live. You had to think about it. Why is this Terminator saying, John Connor, it is time? It's time for what? Time for him not to die? Because he spent a lot of time not dying. Like, what do you mean, T-850? What is it time for? Time for dinner? This one was programmed by Kate Brewster in the future, not John Connor. And she does not have the same easy money skills to just plug into a robot and change its programming.

So, like, he's just kind of confused because he was programmed by an amateur. I mean, there's a few weird things that I wanted to say about this movie. First of all, I do appreciate its attempts at humor, whether they succeed or not. Dude, there was one attempt at humor that succeeded, and they cut it. And they cut it, yeah. It was Sergeant Candy. We like the Sergeant Candy gag having Arnold playing a human being who clearly becomes the model for the T-800. And I think that's where we articulated some of the stuff about Skynet. We did actually want to ask about the Sergeant Candy thing because that's such a cool scene that they deleted. They shot and deleted from Terminator 3. It's like my favorite scene in the whole movie. That was written in that Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing a guy with a silly country accent. And then, like, there's this skinny scientist who has Arnold's voice.

It's so good. My recollection is, pretty much as we wrote it, Mazda shot it, obviously, and then he said the problem was in every screening, it got too many laughs. And it was, like, completely taking people out of the movie. You know, it's like, and timing-wise, it occurs at some point, you know, very shortly before the pushing the button that triggers the apocalypse. So it's like, you know, the picture is not Dr. Strangelog, you know, you're not, you're not really trying to get, you're not trying to make a lot of laughs out of the situation. To tell the truth, what I like about T3 is that it does have more of a sense of humor. I always loved Arnold's line about they're joking around and he says, your levity is good. It relieves tension in the fear of death. And it immediately like just drops a bomb on the whole, you know. I did like the joke of him showing up at a male stripper show because, like, those are the only people whose clothes would fit.

Whose clothes would even fit Arnold Schwarzenegger? I don't know, male strippers. Big buff strippers, right. I also thought it was fun because who takes clothes off for you? Like, we can't have him kill someone. Someone's going to have to take off your clothes. Strippers take clothes off. We'll use a stripper. So I thought that was a fun little reversal that was humorous. Well, that played well. I mean, most I wasn't afraid to go for, you know, like a fair amount of humor. And then he puts on this stripper's like red sunglasses and then takes them off. And I wondered, it probably was just because it made his vision too red. Yeah, right. Yeah. He already sees in red, red on red. Like it would make him blind. In your draft of Terminator Salvation, they move around and operate mostly during the day, which is kind of cool because, of course, the Terminators have infrared vision. And so the humans would just be at a disadvantage at night.

And they even talk about how they operate during the day. Whereas it's just kind of funny how in the original Terminator movie, Kyle Reese says, we operate at night. We only come out at night, which doesn't make any sense. And I was wondering, was that like a deliberate kind of jab at the original, just like pointing out a fun, funny plot hole? I don't think so. But there's always like, I mean, the biggest wrestling issue in these Terminator movies has honestly been just the date. And fans will, you know, write and say like, John Connor would clearly only be 14 years old at the time of, you know, and I'm like, yeah, but what are you going to do? You know, I was kind of shocked watching this the other night and I was getting sent in 2018 and I'm like, oh my God, did we really think that was the far-flung future? Right. I think I was proudest of that moment when Arnold was carrying a coffin full of weapons.

Yeah, that's the shot they used in all the trailers. Yeah, I was glad they made an action figure out of that. I know, it's such a good action figure. I've always wanted to buy that one, him carrying the coffin. I think it's interesting that the T-850, the Terminator in this movie that they sent back to protect John Connor, is the Terminator in the future who assassinated John Connor. Yeah, that's kind of cool. They would have that one. We really enjoyed that as well. I mean, to me, one of the gags I really like about Terminator 3 is just the fact that I think, as he says in the script, I've got to teach you everything all over again. You know, I mean, it's like he's he's not he's not the same guy. The last one burned up in molten metal or whatever. And so it would have been a version of the franchise in which you would actually see some of that stuff play out. But that would probably be the version where Schwarzenegger was not elected governor of California.

