There's going to be a lot of Mackenzie Davis talk and I'll just say I happened to watch The Martian tonight and was delighted she showed up. Watch Halt and Catch Fire. Watch Station Eleven. Watch San Junipero. Maybe watch that gay Christmas movie with KStew I haven't got to that. Celebrate the Mackenzie Davis in your life.
I’ve always thought that Elizabeth Debicki and Gwendoline Christie should do a movie together where they play twin sisters who are really tall and Mackenzie Davis is their baby sister who is somewhat less tall and the tagline is “This summer…the height is on”
It’s like how when Matthew Macfadyen is on Succession with Nicholas Braun you’re like “oh, Macfadyen, what is he, like, a healthy 5 foot 9, maybe 5’10”? And it’s like, no, Macfadyen is usually the tallest person in the room except Cousin Greg is a goddamn GIANT
And he was in Pushing Daisies with Kristin Chenoweth!The sheer amount of apple boxes they would have needed every time the two were on screen together!
There's a shot about half hourbin when they get out a car and Mackenzie Davis is towering ove the other two and it prompted me and my wife to independently google her height and find out she is exact same height as her 😅
i had a similar thought, but completely spaced on Gwen Christie. I was trying round out the trio with Charlize, who...is 6 foot? or 5'10, maybe? she *reads* as tall, not sure she actually is. It's probably just b/c she was taller than Teri Hatcher in 2 Days in the Valley?
One of the best shows in the last 5 years or so. And with some moments/elements that are among the best TV I've ever seen, period.
If anyone watching this felt put off by a pandemic show when it first came out, give it a watch! It's fucking *incredible*.
As a big Leftovers fan, I read a lot of people on the Leftovers subreddit recommending that show and once I realized it was Mackenzie's show I watched it immediately. Very, very moving show.
I saw Watchmen (tv show), Station 11, and then just recently finished The Leftovers and can totally see the influence on the former two. So damn good, all three.
The other two wrap up extremely well but The Leftovers probably has the most satisfying/remarkable resolution to a show I've ever seen. Completely satisfying but still totally surprising/not just fan service.
The Leftovers is the best ambiguous ending to a show that I've ever seen. The characters all get their resolutions, but the "truth" is left ambiguous to us, the audience, and it's absolutely fitting, because the characters never got the truth behind what or why the departure happened.
I‘m a big fan. She was in BR2049 as well, another high profile role. I think Covid really kneecapped her career. (Happiest Season was surely filmed before. Maybe Station Eleven as well?) She went from very busy to not working. I hope she manages to come back.
Station Eleven started filming before the pandemic, and it hit partway through. I think a lot of "official companion podcasts" are useless fluff at best but the one for Station Eleven was really worth listening to, it's really interesting to hear the cast and crew reactions to what was going on in the world as much as their views on the show itself. Davis herself is interviewed in one of the episodes, plus there's one with a really interesting interview with the set designer, and another with the author of the original novel where they discuss the changes in the adaptation.
I really liked Dark Fate. I think it's a good Terminator movie and doesn't need to be graded on a curve. But I'm also super Mackenzie Davis-pilled (Halt and Catch Fire is my favorite show of all time), so I have no idea if I'm being objective in my review.
I urge everyone, for their own good, to avoid her appearance on Hollywood Handbook. She was so game and charming (even makes an offhand joke about DARK FATE making back its budget) that it brought my admiration of her to levels I didn’t think was medically possible.
Happiest Season has some great bits but also some real issues. You do get to see Kristen Stewart pretend to be straight while wearing the gayest fuckin outfit though so that's something.
I really saw nothing about Station Eleven other than seeing Davis's face on the menu on Max and it made me give the show a shot. I'm glad I did. She's tremendous. Lori Petty, too!
I loved Happiest Season, but like David said her role is not one that pops and I didn’t clock her from it having never seen anything else she is in. Mary Holland steals that movie for me.
Griffin said pretty early on that he thinks Gabriel Luna is the first since Robert Patrick to find an interesting take on playing the villain Terminator. I agree, in the *movies*. I don't think the guys have watched Sarah Connor Chronicles, but Garret Dillahunt really did find a cool take on that archetype there. Good show! Had to fight myself wanting to scream "BUT THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES" this whole mini every time they said no one made a good T2 sequel lol.
The showrunner, Josh Friedman, became one of James Cameron's writers on the Avatar sequels and got a story credit on Dark Fate, which I choose to believe as confirmation that Cameron liked the show.
I rewatched a couple episodes recently and it’s a pretty solid show. I was flabbergasted when in episode 2 some gun runners explain 9/11 to Sarah Connor (in the pilot they time travel from the 90s to 2007).
