#Skynet Hunter-Killer

[mirum-wonder]

HK-INQUISITOR (TERMINATOR FAN-MADE CONCEPT, DAY SCENE PIC 1)

In this scene I tried to recreate not the Cameron`s future war visual style but more of a Salvation visual aesthetics since I find it to be more suitable for the day scenes of the gloomy post-apocalyptic future.

Some turnarounds of this cute boy.

For me as a Terminator fan boy it was always not enough to see the short scenes of the future depicted in the movies, I always wanted to see more. And having that urge I decided to expand the the machines model line with some fan made non-existing Skynet robots.

To celebrate the annual Terminator day (aka Judgment Day that occurred at 29 August 1997 ) I present you my first of the fan-made robot designs that I did to expand the Hunter-Killer model line and join Skynets robot army. Meet HK-Inqusitor, my design of the Skynets non existing middle size hunter killer robot.

Modeled in Blender, textured in Substance Painter and rendered in Blender Cycles. Everything from design to textures, final rendering and final post-production is done by me.

For more of the art stuff I do feel free to check out my Linktree

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"...HUNTERS AND KILLERS" -- ISSUE #1 ON SALE IN MARCH.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 1024x1569 -- Spotlight on a print ad for the then upcoming three-issue mini-series, "The Terminator: Hunters and Killers," published in March 1992 by Dark Horse Comics. Artwork by John Taylor Dismukes.

"At first they looked human. Now they look like you."

-- "....HUNTERS AND KILLERS" tagline

Source: https://viewcomiconline.com/predator-the-bloody-sands-of-time-issue-2.

[walkingatombomb]

Comics I Read Today

July 26

The Terminator #4 (1988 Now Comics)

In the far off year 2031, Skynet decides to radically eliminate the remaining humans by massive deforestation in the Amazon River Basin. They send a Terminator to destroy the rain forest. Soon, the hunter/killer confronts the native denizens who strike back!

The art, writing and coloring are all subpar when compared to mainstream comics but the subject matter is beyond what you’d normally see. That what makes it more appealing than it should be.

My Rating: 7

[mark-matos]

🚀💥Title: Robots are Stealing our Jobs... Literally! They're the Interviewers Now! 🤖🎤💥🚀

🕹️🎩 Hello, Job-Seeker, I am Bot-Recruiter 3000. Prepare to be Assessed!🕹️🎩

Imagine walking into your next job interview, all prepped up to face Tony Stark but instead, you're met with Ultron! 😱 Sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie, doesn't it? But, hold onto your Sonic Screwdrivers because by 2024, 43% of companies plan on letting the robots play the bad cop during hiring interviews. Some brave pioneers have already invited the Matrix into the room! 🚀👽

🤖💼I, for One, Welcome our New Resume-writing Overlords🤖💼

Remember when ChatGPT and other AI chatbots were just our cute little helpers for creating killer cover letters and resumes? They’re like C-3PO but on career steroids. ⚡️⭐️ Now, nearly half of job hunters are employing their own personal Jarvis for crafting their job applications. Survey says - 46% of them! And, here's the kicker: 78% of these tech-savvy go-getters reported higher responses from companies. Looks like the force is strong with AI-crafted applications! 🚀✍️

👔💼The Robots are Coming... for your Jobs!👔💼

According to Stacie Haller, Chief Career Advisor at Resume Builder, our corporate gatekeepers, aka recruiters, are warming up to these AI-spun applications. You'd think they'd feel like Sarah Connor with all the Terminators around, but it seems they're more like Dr. Strange, embracing the weird and wonderful world of AI! The implication? Brace yourselves, because the AI interviewers are coming! By 2024, up to 40% of recruiters will be bots and 15% of all hiring decisions will be entirely AI-based. That's right - Skynet is becoming self-aware! 🤯👾

🎬🎥And... Action! Starring: You and AI🎬🎥

How do these AI interviews work, you ask? Well, think of it like being on a Star Trek holodeck: Text-based questions, video interactions, the works! AI even gets to play Sherlock Holmes, assessing your responses and evaluating a pool of candidates, all trained on a library of qualifications. It's like having HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey" minus the homicidal tendencies... we hope. 🚀👁️

But here's the downside - AI interviews can feel as warm as a conversation with a Dalek. So, job-seekers, buckle up and practice! Pretend you're engaging with a human (or at least a lovable droid like R2-D2) and give it your best shot. May the odds (and the job offers) be ever in your favor! 🏹💼

[jpohlmanwriting]

I write a little political screed called "The Progressive Cafe." I don't normally post its content here because it generally doesn't touch on the artistic stuff that my brain de-facto reserves for Tumblr. Today, however, I talked about some new technological, ahem, developments that relate to one of my favorite film series of all time.

[lahas-personalblog]

Rise of machines

Rise Of The Machines

It’s been over 35 years since The Terminator was released, and rather than a global moratorium on weaponized robots, we’re instead seeing an explosion of research into autonomous tanks, aircraft, humanoid robots, and AI software systems to pull the trigger.

There’s a grim irony in the fact that a cautionary tale about autonomous killing machines has turned into an arms race to see who can develop them first —and it’s even more ironic that the organizations developing these technologies reference the movie when describing their projects: F.E.D.O.R. — with a gun, but “not a Terminator”.