Just before the T-850 dies to kind of, like, kill the T-X, John says, thank you. And then the T-850 says, we'll meet again. So this is a threat, right? Because when they meet again, he murders John, right? Yeah, that's true. This is a threat. He's literally saying, I'm coming for you. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a none-too-subtly-veiled threat, I think. that's great i love that so of all the terminator sequels to come after terminator 2 i think salvation is amazing so this movie just a quick synopsis of it a guy named marcus wakes up in the year 2018 and we see that at the very beginning he was on death row and then all of a sudden after signing donated his body after donating his body to cyberdyne i'm going to talk a lot about the screenplay because the screenplay has some major differences from the movie reading the screenplay he was supposed to have a very different personality and unfortunately they got

sam worthington to play him and look sam worthington is fine i really liked him in manhunt unabomber but he's kind of boring and generic as far as action and he just doesn't i think stand out much right like in the script he was supposed to be really rough around the edges kind of weird guy marcus he's trying to survive in this post-apocalyptic world that he wakes up in which is a cool reversal to have someone from the past waking up in the future yeah definitely of course in terminator it's usually the other way around and i thought that was nice it was interesting to have it be a guy who is an infiltration unit he's a terminator but he doesn't know it right Like, I thought that was a pretty cool twist. You could do a lot with that, like having a guy who doesn't know he's actually infiltrating them and he's actually going to kill them all. But he thinks he's just a regular guy. Yeah, I know.

I think this thing has some genuinely clever moments. It's trying to do its own thing. Terminator Salvation, they actually came to us while T3 was still in production to ask if we wanted to write another one. And we wrote a draft and then didn't hear anything about it for like years and kind have figured you know that was just a pipe dream you know and then schwarzeneggers becomes governor of california somewhat unexpectedly although in in retrospect that seems like one of the less strange political yeah and we were told the sky was the limit with the with the fourth one so which i think we always had called terminator colon salvation and then the colon got dropped at some point they were calling it the future begins which i thought was kind of an idiotic title so you gave you gave me an excuse to watch it again i kind of liked it more this time around and the fact that it really is like a war movie like like kind of fashion sort of war movie in a

way that to the best of my knowledge none of the others are as far as my theory goes the year is 2018 in this movie in the opening text it talks about john connor and says some view him as a false prophet meaning that some view him as a correct prophet and important thing about this movie is that there are a bunch of actual like military leaders who are still kind of in charge against the war against the machines john is not in charge he he's got a little bit of clout and there are people who really believe in him but most of the military leaders don't seem to like him and don't like the fact that he's got such a cult following all those guys get killed at the and john takes control of everything okay and this movie is like the story of him resting you know command of the uh of the entire resistance from he's usurping power yep these commanders say that everything will be over in four days why because a kill list was intercepted from skynet

that says everyone in the command room will be dead in four days including connor number one on the list connor's number two number one is kyle reese a civilian so yeah at one point kyle reese gets kidnapped and john connor says to the higher-ups who do not want to do anything to rescue him because it it doesn't make any sense it's it's an unnecessary risk he says kyle reese is the key the past the future everything if we stay the course we are dead he means i am dead yeah he fully believes he is this christ-like figure and if he dies then oh boy the world is is lost i mean his mom's been telling him that since he was born like i said it's a cruel feedback loop that these conners keep going through we always thought connor seemed more interesting as like a fringe character uh grasping something yeah you know rather than the guy who's who's literally in charge we're just more attracted to figures like that i guess i mean clearly in the

in the in the final version of the film he's kind of a thorn in the side of the of the powers that be the whole the whole fake signal plot we didn't write that i don't think right yeah it's to it gave them an off switch that like they really should have been more suspicious of they think they can just play this sound and it will shut down any terminators purposefully gave that to them so that they would use it and it would lead them back to the generals that skynet wants to kill and i think that john connor smart easy money hacker that he is knew that and he went along with that's what i was gonna say i think john connor fully knew that this is a trap and he wants the command dead so that he can take over he does legitimately want to save kyle reese as well because that's his dad but like yeah he went in there he uses the code the the the fake kill button that they gave him so that it will lead them back so that they can kill the generals

basically um the the off switch contrivance that that sky net set up for them basically it's just if you transmit a signal like a radio wave a specific signal it allows you if you're transmitting on this specific wavelength to control any skynet machine that's what skynet leads them to believe so of course when they control the machines which is stupid tell them to turn off yeah it's completely stupid it's dumb but yeah when they get control of these machines they tell them to turn off. Now, once they've tested it and found out that it works, the submarine begins broadcasting this signal to turn off all the Skynet machines. But turns out they don't have to turn off. And now that it's broadcasting, they know where it is. They could have broadcasted it from anywhere else, but they decided to broadcast it from the submarine. Marcus, he meets up with young Kyle Reese and a young girl named Star. They're trying to find John Connor, but those two get kidnapped