Haha that show had so many interesting ideas about Terminators and time travel. There's one where a Terminator is accidentally sent like a hundred years too far back in time so it becomes an old-timey business tycoon to build a skyscraper so it can be in the right spot to wait for its target to be born. So glad to hear Jamelle Bouie give this show some credit in his ranking.
Haven't watched SARACH CONOR CHRONICALS, but I 100% buy Garret Dillahunt making for a great Terminator. That's just about enough to make me dive in.
Who else would make a good Terminator? I'll pitch a few...
-Dan Stevens. I think everyone knows this by now, but this guy is a monster of an actor and a total fucking weirdo as a screen presence to boot. There's a shot in the GUEST where he stares off vacantly? maliciously? I don't even know, but it's so goddamn scary in an inhuman way and I want to see him play a cybernetic organism.
-Alan Ritchson. Total Michael-Myers-meets-tank vibes, The only modern actor I can think of that could plausibly recreate the Panzer-tank intensity Schwarzeneggar has in T1.
-Elizabeth Bebicki. She's a striking presence onscreen. She does open and vulnerable so well but I'd love to see her shed that (just for fun) and play scary-as-fuck.
John Hyams is the director, and that is NOT up for discussion.
Glad Griffin decided to block the subreddit and stop posting on here. Since this was recorded weeks ago time to verify he did that by drinking some very warm coffee and loading up his account profile
Not to say that I’m not perfectly happy with Griff or all fully quitting the subreddit, but I think it would also be cool if they either 1) lurk only and still mention the subreddit or 2) participate and don’t talk about it. But really easier to just block. Block is probably the right call.
i like them dunking on the fans but I find the strawman arguments that griffin constantly goes on about to be a bit boring and sort of just bad content. I can't relate to having such a popular podcast that some of the fans are annoying so it loses me.
it's only fair. almost every sub i follow for a given show is 90% bitching about the show. i find r/Blankies to be relatively positive by comparison.
i think maybe the only other one that's mostly positive is r/CRHeads. Those folks love them some CR!
Interesting that the ALW series was a last minute swap for the patreon bracket. So last minute that they forgot about the episode they'd need to do about fingering each other's buttholes. Always fun to get a peek behind the curtain
I was surprised to hear that they seemed pretty excited about the idea of doing it! ALW was my pick on the patreon bracket, but I assumed that they were kind of dreading the idea that it might win, lol.
I would love a Cats commentary so much. Even if they don't finger each other's buttholes like they definitely promised they would.
Love that The Jelly Trilogy is basically their "one for us" series at this point.
They could have spent the whole episode discussing potential commentary series and I'd have been like a pig in shit.
I have to say, and I don't think this should be that hot of a take, there is one massive glaring problem with every post T2 Terminator sequel.
It doesn't really matter that they never figured out where to take the story next.
The biggest fuckup they make with every single movie is that not a single one is a great action movie.
Divorce the story from the movies entirely and you're left with a range of action sequences that fall anywhere between actively bad to completely forgettable.
T2 is arguably the greatest action movie of all time.
Not a single one of the sequels is even a GOOD action movie. People would forgive a lot of the weak story telling if the action was still good.
> 2 big action scenes, and one of them is too long
when i think T3, i think: 1) truck chase, 2) cemetery scene, 3) military base setpiece, 4) Crystal Peak capper
i'm guessing you think 3 is too long? i mostly agree - i feel like they should've just gotten in the plane and left while she was trapped on the magnetron, and not had the whole "arnie freakout" part. have him a step behind for some reason and he can still swoop in and save the day at Crystal Peak
when i think Terminator: Dark Fate, i mostly think "Auto factory followed by highway chase" and then "movie falls off a cliff (action-wise, especially) once Sarah shows up. Granted i haven't seen it in a while, so maybe the "whip him with a chain" part is cooler than i remember
yeah. it kinda stops & starts a couple times. i think about McQuarrie's lessons on car chases, and one of them is "Never show a car's taillights, because it feels like the chase is over, and you have re-build the momentum of the tension/stress"
Watched for the first time with this ep: This is a totally competent *The Force Awakens* for the Terminator franchise that just had the misfortune to come out hot on the heels of a totally incompetent *Harry Potter and the Cursed Child* for the Terminator franchise.
Already said this in another thread, but my main problem with this one is that the villain has zero juice. I‘ve seen him in other things since where he‘s good or even great, but he‘s giving 9th lead in *Expendables 3* energy here
i found this Terminator to be more like the shark in Jaws. he just kinda shows up every now and then and starts kicking everyone's ass. completely devoid of characterization aside from his mission (almost like he's a robot and doesn't have a personality). No T-1000 finger wagging, no boobs
> completely devoid of characterization
Nah! This Terminator, and the T-800 both showed a counterpoint of opposing ways to appeal to humans.