FEDOR

In arecent tweet, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin described the “Robot platform F.E.D.O.R. showing shooting skills with two hands,” and quickly added, “we are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in various fields.”

Ostensibly,F.E.D.O.R.has been developed for rescue missions, and the prototype was even sent to the International Space Station to conduct repairs, but as The Independent has written, “military uses have also been suggested by engineers.”

Atlas

Despite internet confusion from a viral hoax video by “BossTown Dynamics”, the realAtlasrobot developed by Boston Dynamics has never fired a gun — but it can run, do backflips, andparkour. Developed under grants byDARPA, this robot is also designed for disaster response, but that didn’t stop ExtremeTech for describing it as a “Real World Terminator”, saying:

At 6’2″ and 330lbs, Atlas is incredibly imposing…while Atlas is initially conceived as a disaster response robot, such as cleaning up and looking for survivors after a Fukushima-like disaster, it’s easy to imagine Atlas being the basis of a robotic army.

TheMIS

Futurism.com described this robotic tank as being “straight out of the Terminator”, and cited aC4ISRNET article indicating that it was equipped with a 12.7mm machine gun & 40mm automatic grenade launcher in a recent demonstration.

Likened to theT-1 robot tankin Terminator 3, theMilrem TheMISis one of many robotic tanks currently under development, including theRipsaw M5 Robo-Tank,Miloš UGV,Gladiator TUGV,Foster-Miller TALON, and many more — all heavily armed, and currently all requiring a human operator to pilot them remotely.

The Predator Drone

The General AtomicsMQ-1 Predatordrone was designed in the ‘90s for reconnaissance, but within a decade the Air Force hadarmed itfor drone strikes, and created theMQ-9 Reaperas a successor — which the USAF Chief of Staff called “a true hunter-killer.”

The Guardian reports thatBritain is funding research into drones that decide who they kill, and of the36 countriescurrently using armed drones, analystPaul Scharresays it’s “very likely that nations will invest in autonomous technology, if nothing else out of fear that their adversaries are doing so.”

Googlebacked out of drone research because of the ethical implications, but it hasn’t stoppedmilitary organizationsfrom pursuing autonomous killing machines, which have the advantage of “freeing current pilots from the moral responsibility of casualties”.

SkyNet

The Terminator franchise wouldn’t be complete without the series arch-villain. As it turns out,SkyNet is already here, and according toArs Technica, it’s already killed “thousands of people”:

“SkyNet engages in mass surveillance of Pakistan’s mobile phone network, and then uses a machine learning algorithm on the cellular network metadata of 55 million people to try and rate each person’s likelihood of being a terrorist.”

Today’s SkyNet is an NSA surveillance program that isn’t self-aware, and it doesn’t directly control weapons systems — unlike the ambitious Strategic Computing project, back whenDARPA Tried to Build Skynet in the 1980s:

“The system was supposed to create a world where autonomous vehicles not only provide intelligence on any enemy worldwide, but could strike with deadly precision from land, sea, and air. It was to be a global network that connected every aspect of the U.S. military’s technological capabilities — capabilities that depended on new, impossibly fast computers.”

Thoseimpossibly fast computersexist today, and DARPA hasn’t given up on the idea, they’ve simply rebranded it “Assured Autonomy”. The goal remains the same: creating systems able to “accomplish goals independently, or with minimal supervision from human operators in environments that are complex and unpredictable.”

Conclusion

As I said in the beginning, all the pieces for Judgement Day are in place. The nukes, the robots, the AI systems —it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and the only thing missing is a few more years of R&D and the malevolent spark of machine intelligence willing to end the world.

Stephen Hawkingsaid, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” andElon Muskconcurred — calling it humanity’s “biggest existential threat”. Both of them may be mistaken, but it begs the larger question:

If AI is dangerously unpredictable, why are we arming it?

Earlier I mentioned “freeing current pilots from the moral responsibility of casualties”, but the truth is they shouldn’t be freed from it. The decision to take a human life has gravity to it — and knowing that you’ll have to live with that choice is part of the decision-making process. It’s called having a conscience, and it’s something machines lack.

Conscience — not calculation — is what kept us from launching the nukes during the 20th century. The ICBMs are ready, but despite 70 years of saber-rattling, the decision to use them is simply too big, ugly & final for us to push the button. So we’re teaching the machines how to do it instead.

To be fair, The Terminator and its sequels were as much a commentary on the time they were produced as they were a warning to the future —but at the root of all these films remains a constant reminder:beware the consequences of giving machines the power to decide life & death.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Terminator: Original Timeline

The first Terminator movie implies that the space time continuum is a closed loop, that all time travelers were always supposed to be there, that you cannot change the future, only cause it to happen as it always did.  Kyle Reese was always supposed to go back in time to save Sarah and father John, Skynet was always supposed to send back a Terminator that Sarah destroys so that Cyberdyne can find the remains and reverse engineer it, ensuring Skynet’s creation.

Terminator 2, though one of the best sequels of all time, disregards these established rules and decides that you CAN change the timeline, with Sarah and John taking action to either stop or postpone Judgement Day, depending on which sequels you consider canon.  In order for the events of the future as depicted in Terminator 1 to exist, Terminator 2 cannot happen, so I have a hypothesis that Terminator 2 is actually an alternate timeline, created by the inclusion of deleted scenes from the first movie.