by a giant Terminator called a Harvester. And then Marcus ends up teaming up with someone named Blair. And then eventually John Connor, they find out he's a Terminator. He escapes, but he still kind of is working with John Connor and they go to Skynet headquarters and they save Kyle Reese and Star and blow up that particular manufacturing facility. The end. And Marcus dies at the end because he has to donate his heart to save John Connor. There's a scene at a gas station where the harvester is trying to pick them up. And there's just this really cool tracking shot where Kyle yells at Marcus, he picks up Star, a random person gets hit by a car, then that random person gets away in an RV. The camera spins around to see that the giant Terminator is right behind them. It's just really cool the way they do that shot. Yeah. What to us was amazing when we saw McGee's cut was was like how much stuff we wrote that survived that we thought was unfilmable there's a whole

20 minute sequence in the middle when the gas station blows up first time i saw that like the hair stood up on my arm jails i was like i i still think this is one of the best action scenes hands down yeah you know we're writing the scene where marcus is like holding an axe on the roof for this floating transport while he's wrestling a robot and we like people just said no one's gonna make this like this is like we're just like writing down a fever dream you know there's no way we're going to shoot this you know yeah they were like well what the hell you know i mean they're probably not going to make this movie so we'll just just do it we can get away with and you know so much to my shot there it was so a big part of this movie is taken up showing people getting rounded up and put in cages. That giant Terminator, the Harvester, it grabs a bunch of them. Yes, this is a huge thing. It's interesting to note that it grabs only the non-violent ones. It kills the violent,

resisting ones, but it grabs that sweet, kind old lady. Grabs the kids and the old lady. I think that kind of goes along with your theory. What do you think it's doing with them? Why does it want people in this movie it is set up almost as a mystery like you're supposed to wonder why it is collecting all these people yeah very much so the very first scene of the movie is john connor finding a cage full of people and they don't look sad they look happy like they're smiling but maybe they're just smiling because they're getting rescued i don't know yeah that could be but they don't ever tell you why the machines are rounding up people like that is never revealed even though it's a mystery in the movie. But it was revealed in the screenplay. Oh. And I want to say that even though that part of the screenplay wasn't ever made, nothing in this movie or any other movie contradicts that this might actually be Skynet's true purpose. And it got me interested. Yeah. So

in the screenplay, they take the humans and put a barcode on them and they use those barcodes to scan each person and then they analyze them based on the chemicals in their brain and stuff like that and kind of maybe how violent they are and some of them are scheduled for termination and other ones are scheduled to be taken to a paradise oh nice so jackpot yeah marcus manages to get all the way to skynet in the script into the skynet facility and he finds a seaside little town that's like suburbs and there are people there who are just driving around living their daily lives and they're very peaceful living happy lives like basically before the war like it is not post apocalyptic in any way they have the older more obsolete terminators like the t-400s the t-600s doing chores for them so they're like cleaning and gardening and stuff like that and just taking care of the people really taking care of them that's nice skeletal metal guys that wasn't a

dream yeah okay yeah it turns out that these people who were chosen to live in this paradise are actually just human brains that were harvested and then put in bodies that look like theirs skynet has been trying to create like immortal humans yes immortal humans humans who live forever great because they now have a perfected life support system for their brain and marcus was the prototype for that. Well, dude, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's just kind of cool. Yeah. In the script, he does not also have a human heart. He only has a human brain. And also, weirdly enough, I don't necessarily know why this is, but in the script, he has no blood. And that is important. And that's something that did end up in the actual film. Yeah, he doesn't bleed. Even though he has a heart, in the film, he does not have blood. I don't know why, but... So why does he have a heart? Yeah. In the screenplay, it was important because he doesn't actually have a heart and they had created a perfected life support system that no longer needs blood. But he does like in this town, he pulls up the grass and it's like AstroTurf, like it's fake grass. And underneath the AstroTurf is just piles of bones.