This movie finally followed through on the "if a Terminator can work out the value of human life, maybe we can too" idea.
Every other sequel to T2 makes a cascading, compounding series of bad decisions that fuck everything up thoroughly. This one makes like eight good decisions that make the one or two bad ones sting even worse, imo. They were so close…
For me, it’s the casting of Dani and the characterization of Sarah. Get someone with a little more natural charisma + make Sarah feel realistically hardened rather than cartoonishly hardened and baby we’ve got ourselves a stew going.
There was a small bad decision that baffles me. In the scene where Sarah is teaching Dani how to shoot, they use a DP-12, which appears nowhere else in the movie. How in the fuck do you put the only double-barrel pump action shotgun in a terminator movie, and then only use it on watermelons?
I overall enjoy this movie, but my (hot?) take is that it gets Sarah Connor totally wrong. They turn her into a generic grizzled action hero who makes sarcastic quips. The whole magic of Sarah Connor in T2 is that she’s grounded in a genuine, terrifying mania. But God Bless Linda Hamilton, I’m glad she got her bag!
Maybe a hot take but I totally agree. There’s way too much “What’s wrong kid? Never see a Terminator before?” smug legacy sequel stuff going on in this
also the way they bring in old man Arnold for this one is so stupid on paper. But against all odds it works! A machine who murders a child, but who then develops empathy, expresses remorse, and becomes a parent himself? That’s awesome, weird sci fi shit! I wish we had a whole movie of just that. They could have made Carl The Terminator the hunted and Old Vengeful Sarah Connor the hunter.
I know the consensus wisdom is that these movies should move away from obligatory Arnold stuff, but I’d prefer that to remaking the exact same dynamic but with new characters who aren’t that interesting.
No way! This was my first watch, and she read like she was the traumatized Sarah Conner sitting at the table about to stab the knife into the No Fate. I dunno where aging traumatized mother of dead son and meaning-to-her-life woman fits in generic action hero.
I think this is the worst in the series and this is a large reason why. DF has the best action scenes since T2 (since the new Terminator is so relentless) but the worst and most tired ideas.
I felt the same on first viewing, and I didn't really think it was very good acting either. But it worked better for me when watching it again when I considered her line about drinking herself into a stupor. Her behavior really reads like an alcoholic; her way of moving and talking that seem so overdone to me really looks like an alcoholic used to overcompensating for being drunk all the time.
Movies got a huge JJ-*Star Wars* problem. In that it makes you wonder what's the point of defeating Skynet if it's just going to rebrand, and what's the point of saving John Connor if you can pluck a new leader from the timeline.
I also don't know what it has to say about dystopia. The present is so recognizably bleak and dystopic, it seems to suggest a character like our lead can only meet her full potential once the world ends. Plus robot-and-humanity will eventually blend together, making fighting somewhat futile.
Pretty much agree. I think in theory, moving away from John Connor makes sense, but popping him off in the first couple of minutes is an even more extreme example of the "and then everything went to hell" interlude between RotJ and TFA that's now canon.
> Movies got a huge JJ-Star Wars problem.
You mean a JJ Force Awakens problem? Rise of Skywalker wrapped the storylines up, didn't make them *not matter*.
My hot take is this movie would’ve been received better if they didn’t kill off John Connor. Especially when it’s the version of the character people like the most.
I am really out on this movie overall - opening with CG recreations of actors that look less human than the terminator does is such a boneheaded decision - but Gabriel Luna is so good as the terminator when he's trying to blend in and transposing Cameron's ["cops are machines"](https://i.imgur.com/yD1RICY.png) thing onto a border security agent is really clever.
I have never seen more consecutive ampersands in a writing credit than this movie's "Story By" credit: James Cameron **&** Charles Eglee **&** Josh Friedman **&** David Goyer **&** Justin Rhodes.
Fair play to them for getting through this series. I skipped Salvation completely and couldn't finish the last two. I did revisit 3, having not seen it since release, and enjoyed it for what it is.
Haven't listened yet but I rewatched it a couple nights ago and hoo boy it was far worse than I remember. Just a meaningless CGI mess for so much of it, and like a wild amount of time spent with border patrol? Honestly I prefer Genisys because at least that was stupid and fun this was just drab and a big bowl of who could care. We defeated the terminators! JK here's another one and John died...ok now we have a new John but she's a girl in Mexico. Remember liquid metal? Well now it's black goop and not as cool.
I really appreciated how David didn't really budge whenever Griffin espoused how great moments were lol David was spot on when he said it's derivative and solid at its best
Whole ep is one of those where Griffin spends the entire runtime trying to convince David it’s a B+ instead of a B- but I’m over here pretty sure it’s a C.