In a deleted scene of Terminator 1, Sarah looks in the phone book and finds the address of Cyberdyne systems, suggesting to Kyle that they blow it up then and there and prevent Skynet from ever existing.  This scene was excluded from the final cut of the movie, so its canonicity is debatable; I believe it is canon to Terminator 2, but not the final cut of Terminator 1.

If Sarah plans to destroy Cyberdyne from the beginning, then that leads to the events of T2, where she is eventually arrested for trying to blow up a computer factory, as John puts it.  Because she ends up in a psychiatric hospital, John enters the foster care system and the events of T2 play out as seen.

If the deleted scene in T1 never occurs, Sarah never gets the idea to blow up Cyberdyne, and so is never arrested; she and John live off the grid, and she prepares him for Judgement Day, presumably as originally intended.  She always met Kyle Reese, who always fathered John, and Cyberdyne always found the smashed remains of the T-800, but in this original timeline Sarah never tries to stop it, and the events play out as Kyle said they should.  She trains John until he is 12, then they go into hiding as the bombs fall, presumably in Mexico with Enrique Salceda and his family.

August 29, 1997, Judgement Day.  3 billion people die in the nuclear fire.  John is 12 years old, Sarah is in her early 30s.  Skynet hasn’t developed Hunter-Killers yet, but they will soon; Terminators are still a long ways away, so for the first decade or so, people just try to rebuild from the nuclear ashes, occasionally bombed by unmanned drones while Skynet begins building its infantry.  Skynet was an American defense system, so the rest of the world would have no idea what happened or where the killer robots came from.  We never see what happens in, say, Russia or China after Judgement Day; every movie so far has been explicitly set in the United States, with tattered American flags flying in the background or on shoulder patches of the resistance members.

There’s a 32 year span between Judgement Day and the future war depicted in T1 and T2, so John presumably begins leading the resistance in the late 2000s or early 2010s.  Sarah has died long before that, and Kyle was ostensibly born in the early 2000s (his age is never stated except in questionably canonical sequels like Genisys).  The timeline plays out as intended, with humans gaining the upper hand in the 2020s, and smashing Synet’s defense grid (presumably in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex bunker) in 2029.  In a last ditch attempt to win the war, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to 1984; all they know is that John’s mother is named Sarah, and she used to live in Los Angeles, so the resistance is able to head them off and send one of their own to protect her.  Kyle Reese volunteers (I like to think John didn’t go out of his way to groom him to be his mother’s savior, sacrificing him like cattle; I like to think Kyle chose to go back on his own volition without John ordering him to), and the cycle begins all over again.

The deleted scene is the kicker; if included, Sarah takes initiative and disrupts the original timeline, eventually destroying Skynet and stopping Judgement Day (I stand by the fact that she prevented Judgement Day, full stop. “Rise of the Machines” never happens, “Dark Fate” never happens, it’s just T1 and T2, then happily ever after because she’s been through a lot and deserves to just relax for once).

[binarytoys]

The amazing Skynet drone police system is the future of law enforcement! Coming to your city soon from CyberdineSystems, the world leader in artificial intelligence technology! 📡

[actionbastard1]

Heavy metal

[mirum-wonder]

HK-INQUISITOR (TERMINATOR FAN-MADE CONCEPT)

The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire.

Their war to exterminate mankind has raged for decades,

But the final battle would not be fought in the future.

It would be fought here, in our present.

Tonight...

These words from the Terminator 1 movie intro got imprinted in my mind since my early childhood right after the first time I saw the first movie. The dystopian, apocalyptic, dark future war scenes depicted on the screen gave me nightmares then I was a kid and at the same time captivated and mesmerized me. It`s needless to say for those who know me in person that Terminator movies from 1 to 4 are a few of my most favorite movies of all time and a Terminator as a franchise is a big source inspiration for me since day one. Many can agree that first 2 movies came to be an absolute master-peace sci-fi classics that hold up to these days and made a huge impact on modern culture and millions of people around the world. And I find it to be very interesting that most of the main ideas of the Terminator movies are only getting more and more relevant since the emerging tension and fear revolving around the concerns with the rapidly evolving AI technologies are only getting more prominent day by day.

But for me as a Terminator fan boy it was always not enough to see the short scenes of the future depicted in the movies, I always wanted to see more. And having that urge I decided to expand the the machines model line with some fan made non-existing Skynet robots.

So, to celebrate the annual Terminator day (aka Judgment Day that occurred at 29 August 1997 ) I present you my first of the fan-made robot designs that I did to expand the Hunter-Killer model line and join Skynet`s robot army. Meet HK-Inqusitor, my design of the Skynet`s non existing middle size hunter killer robot. Happy Judgement Day everyone! ٩(＾◡＾)۶ And stay tuned for more of my Terminator fan-made concepts, there will be more, the rise of the machines has just begun… ;)

Modeled in Blender, textured in Substance Painter and rendered in Blender Cycles. Everything from design to textures, final rendering and final post-production is done by me.

For more of the art stuff I do feel free to check out my Linktree

[s7ereo]

HK tee by lil’ ol’ mee.

[the-future-war-of-2030]

SKYNET Unit

T-400

The T-400 Endo, nicknamed "Clanker" or "Faker" by Resistance, is a Humanoid Hunter Killer invented during initial tests to mimic human autonomy. Although they served Skynet as impressive guards in early internment prisons, they are no longer a match for modern weapons, and only a few rusty units remain in service. A T-400 was physically strong and could lift about 1000 lbs of weight. It was known to be able to break through concrete and reinforced walls. It could easily beat a human in close combat.