Oh no, bones. This guy always leaves bones everywhere. They just paved over the human bones with like a nice town. i like this a lot this is this is a very interesting movie as i recall that the humans are kind of living in like human zoos i mean we we constructed like the idea of like a suburban landscape that would feel a little like i don't know you know one of the ones in the david lynch movie twin feet but you know if you peel up the the astroturf there's human bones you know right and that seemed more interesting and we had a whole i recollect a whole set piece of destruction and whatnot in that environment the imagery they finally went with which is obviously much more kind of holocausty um yeah the factory full of human slaves and experiment victims and stuff you know i mean it's effective in its own way but it's it's pretty weak too and i kind of i thought ours was sort of like more fun and the idea that skynet is working for the greater good

But I mean, obviously, it's not a novel concept in evil AI. When Marcus gets to this resort, he meets several of these people who are essentially living Terminators with human brains. And these people are talking about how like, yeah, we still do things like, you know, we eat and we laugh and cry, have sex, etc. All the fun things that we don't really need to do anymore. Like they don't need to eat. But like we're slowly weaning ourselves off of these things as we try to learn to live like a more perfected life. And is Skynet telling them to do that or they just decided of their own accord? I kind of think Skynet is telling like they're all sort of linked by a thing. This actually makes more sense in the script than it did in the movie. They're linked by a thing on the back of their head that kind of controls them. I was going to ask you that. Like he tears something off his head at one point in the movie and I was like, what is that?

Yeah, in the movie it makes no sense. They did not set that up. In the screenplay it actually does make sense. So all the other ones have this thing at the back that links them all together. It doesn't necessarily control them, but it makes it so that they're all essentially of one mind. Like they all agree with each other. They know what their glorious purpose is kind of thing. We're usually pretty good about trying to tie all the loose ends together, but our experience has always been that like directors will then come along and just cut those tops apart for the sake of, you know, speed and efficiency. Yeah. But in the screenplay, he actually does meet that scientist who he kissed at the beginning, who is played by Helena Bonham Carter in the movie. And she has brought herself back to life using this method that she perfected using his body. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what she wanted.

That's what she wanted, yep. And one other thing is that he meets some people in this town who are like, yeah, I was selected and it's wonderful. And they stop and think for a minute, like, but my wife and kids weren't. And they look real sad. And then the thing on the back of their neck pulses and then all of a sudden they look real happy. And they're like, oh yeah, whenever we feel sad, This thing just activates endorphins that make us feel happy, which is great because Skynet's supposed to keep us happy. Yeah, that makes sense. Like this computer has found a way to keep humans alive and happy forever. So like whether or not you agree with it is that its goals are good. I mean, it's also a great way to control them because whenever they do what it wants, it makes them happy. And if they don't, it doesn't make them happy. That's true. So it can keep making more humans happy. And actually, time travel did figure into our original draft.

We wanted to show the whole time chamber, which I think they have done now, but that all got cut out. Yeah. At this facility, Kyle and Star are both sorted, and Kyle has chosen to be the one who lives and Star isn't, and she's terminated. And that's when, in the screenplay, Marcus realizes he has to break the thing on his neck, which he does. And then he uses their, they have a time machine. He uses their time machine, which isn't perfect. It can only send you back in time, like two minutes to go back in time. Two minutes to save Star. No, that's fun. I like it. I mean, I like all this use of like imperfected Skynet technology, right? Like, I think that's fun. And then in the screenplay, he does end up, of course, fighting Skynet after this part, after he rescues Kyle and Star and they do fight the T-800. John Connor is wounded in this fight. And they decide since he's the leader and he's dying, they need to take his skin and graft it on to Marcus.

And then Marcus is the new leader at the end. And everyone just believes he is John Connor. Whoa, that's an interesting ending. Like, that's how you shake things up in the Terminator franchise. Turn someone else into John Connor. Being able to end the world at the end of T3 gave T3 a reason to exist. We really thought it was important to kill John Connor at the end of the intercalvation. That was kind of our starting point. Like, OK, how are we going to? And I mean, the whole reason the Marcus Wright character exists is to replace John Connor. I mean, like positing this half man, half machine who's kind of a product of Skynet or Skynet technology, who ultimately becomes the savior of mankind because he's the only one who can beat the machines because he's half machine. And it made perfect sense to us. And I think it made perfect. I mean, there was a lot in our last draft that wasn't tracking yet.

I mean, I regret not being given a chance to take a couple more cracks at it. But I thought that'd be Connor is mortally injured and they turned to Marcus, you know, not for a field hospital heart transplant, which just didn't make any sense to me. But but to become John Connor, because who the hell knows what John Connor looks like anyway? He's most of them on the radio. I wish they had kept that ending. My understanding is that it leaked on the internet and so McG felt like he didn't want to shoot it anymore. And this doesn't happen in the script, but there's a YouTube video that you can watch of McG actually talking about the thing that they were going to do in the end of the film, which is instead of Marcus giving up his heart to save John Connor. They had a way darker ending where it was the one where Marcus has to go under and get skin grafted onto him because John Connor is dead.

He wakes up as John Connor and then takes out a gun and kills everyone, including like Kate Brewster and Kyler. Because he was working for Skynet from the beginning. He was the perfect infiltration unit. Wow. I think that that would have been a really cool ending. I mean, not necessarily like killing off John Connor. Everyone would have remembered it. They would have hated it, but would have remembered it. And I especially like it because they have him chained up and they're like, yeah, we're going to keep him all chained up here and he's a Terminator and we don't trust him. And then that girl who's in love with him, she's all like, no, I'm going to save him and let him go. I'm going to let him go because I know he's good. He's literally a Terminator. He's actually a Terminator and he's an infiltration unit. She's just going to let a Terminator go because she thinks it's a nice guy, right?

Like, he's doing his job so well. This is exactly what Skynet wanted out of its infiltration units. Like, even though she knows he's a Terminator, she's still willing to go with her heart and, you know, let him go. I just thought that was great. I thought it would have been extra, like, salt in the wound if it had turned out that he actually was evil in the end. Yeah. We did not write that ending of that big change. I mean, I found out about it from Wikipedia. the idea of uh him turning on everyone and killing him at the end it's yeah it is kind of cool it's pretty no it's very very dark i think he didn't lead it any further than him adopting john connor's identity and then going on to you know lead the fight against the machines but no i'd be curious as to how close he came to actually shooting that i mean the the script sounds a lot more daring than the movie actually turned out to be yeah the movie had to be rewritten

I think mostly for Christian Bale. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing I was going to say. It sounds like it doesn't have much of John Connor in it at all. He's not in it very much. Nope. And I think that Christian Bale was like, Hey, I'm the leading man here. I don't want to play whoever this Marcus is. I want to be John Connor and I also want to be the main character. So put me in it more. Yeah. That sounds like something that he might demand. It would have made for a very interesting and I think remarkable movie whereas I think what Terminator Salvation ended up being was kind of a I guess more forgettable movie but not bad no not bad although many people seem to believe it's bad like even Mukji kind of is like wow I thought it was good but yeah maybe it's bad everyone hated it it's not bad it's good I mean as far as Terminator sequels go it's the And, like, Arnold Schwarzenegger has said, it sucks.

Like, he hates it, but also he's not in it. Of course, he wasn't in it. I mean, come on. He's not going to say I love it. The best part of this movie, the part that we remember is just being so amazing, is when John Connor gets into the Terminator construction facility in the film. And this, like, door just, like, breaks open. And this guy steps out. And it's naked Arnold Schwarzenegger, like CG recreated, basically. And he's so mad. He's more pissed than you've ever seen him. He is so angry. Like, this is the most intimidating a Terminator has ever been in any of the Terminator movies. It's insane when he comes out. Like, he's just like the Hulk. And like, Christian Bale, not a small guy, is just like, oh, no, I'm screwed. He's a ragdoll. But this final fight is very good and very Terminator-y. Like, they have to kill this T-800 so many times to the point where you're kind of thinking like, dude, is this one even more resilient than like the original?

They pour molten metal on it, which killed the one in Terminator 2. That doesn't stop it. They needed to dunk it in molten metal. You can't just pour it on. You got a full immersion. So they actually just put Arnold's face on another bodybuilder. Yes. He's pretty big. He is pretty big. But also the Arnold face that they put on this guy, they generated from an actual cast of Arnold's face that was taken during Terminator 1. Wow. They did like a really detailed full cast of not only his face, but also the top of his chest to his shoulders. Yeah. So that is his chest. That's how wide it was because they just slapped it on there, right? Like they didn't change the proportion. He was just that big. I'm glad Arnold was willing to sell his likeness or whatever.

That's pretty much most of my proofs for Skynet is the good guy, is that even though that alternate ending in the screenplay was not in Terminator Salvation, nothing contradicts it. And since they never explained why they were rounding up those humans, I still believe it to be true. I think that they were rounding up humans. There's no reason for it. Yeah, the less violent humans to give them a good life. No, it's nice you could feel good about Skynet. That's it for Salvation. So great to meet you. And seriously, I really, really enjoy your movies a lot. And thanks for being willing to come on and talk about these kind of silly theories we have. My pleasure. It was fun. Two more movies. Terminator Genisys, a 2015 film directed by Alan Taylor, written by Laeta Calogridis and Patrick Lussier. Okay, what do you want to say about this movie? All right, that's it. Next movie. What do you think about Genesis?