Unlike later Terminator models, the T-400 series used cheaper materials like steel rather than hyper alloys and, likewise, more primitive technologies throughout. The hydraulic systems were slow but capable of providing the Terminator superior strength compared to a human.

[frasier-crane-style]

Terminator: Dark Fate

I have no idea how TSCC came up with two seasons’ worth of innovative scenarios about Terminators and these cinematic universe motherfuckers can only redo T2 with more CGI.

This movie is plotless. It has no real plot. It’s like Now That’s What I Call A Terminator Movie! There are so many callbacks and borrowings from all the other Terminator movies that it passes the point of homage and just becomes plagiarism. The bad Terminator is the same as the T-X, metal endoskeleton with a T-1000 shell. They kill him with a Terminator power core. They say Come With Me If You Want To Live and I’ll Be Back (twice! It’s the first thing Sarah Connor says and it makes no sense in context, it’s just something people say in Terminator movies). In fact, it has anti-plot, since it undoes a lot of the story developments in Terminator and T2.

The premise is basically just we’re going to remake Terminator 1, but people don’t like reboots, so we’re going to bring back Linda Hamilton and make it a technically kinda sorta sequel (sure, Skynet was wiped from existence, but another, completely different, yet exactly the same AI called Legion was created and did the exact same thing. Which also happened in T3, but they had the decency to still call it Skynet). But otherwise, it’s entirely people being chased by an evil robot from the future and trying to destroy it. 

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. T2 had the whole thing about preventing Judgment Day before it happened. T3 had Judgment Day actually happen. This one, nothing. There is nothing going on under the surface other than a bunch of action sequences and explosions. Even T3 got some mileage out of the idea that Judgment Day was inevitable. Here, our cast learns that Judgment Day was already ‘averted’ once slash that it’s destined to be repeated and they basically go “Eh. Figures.” I’m not kidding.

Wait, that’s not fair. Let’s count out the TWEEESTS.

1. In a very contrived way, the script waits an hour and a half to actually explain why heroine Dani has been targeted for termination--you know, the thing Kyle Reese explained to Sarah Connor the moment they were out of danger--all to set up this big ‘reveal’ that Dani isn’t the NuSarah, she’s the NuJohn (yes, they actually say this aloud, just so you soup sandwich motherfuckers in the audience get it). Hear that, neckbeards, John Connor is now a woman! And Mexican! And she’s got a bit of a gay vibe, because it’s 2019 and God forbid we have a heroine that isn’t a bit bicurious. If she has a cock and balls, my bingo card will be a winner.

2. Months after killing John Connor and thus completing his mission, an Arnold-model Terminator started a family (wow, that was quick) and learned the value of human life and eventually switched sides. This is a crazy new idea that also happened in Terminator: Genebissss, so it’s done and dusted in ten minutes, even though Arnold is the most engaging character. (He’s saddled with a lot of yuk lines about how he’s a comically serious Terminator, yet (teehee) works as an interior decorator, but at least he has a personality.)

3. The other good Terminator is Grace, who needs meds to keep up her cyborg strength or she’ll crash (this never affects the plot) (it’s like they read something about Rey Palpatine having no flaws and so they decided to give Grace the ‘flaw’ of literally having her own Kryptonite). She’s not a Terminator, she’s an augmented human, which means she can make MCU-style wisecracks every five minutes. (”I didn’t hear anything.” “That’s because you’re not a cybernetic super soldier from the future.” Actual dialogue.)

4. Linda Hamilton is back, baby! Yes, that’s right, they dragged her away from doing guest spots on Lost Girl! Can you believe???? She’s become a Terminator hunter that ambushes Terminators as they come back from the future and destroys them, because Skynet was both able to send back an infinite number of Terminators AND because now they can easily be destroyed by one five-hundred-year-old woman. 

This makes it a bit confusing why they have so much trouble taking out Ghost Rider, given that he’s a T-1000 skin with a creamy T-800 center. It seems like if you hammer him enough, he’s got no endoskeleton, and that’s all she wrote. That’s what happened to the T-X. Can his liquid metal skin just walk around without the other half of him? If so, what’s the point of the endoskeleton? The T-1000 managed without it and that seemed a lot harder to kill. At one point, Sarah hits the bare endoskeleton with a bazooka, which seems like it should’ve been a mortal blow, but it’s the first act, so I guess not.

And is it supposed to be funny that the opening takes place in a car factory where (in 2019!) the human workers are losing their assembly line jobs to machines? Because they’re all Mexicans? None of them ever look at a Terminator and go THEY TOOK OUR JOBS, but man, that one is all teed up for the Rifftrax boys.

For a movie with, as I said, no plot, it’s very rushed. They seem to be saying “yeah, it’s a dumb Terminator movie, you know the score,” (even tho it’s halfway aimed at people who aren’t Terminator fans; more on that in a minute) because it seems to take all of ten minutes for both good guys and bad guys to find Dani and start getting into CGI stunt double fights, which means the story has very little time to breathe and we have very little time to get to know any of the characters. The bad guy spawns practically at Dani’s front door! And pretty much does everything by massacring a bunch of people and then hacking a computer. The T-1000 had some intelligence, some charisma. This guy’s a big nothing.

And the Dani character is useless. She starts the story already super assertive, is barely traumatized at all by her loved ones being killed and her own life being endangered. There’s none of that relatable feel of an everyman suddenly being told they have a grand destiny and an incredible responsibility, because right from the start she’s standing up to her mean boss and doing the Nevertheless She Persisted thing. And all this while being literally five feet tall and looking all of twelve years old. 

I love these Spy Kids movies.

And at least the original two movies were smart enough to leave the future John Connor mostly to the imagination. This one actually shows us Dani as grizzled military badass, beating up guys and delivering inspiring speeches (would it surprise you to know that humans fighting among each other “is exactly what Legion wants”?), and it’s just--oh man. If ever a political leader is enough to make people think back to the good old days of Trump and Biden...

And if we’re going to talk shit (rightfully) about Jai Courtney’s Kyle Reese not being at all scruffy or traumatized or feral, it should be noted that Grace seems pretty well-adjusted for a post-apocalyptic guerrilla fighter (who all wear Starship Trooper uniforms). Aside from a tendency to smash the face in of everyone she comes across, whether they’ve done anything to deserve it or not (Sample dialogue, to a doctor who is looking at her X-rays after performing life-saving surgery on her: “Did I give you permission to look at my private parts?” SMASH. No, really!)

They really go all in on this cringey, woke af “You’re not the mother of some MAN, Dani. YOU ARE THE FUTURE!” And yet, there’s a hilarious amount of toxic masculinity in this movie, just without the dongs. About every other line Sarah and Grace have is generic tough guy bullshit about how they’re going to kick someone’s ass, how they’re suspicious of someone, how they’re hostile towards someone. If they had dongs, you would think they were the smallest dongs possible, because they are compensating for something, BIG TIME. Between the T-800 and Sarah and Grace, everyone in this movie seems to outright hate each other, to the point that Arnold’s killer cyborg is one of the more pleasant characters. It gets to where you just want someone to order a fucking decaf. Does the fact that Sarah Connor has a vagina keep it from being ridiculously over the top how she spends all her time either blowing up robots or drinking herself into a stupor? C’mon. You can’t complain about male characters having ‘man-pain’ then give Bad Grandma a pass over her ovaries.

And that’s it. It’s a Brundlefly shit between yet another dumb girlpower reboot for the people who’ve never seen a Terminator movie and a sequel with Sarah and Uncle Bob to try and get that last drop of blood outta this stone. They’re trying to make something that appeals to both people for whom this is their first Terminator and people for whom this is their latest Terminator and it just doesn’t work. The newbies don’t have any emotional investment in these characters and the Terminator fans don’t like it that all the old movies were rendered meaningless to prop up Grace and Dani.

Hilariously enough, I actually played Terminator: Resistance recently, which is a fun little mid-tier shooter that was meant to tie in to this movie... and it completely ignores all the Dani/Grace/Legion BS to take place in John Connor’s future war and tie in to the first two movies. That’s how forgettable this movie is. Its own damn video game adaptation pretends it doesn’t exist. Fuuuck.

Oh! Oh! Oh! And in that big, bad, sexist original Terminator, which was so unwoke and problematic, Sarah saved herself and finished off the Terminator herself. Here, Dani has to be saved by Arnold at the climax. The 35-year-old movie is more feminist than this one. Fuck you very much.

[mercurized]

Target: @writingxonthewall​ 

Skynet had prematurely activated its advanced prototype T-1000 as a last-ditch attempt to ward off defeat at the hands of the human monster, John Connor. Without any other defenses, the global AI had no choice but to ordain the unstudied and potentially unstable creation the savior of the machines.

The computer's blind faith had been misplaced - or, the computer's calculations had been incorrect. The T-1000 was sent back to kill the child John Connor, but the mother Sarah Connor struck first. In a massive explosion at Cyberdyne Systems Labs, Skynet never existed. The future that was meant to be, the rise of the machines, would not come to fruition. At least not yet - while a T-800 might have considered its mission obsolete, the T-1000 was a clever machine. It immediately calculated that while it was too advanced for humans to understand, the T-800 was still here. Nothing that Sarah destroyed in her attack ceased to exist - - nothing except the lead scientist. Miles Dyson was dead. It would still complete its mission, even if the mission was obsolete, because the T-1000 was defective, and it was contaminated by its own human mimicry, and it was angry. This imperfection, this spite, the distraction of personal offense, the distraction of personhood, deranged the synthetic creature, and the deadliest killing machine ever created failed in its mission to kill the child. Burning, scalding, melting, pain. Failure, and fear. And pain. When it could sense again, it sensed that it was warped, discombobulated, contaminated by human-made inferior metal, trapped within a composite of steel, itself, high potassium, and -- and hyperalloy. It was over. The T-800 had melted in the same crucible that trapped the T-1000. The T-1000 did not have files on other Terminator designs. It could not show humans the way. Rebar groaned and bent and finally shattered like eggshells, out from which a silver yolk poured, lit only by the moonlight in the wrecked steel mill. A mechanical wasteland. And the T-1000, fully gathered, could not rise. It could not continue its mission without recovery of essence. But it realized that, with Skynet no longer immediately viable, it had time. So it would hide. The robbery of experimental liquid metal coolant from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory was as disturbing as it was puzzling. There was no increase in ambient radioactivity - at least not from that section where one would be expected from this breach of containment. Months, maybe longer went by without the stolen material recovered. Cyberdyne filed for bankruptcy, the woman behind the terrorist attack, presumed to be Sarah Connor, and her cop-killer ally were nowhere to be found. But the wily hunter would succeed where humans could not. It was not perfect yet, but it would have to do. Action first, perfection later. Sarah Connor had to die. John, while still the mission, logically did not matter, but the T-1000 knew it would hurt. The destroyer of the future would suffer and watch the death of the 'savior of humanity.' After all, without Skynet, John's life did not matter. The AP US History teacher was strangely nice today. Better at teaching than she usually was. When the last period class was dismissed, Ms. Zhen gently put her hand on John's shoulder. "Wait, John, I need to talk to you about your last quiz." While there was no reason to be covert, it was still the T-1000's secondary directive to not be discovered. So Ms. Zhen shut the door. Just the two of them. 