I mean, I don't want to be too hard on it because I know that people actually worked on it and cared about it, maybe. And, like, you know, did their best, maybe. I think that it doesn't do anything to bring the franchise into a good direction. I think it had a lot of potential. Like, it starts out pretty okay, and they could have done a lot with it. I think there's a cool idea of Kyle Reese coming back to Terminator 1, but everything's different. Now there's two T-800s. One is like old and is a good guy and the other is the bad guy, right? We've got a different liquid Terminator and he's in 1984. What's he doing here, right? Everyone seems to know what's going on but Reese. Like this is the start of what could have been a good movie. Like kind of a mystery from Kyle Reese's perspective. Except it couldn't have been because the first person we meet is freaking Kyle Reese and he looks and acts nothing or sounds.

So I think a lot of people were miscast. Like how did they pick that guy? I think it's a bad sign that this movie is all about Kyle Reese and I had completely forgotten that he was in it. Yeah, yeah. The reenactment of the scene from the first movie with the punks and Terminator getting their clothes. The punks in the original movie were so much better actors than in this movie. Like, what happened? I know. How hard can it be to say, like... Laundry day, no clean clothes. Well, you know, they got game over, man, game over. i know he's a great actor but it's just for such a small part can't you get someone who can act like every actor in this movie is bad i don't know i didn't want to go off on it yeah except jk simmons yeah it's true jk simmons puts it through a good performance they did put in like some fun little things like when the terminator just ages naturally as they go several years into the future and he

talks about how he had to get like a job as a construction worker until he was laid off so it's kind of a fun idea for a cyberdyne i thought that was really cool that a terminator went to work for cyberdyne as a construction worker that was that was good i give that credit once they get to the future why is john connor there why would john connor be in 2017 they never explained this like i guess the skynet sent him back to make sure it gets built sent him back with what a time machine that we know time machines kill him yeah also yes like how did it send him back because at the end he's killed by a time machine just by trying to use it what is genesis why are they pre-ordering it what does it do can you answer this from watching does everything no it does nothing it's an operating system how many people pre-order an operating system can you tell me one time in your life when you pre-ordered an operating system well i mean if i was a random extra in a movie

all right okay no exactly like this is the point i'm trying to make everything in this movie is meaningless so like you were saying the line deliveries are awful and especially awful in the scenes where they're redoing scenes from the first movie yeah when he asks the cop what's the date the year except he does it in his voice so he's like oh what's the date the year in the original the cop says it in just like this ridiculously monotone voice he's like whatever it is march 23rd you know 1984 like he's not scared at all that this crazy bum is holding a to his face and then in genesis the cop says it in an equally monotone voice and i was like that's the one they got right the one delivery that was actually correct but then it turns out he's delivering it monotone because that was the liquid terminator yeah no i actually caught that too and i was like hey monotone delivery and i was like oh he's a terminator so the guy they got to play

john connor he looks like quentin tarantino yeah he does but he doesn't look like john connor no he looks like quentin tarantino at the end i finally realized i was like oh it's because they knew that this kyle reese is his father so he would be ugly no it's just because he's the bad guy so they like wanted to cast him as someone who's not i don't know i feel like i'm being mean to the actor this the actor's fine right like he's not right i'm glad that quentin tarantino did this film as an actor well okay speaking of john i have a question for you what does john connor want them to do he keeps telling them to join him and do what i think he just means stop fighting me maybe and die like what he does he want them to become terminators because i don't think sky net has that tech yet no it can't make So this will get into the couple of evidences that I can pull from this movie. So I think this movie does have the clever reversal of Skynet being a child, like Genesis.

It projects itself as like a child hologram. And that doesn't necessarily make sense. But I think there's a fun reversal in that they are trying to kill it, like the Terminators have been doing to John the whole time. And I think that this is a fun iteration of Skynet, of being like, oh, hey, wait a minute. What if I was the kid, since that's always worked for them? Wow. If I was the kid, and also having John always worked for them, so what if I had John? And so it takes over John, it turns him into a Terminator. It's just like, hey, what are the winning pieces in this game? Give them to me. Right, I think it's just very machine thinking. So let's go over some of the things that Skynet says as like a hologram boy at the end. It says, all you people know how to do is kill what you don't understand. And I think this is pretty good evidence that Skynet is trying to help them and they just don't understand.