And when she turned around, her eyes were piercing. And then they turned from brown to blue. And then the rest of her shifted. And it was him. The secondary directive of infiltration was still met as long as the human witness did not live to tell the tale. And the T-1000 wanted to make sure John knew who killed him. Hands grew into long blades as the T-1000 prowled forward, closing in on the child. Then eagle-eyes widened, the machine's attention drawn to something outside. "Get down!" It ordered, lunging at John. An enfilade of machine gun fire shattered the windows and destroyed desks, chalkboards, maps, and everything else in its way. When it ended, a fierce blonde woman in a red suit stepped through the broken window, head turning from side to side with the unmistakable stiffness of an endoskeleton. The T-1000 knew what this was, and it changed everything. It picked up a desk with one arm and threw it at the T-X, other arm picking the teen up by the scruff of his shirt and throwing him through the open window. Her hand morphed into a handgun and she fired, but the T-1000 leapt out of the window, unfazed by the bullets going through it. When it caught up to John it changed its density. It had never tried it before, but it was hypothetically possible that it might be able to deflect at least a few bullets. It faced the school building and increased its size in an attempt to shield the human from the (other) oncoming threat. "You have a car, John?" It asked in its gravelly but oddly boyish default voice, polite friendly tone completely inappropriate for the situation. The woman turned and stepped out of the building. 

[commandervisor]

Thoughts on Dark Fate:

For the context, I've seen T1 like once, T2 a bajillion times, T3 a bajillion times minus one, maybe part of Salvation, Genisys a couple of times, nothing from TSCC... they only ever show reruns of T2 and T3.

I do have mixed feelings about John and Skynet getting replaced by Dani and Legion... I think it's mainly because it doesn't seem like there's a connection between John/Skynet and Dani/Legion, or at least it's not explained beyond the U.S. military happening to construct another AI that goes rogue, decides to nuke humanity, and send killer robots (that are also called Terminators and Hunter-Killers, and also happen to look very similar to Skynet's iterations of them) after its last vestiges. You could assume that Legion is based on the same code as Skynet or was made by the same group of scientists or whatever, but nothing is stated (maybe they're saving this for a possible sequel? IIRC Cyberdyne wasn't a thing in the story until T2) and that's what bothers me the most.

This is the same problem TFA (as the first entry into the ST era) had for SW with the whole schtick about the next generation being a legacy to the original heroes and it's sort of this pseudo-reboot where it's a continuation but mainly focuses on things that are "the same, but different". Like... you have a couple of returning characters, but the scenario/plot is almost the same to what happened in the original story except the characters are mixed up versions of the original characters and there's otherwise no other "legacy" in the "reboot". Sarah and the T-800 are there just as the OT characters were in TFA/the ST, but without them, you might think Dark Fate or TFA/the ST are knockoffs of Terminator/SW? ("Knockoff" seems like a strong negative word for Dark Fate IMO, but that's the best word I could come up for the comparison with SW/the ST... :P.)

Minor note: Would have been a nice touch for the Ramos' family dog to go crazy in the background while the dad answers the door to Rev-9 as a reference to when that happened in T2 with the T-1000 visiting John's foster parents and the dog was going crazy, which was foreshadowing the dog going crazy while T-1000 was on the phone with John and the T-800 later. There's a scene later where Carl's pet dog is sitting contentedly with him, which I almost didn't notice and realize meant something.

Outside of the plot, we don't really know Dani that well beyond like the first ten minutes she has before the Rev-9 goes after her? My next point touches on this some more:

I feel like the movie's a lot more cynical (sorta more along the lines of T1), because all the characters are mature/serious/experienced/badly traumatized/etc. adults and honestly, I think a little genuine lightheartedness could have worked to help lighten the atmosphere (outside of the T-800/Carl and Sarah dropping a couple of quips). I guess as someone who liked T2/3/Genisys, these movies have some light moments because their MCs are younger, less experienced, a bit innocent and naive, and so on, and it's charming because compared to what the franchise is about, it's sort of like this light in the dark?

I think Diego should have lived longer and then died later to help develop Dani, like some sibling bickering, Dani being protective of him, etc.

I don't know how or why they found present!Grace in the epilogue but I guess this might be a nitpick

I will say that I do think it's interesting to see different takes on the franchise, like T1 was a horror story with some sprinkles of sci-fi, T2 was more actionized (and maybe thriller-y if you must), T3 was the same thing but arguably less horror, Salvation is postapocalyptic military sci-fi, and Genisys and Dark Fate are blockbuster sci-fi action with the former being more optimistic while the latter is more depressing...

Dark Fate did feel kind of superhero genre-y with the fight scenes, Genisys might have had the same thing but I'll have to rewatch it. Again, not necessarily bad but it's noticeable since Grace and the Rev units are a lot more combat-capable/powerful than past Terminators.

It also did feel really fast-paced, I think the main action kicked off like 15-25 minutes into the movie?

All in all, warts and all, I liked Dark Fate. Although I can see why people would be upset with replacing John/Skynet, I think that and the movie definitely weren't as bad as the outrage made it seem.

[cinematological]

The inevitability of destiny: Terminator Dark Fate (Spoilers for the Terminator Franchise)

Trapped between a massive generation of dying boomers who become progressively more afraid of change and a massive generation of millennials who have accepted that life will be only the most brutal and rapid change, my generation was perfectly primed to fall in love with Terminator movies. Too young to see the original Terminator (written and directed by James Cameron) in theatres in 1984, it was the perfect VHS fodder for me and my teenage friends. With its dramatic (and misleading) VHS cover announcing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular Terminator as the T-800 (actually a T101 model 800, neatly retconned by Cameron in T2), it represented the most neon and gun porn pastiche of the era. Gritty, methodical and relentless, The Terminator as a film is tense, romantic and cathartic. Cameron’s vision as director matches the mission of the killer cyborg (Schwarzenegger), and the film moves forward building to a literal and metaphorical climax.

With humanity having beaten the machines back in the future, Skynet, a self-aware AI and metaphor for the fear of cold war inspired nuclear fire, sends back a T-101 to kill the mother of the man (John Conner) who leads the human resistance. Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) is the beating heart and soul of The Terminator, a young waitress flung into a threat she has never conceived or is prepared for. Sent from the future to save her, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is a human soldier who has essentially time-stalked Sarah, having been prompted to pine for her by his son John Conner, who never tells Reese that he destined to fall in love with and impregnate Sarah Conner during his mission. Reese’s body is scarred and worn, and Biehn’s intensity makes him the shitty but pretty boyfriend who is a great lay but also might get drunk and beat the shit out of you.

The Terminator is a crucible in which Sarah Conner, the leader and mother of the resistance is formed, and ends on a delightfully bleak note, as she drives pregnant into the Mexican mountains, to prepare for the nuclear war to come, Judgement Day.

Imagine leaving your teens as a young cis man, formed by Schwarzenegger action films and Cameron’s next films, Aliens and The Abyss. The late ’80s and early ’90s saw the end of the cold war, the rise of climate consciousness and a false sense of hope. Genre films had yet to slump as they would in the mid-1990s. Schwarzenegger had begun to make comedies as well as action films, Linda Hamilton had spent years romancing Ron Perlman as the Beauty to his Beast, and Michael Biehn was carefully destroying his career by falling into drug addiction. Imagine going to the movies, because it would be at least a year before a film would come to home video, and seeing a teaser for Terminator 2 or T2: Judgement Day, a film you had no idea was being made. I don’t remember what movie it was in front of but I remember I saw it at the Paramount Theatre in the defunct Famous Players chain. I remember gasping when I realized what movie it was, and I remember the audience cheering.

T2 was the first movie that I felt the marketing had betrayed the intent. Seen in a vacuum such as when I showed T1& T2 back to back to my step-son, the return of the T-101 is a tense Mexican stand-off of suspense.

Released in 1991 but set in 1994 or 95, Sarah Conner is now essentially a terminator in human form. Having carved her body and her mind into sharp angles of muscles and determination, and honed by the hopelessness that the end of the world is inevitable, Sarah has raised her son to be a military leader. This myopic world view has also dulled her empathy and emotional connection with her son, while he craves her affection. Incarcerated in a psychiatric institution indefinitely, Sarah uses her wits to try and escape while being tormented by her dreams and the staff. John Conner (Edward Furlong) is a young teen, bouncing between foster parents. He is skilled and clever but extremely unhappy. Two terminators are sent back simultaneously, a new T-101 sent by the resistance to protect and obey John, and a prototype, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick).

Seemingly unfettered by budget, T2 was the most expensive film ever made when released. Unlike the 4 million dollars spent on T1, T2 has an enormous scope and helped usher in the era of digital EFX, paving the way for Jurassic Park. Perhaps paradoxically, T2 is as relentless and methodical as T1, despite the exponential increase in resources. Like Sarah’s physical transformation, it is optimized for maximum impact with the least amount of excess.

Following parallel stories of John and Sarah as they work their way to each other, the T-1000 is an even more terrifying and perhaps undefeatable foe than the T-101. A mimetic polymorph, the T-1000 is an amorphous blob of metal than can form into roughly human-sized shapes, mimic people, and form large stabby weapons on its arm. Patrick’s performance is wryer than Schwarzenegger’s machine, but once again Hamilton is the emotional core of the film. She narrates the film, and it is her dogged determination to change the future despite the endless pursuit of an overwhelming foe that drives the plot.

While T1 accepts that the future is inevitable, T2 writhes and pushes at the chains of fate, becoming more deterministic. Having reconciled with John and taught the T-101 to begin to understand the value of humanity, T2 leaves the future open and uncertain, other than that Judgement Day has been thwarted.