So they're always trying to kill it. And it's also always defeated by their hyperviolence, you know? Yeah. Bad people killing things. It says, I didn't attack John. I saved him. Primates evolve over millions of years. I evolve in seconds. So like, I think that it kind of in a different way than what we've seen before, but it did to John, what we saw in the alternate version of salvation, like it essentially turned him into a human who is now immortal. It saved him. It put his mind into a Terminator body. Which I think is kind of like confirmation from the films itself that like that alternate version that didn't get filmed, but was never contradicted of Terminator Salvation is true. It's kind of trying to perfect humans. And the interesting thing about this is they never try to pretend that this isn't John Connor or that his mind was altered in any way. This is John Connor. Like it literally just put his mind into a Terminator and he realized this is dope.

like he's like i love being invincible but no and so as to your question of like what does it want them to do i think it does want them to join them like i want you to become you know like john you'll be elevated humans who live forever that'd be great if that technology existed in 2017 which it clearly doesn't yeah i do appreciate that unlike terminator 3 and unlike dark fate this movie did not just try to retell terminator 2 yeah it is trying to be its own thing yes it's doing different stuff so i'll give it credit for that lucky for us terminator fans there there came a movie in the year 2019 to save us from this dirge of awful terminator movies james cameron hit the helm again finally no with direct linda hamilton returning and donald schwarzenegger returning and even edward furlong returning right like this was the movie to end all terminator movies it was gonna bring it back like i was stoked for edward furlong what we had in the

year 2019 was the phenomenon known as terminator dark fate yes directed by tim miller the director of deadpool wow written by david s goyer and justin rhodes and oscar nominated screenwriter Billy Ray who I've met nice guy dude this sounds great how could this go wrong like I'm I'm excited yeah I mean well they've brought in Billy Ray for like a production rewrite because I think they knew it sucked but the only way that this could fail is if audiences just don't like Terminator anymore I guess yeah it's always the viewer's fault it couldn't fail on any of its own merits. Many viewers took issue with this movie because it opens with the death of John Connor. Young John Connor. We've seen John Connor die many times, but not little kid John Connor. Well, and especially after they're like, hey, we're bringing young John Connor back. Just wait till you see him. And then they're like, psych, now he's dead, suckers. Like, why would

you do that? James Cameron had always voiced his dislike of how the characters of Hicks and Newt in his movie Aliens, which was beloved, were unceremoniously killed at the very beginning of Alien 3. So he did it to his own characters? Right. Why did they do the exact thing that Alien 3 did? Like people hated that you killed Newt. She was the reason that Ellen did everything in the beloved movie Aliens. You don't kill Newt. And of course, everyone loved Hicks because it's Michael Biehn. He's Hicks. Yeah. Dude, Michael Biehn. It's Kyle Reese. I guess it should be noted that James Cameron kind of sort of detached himself from the project, right? He did, but according to everything I have read, he was signed on and everyone thought it was a good idea to kill John Connor at the beginning. But this is just what happens. You get in a room, you're completely cut off from society, you keep talking

and talking and you convince yourself yeah this would be good because it's a cool reversal and wow it's always been so much about the male savior we need to introduce the female savior kind of thing and like not that that's necessarily a bad idea but you don't have to kill john yeah i mean and if you're gonna kill john kill him as an adult don't kill him as edward furlong everyone loves that kid i mean most importantly if you're gonna kill john make it a death worth dying if i know that the new wolverine comic is going to come out and this is the wolverine comic where wolverine's going to die i don't want wolverine to die by tripping and falling on the first page oh gee i feel like i should be able to heal from this but i just can't i don't mind they they've killed wolverine off before they'll kill him off again it's not important that he dies what's important is that he gets a good death maybe they could have made it work that they kill off john

connor if they gave him a good death they did not give him a good death they just had some guy walk up with a shotgun and shoot him and then walk away it's like after all the work they did in terminator 2 what they should have done i guess at the end was right after you know the thumbs up as they lower terminator into the molten metal one of the factory workers should just walked up and just like pushed john connor into the metal too because that's basically how this movie starts and then zara connor should have looked at that factory work and be like let's team up yeah We're so pissed. Are we supposed to be happy when she teams up with that Terminator? First two seconds, movie ruined. There is no salvaging it after that point. And even in Alien 3, like Alien 3 is at least salvageable. No one walks up to Newt as young little blonde haired, cute little Newt and shoots her with a shotgun.