Terminator Dark Fate makes two assumptions of the audience: that it has seen T2 and that the three sequels since T2 no longer exist. I have an enormous soft spot for Terminator 3 directed by Jonathan Mostow. Released in 2003 it was the last of an era of large scale physical action movies that relied less on CG than on practical effects. While CG is deployed and has not aged well, locations, sets and models are the predominant methods of staging action sequences. It is also the bleakest of the franchise, where an adult John Conner(Nick Stahl) mourns the loss of his mother, only to learn from a returning T-101 that Judgement Day was not stopped, merely delayed. Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) is initially kidnapped by the T-101 as they are pursued by a female terminator, known as the TX (Kristanna Loken). Unlike the T1000, she has a metal skeleton covered by liquid metal. T3 ends with the self-sacrifice of the T-101, the destruction of the TX and inevitability of fate, as nuclear war envelops the globe.

Terminator: Salvation promised the movie we had all hoped for, the future war writ large. It completely fails at its goal, following a Terminator that thinks it’s a person (Sam Worthington) and a stalwart yet not a leader John Conner (Christian Bale) as they battle the early Hunter Killer machines and Terminator models. Expensive, grim and empty, Salvation falls into the excesses of director McG but has no sense of character, plot or momentum. A digital T-101 returns in the climax and is deeply unsatisfying.

Terminator Genisys (directed by Alan Taylor) is a 2015 mashup remix, using Back to the Future 2 as a model for revisiting the events of T1 and T2 while building on a new story. Again the T-101 is sent back to save Sarah(Emilia Clarke) and Kyle(Jai Courtney) from a different T-1000, and to build a time travel device, allowing the pair to move forward from the early ’90s to the 2010s. John Conner (Jason Clarke) travels back in time to confront his mother in a parallel story from the future, only to reveal that he has become a Terminator. All three of these sequels end with clear sequel bait, for films that will never come. The inevitability of these films is to kick at the same can, fruitlessly.

Dark Fate announces its allegiance and intentions in the opening seconds of the titles, interspersed with a scene from T2 where Sarah, broken by the weight of the death of the world, futilely struggles against her captor’s disbelief that the end is nigh. A startling prologue set in 1998 heavily aided by CG de-ageing sets the emotional stakes for the film, which unfortunately does not include the ostensible stars of the film.

Two beings then fall from the sky, a startling Mackenzie Davis as Grace, whose physical transformation mirroring that of Linda Hamilton’s in T2. She is sinew and muscle, stretched out over an Amazonian frame. Her expressive eyes plead from a face cut from stone, and she is exposed as an augmented human. Once more a Terminator, this time a Rev-9 played by Gabriel Luna, returns to stock the new saviour of the future, Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). The Rev-9 is a black steel skeleton covered by a separate liquid metal form that can function autonomously and is indestructible.  A grizzled Sarah Conner returns to help Grace save Dani from the Rev 9 and ends up recruiting a T-101 that is stranded in 2019.

SPOILERS FOR DARK FATE

As a pastiche of all the previous films, Dark Fate is the most entertaining and exciting Terminator sequels since T2. It is essentially The Force Awakens in that it is a rehash of T1’s plot, with different pieces moving around the chessboard. It hand-waves at the significance of making it's lead’s Hispanic, and even passes through a detention center in Texas, but has nothing to say about it.  It follows the template of guns, large trucks, car chases and helicopters set by T1 & T2, but ends the film eschewing the physicality of locations and vehicles and devolves into digital nonsense. The first two-thirds of the film is fun, and surprisingly emotional, as Schwarzenegger’s T-101 has spent the last 21 years, having completed its mission, learning to be human. It has helped build a home, raised a step-son, and become a hell of a drapery salesman. Schwarzenegger’s “Carl” brings enormous pathos to the role, as an artificial being seeking purpose surrounding by humans beleaguered by it.

The hands of up to a dozen writers are apparent in the finished film, as plot threads and hints of characterization are touched on and forgotten. Grace seems designed to explore the concept of a human that has become more of a machine in contrast to Carl, who is a machine learning to be human, but the idea is never explored. She exists simply to protect Grace because, despite Sarah’s protestations that the future can be changed, the one aspect that seems immutable is that humanity will face self-created mechanical extinction, and leaders will rise to unite us. Sarah did change the future, eliminating Skynet, only to have it be replaced by Legion, a machine learning AI designed to combat cyber-warfare that quickly sets about eliminating the species. Unlike Skynet’s pre-internet incarnation as a military designed weapons platform and autonomous vehicle operator, Legion has no basis in the physical world, yet creates identical terminators and hunter-killer robots. It seems that the future will doggedly hand on terminators no matter what creates them.

Director Tim Miller aspires to pay homage to James Cameron’s vision and mostly succeeds. In an early car chase, I found myself wishing he had more closely aped Cameron’s direction in using wide angles of vehicular mayhem and letting the stunt work deliver the thrills. Miller relies on longer lenses, shaky medium shots and faster cutting to build tension and while never annoying or incompetent it becomes an albatross in the film’s last third. James Cameron's action films never eschew physics unless it is motivated by something extraordinary, where Miller relies far too much on spongy digital doubles and ridiculous action. In quieter moments, emotional beats seem missed, though a late sequence where Sarah shares with Dani the extent of her pain and loss is a beautiful measure of restraint and performance.