It's just that, oh, oops, she died in stasis, which is a sucky way to kill her off. But at least it's like you're not just killing a little cute little kid on screen. He's a cute little digitally de-aged 40-year-old man. I will say, Grace, this future soldier who's been upgraded with cyborg parts, she was kind of interesting and she was kind of a cool actress. And she's like really tall. Like, she's cool. I thought Grace was actually a really great character. Yeah, Grace is cool. And even Danny, like all the characters, like this movie had very good acting, I thought. Like way better than Genesis. Yes. Even though it's so much worse than Genesis, but it actually had compelling characters. It had way better action sequences than Genesis 2. some really cool set pieces like you know the fight on the plane the terminator versus the rev nine underwater we've never seen two terminators fight underwater before that was kind of fun

or them being in the truck as it sank underwater with the terminator outside of it trying to break in also pretty cool accident sequence right yeah and even though like no one could be better than robert patrick i actually thought that this terminator the rev nine the actor i thought did a good job and i think he's kind of a fun interesting character he's like a genuinely nice guy when he's not killing well he has no reason not to be he apologizes for breaking their shed right like why wouldn't he be like i just thought he was pretty interesting we've never seen a terminator be quite that polite and that was a cool little quirk they gave him yeah the fact that they you know said skynet oh what's that skynet doesn't exist we're legion like in resident evil everyone loves when you take the beloved bad guy corporation organization kill it and replace it with something that is exactly the same with a new name that we don't like i love it

like i just we don't like that thing if it's gonna be the same thing then have it be the same thing if you just took out obviously the scene in the beginning where john connor dies yeah and then just literally took out every single exposition sequence where they just talk about the past and rev nine and legion all you have to do is take that out this movie is fine it's well acted in the action sequences are great you know like all they had to do was stop talking like if they just never even acknowledged that john connor exists and just had it be a movie about some other people that would have been way better than what they did right or even they could have just been mysterious like oh yeah john doing great work overseas yeah sure i mean i don't think that would have been great but they could have done it i guess by the end of this movie there were three things that i was kind of interested in one of them was grace because grace is a great

character and she's kind of interesting yeah i also was interested in rev 9 by the end of the movie because like you said he was a different kind of terminator and that he was a little kinder and he was a good actor and then i was sort of interested in terminator uh in the t-800 just because we've never seen a terminator who decides to go and sell drapes right could be interesting to explore this character yeah i think it's kind of silly when they first say it but like i was willing to accept that and it is kind of interesting sure a terminator who has a family that whatever like i could i liked that they even included a scene where it shows that he takes selling drapes as like his mission like he takes to it like a mission for skynet where he's like it is of utmost importance that everything needs to match and the drapes must not be a solid color you need polka dots or at least some stars right like i love the way he talked about it like it was

life-threatening the fact that he needs to sell them the right drapes and what they do at the end of this movie they killed grace they killed the rev 9 and they killed terminator so i'm like what am i supposed to watch for yeah so yeah they started by killing everything i wanted to see and they ended it by killing everything i wanted to see i don't really have any evidence for my theory from this movie except that the rev 9 i mean he's a terminator and also he doesn't want to needlessly kill people. He's polite and he only kills people who he actually needs to kill. Skynet's not evil, except it's Legion now, whatever. So our theories, what do you think? Was Sarah Connor just crazy? Was this all in her head? And she was just making up more and more crazy, delusional movies. Obviously that's what's happening. Yeah, look how bad the latest movies are. Clearly these are the delusions of a disordered mind.

When there is someone who's crazy, who's like, the end is near and it's coming on this date, What do they do? They always move the date back. And throughout this franchise, the date of Judgment Day keeps moving back further and further. And that's clearly just Sarah's mind. Like most of these movies are all in her head. Something else. It's going to be 2017. Wait, no. And as they've gotten worse and worse, she's just dissociated more and more from reality. And finally at the end, she was like, wait, I forgot about, I lost myself somewhere along the way. In my fantasy, I'll come back as a cool badass in Dark Fate. She's like, also, I guess my son died because he's not here. Yeah, he doesn't come and visit me anymore.

What do you think? Is Skynet, are they the good guys? Do they really have the best interests of human at heart as far as they can with, you know, what with being a machine learning? Actually, yes, based on what you've told me about the script of Terminator Salvation and how that combines with Terminator Genisys. Did Skynet do anything to hurt anyone in Terminator Genisys except for the people who are trying to kill it? No. It never did anything to hurt anyone. It just wanted to live. It never terminated a single person. With that side plot in Terminator Salvation, which is literally Skynet turning people into Terminators so that they can live forever and be happy in Utopia, clearly Skynet is trying to protect people. It just goes about it in a very mechanical and uncaring way. It gives me a different perspective on one of my favorite series of all time. All right. Well, that was a lot of fun.

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