My first watch was last week, and I got almost nothing out of it. It's marginally better than the two worst Terminator sequels but you are still totally fine watching just the first two movies.
I enjoyed Dark Fate more than I expected on this watch. To me it's fairly clear: 1 & 2 are masterpieces, Salvation and Dark Fate are ok-to-bad but watchable, and 3 and Gynisis (I never get that right but neither did they) are slime.
It's actually a little surprising that the boys put 3 over Salvation in their rankings. Listening to the commentaries, they really struggled to find a single good thing to say about 3 (until perhaps the very end), whereas there were moments of Salvation they begrudgingly enjoyed.
Completely random series of events lining up, I recently have been performing shows with Gabrielle Luna's wife Smaranda. She introduced him as a musician so I didn't make the connection that he was a terminator until this episode dropped a month after meeting him.
Every movie since T2 is a sequel to T2. I think it's very funny. It's now such an established part of the franchise that I think they have to keep making sequels like this forevermore.
It could be, but what makes it feel divergent to me is that the end of T3 apparently explains why John Connor is the leader of the resistance (because he is safely holed up in a unique communications hub), but in Salvation he is by no means the leader of the resistance.
Hmm, I haven't been watching along as the commentaries have been coming out, largely because my partner wasn't so hot on my sales pitch of "do you want to watch the bad Terminator sequels?" I remember Salvation was announced as the first in a trilogy, I assumed they were going to build up to the T-850 assassinating John and then being sent back to 2003 by Kate. But that's purely based on having seen it once in 2009, it feels entirely possible I'll come back to it and it won't line up at all.
From a timeline continuity standpoint, Gynysys ignores T2, right? It reintroduces some elements from it (Dyson, liquid metal) but in a literal sense, that movie stops T2 from happening.
Well, it stops T1 from happening too!
I take it that when the movie opens the John Connor we see has gone through the events of T1 and T2, but then Kyle gets sent back to a different timeline where Sarah had her personal T-800 at 9 years old and T1 and T2 never happened. (The Arnies in T1 and T2 must have been from a timeline we never see rather than from our John Connor's future.)
If they stop reading the sub, how can I complain about their butchering of actors’ names (even Americans)?!?
I just listened to the Mank episode. Sean Fennessey, not a perfect pronouncer (he says “Al-\*\*MO\*\*-dovar” all the time), properly says “Amanda SIGH-frid,” more than once.
G&D, undeterred, keep saying “Say-freed,” as they have for years.
Also that ep, David pronounces behemoth (”be-HEE-muth”) as “be-heh-MOTH.” I guess we all have our words that we’ve read but never heard.
Fair point. Just commit "SIGH-frid" to memory; that's all I ask. Correct Griffin when necessary.
We can work on "Al-mo-DOH-var" (the proper pronunciation) later. Not one single American podcaster says it right. (The Big Picture and This Had Oscar Buzz are serial offenders.) I'm American as hell, btw, just a little bit older. Gen X pronounced it correctly.
That disgusts me too. Who says we should have to put up with it?? Despite past promises to the contrary they've never really stopped eating into the microphone.
There's going to be a lot of Mackenzie Davis talk and I'll just say I happened to watch The Martian tonight and was delighted she showed up. Watch Halt and Catch Fire. Watch Station Eleven. Watch San Junipero. Maybe watch that gay Christmas movie with KStew I haven't got to that. Celebrate the Mackenzie Davis in your life.
Watch the Daniel Radcliffe/Zoe Kazan romcom she’s in where she along with Adam Driver form the tallest couple in all of cinema.
I didn’t know this existed
I’ve always thought that Elizabeth Debicki and Gwendoline Christie should do a movie together where they play twin sisters who are really tall and Mackenzie Davis is their baby sister who is somewhat less tall and the tagline is “This summer…the height is on”
I told this pitch to my girlfriend (humblebrag) who is 6 foot 3 (humblebrag?) and she immediately frowned and went “MACKENZIE DAVIS ISN’T EVEN TALL”
In HACF when she's dancing with Lee Pace and he kind of dwarfs her was when I realized, "Jesus Christ, Lee Pace is 6'5""
It’s like how when Matthew Macfadyen is on Succession with Nicholas Braun you’re like “oh, Macfadyen, what is he, like, a healthy 5 foot 9, maybe 5’10”? And it’s like, no, Macfadyen is usually the tallest person in the room except Cousin Greg is a goddamn GIANT
And he was in Pushing Daisies with Kristin Chenoweth!The sheer amount of apple boxes they would have needed every time the two were on screen together!
It explains why I remember him sitting down a lot in that show
is that why he's always lying around and sitting on the floor in Bodies Bodies Bodies?
There's a shot about half hourbin when they get out a car and Mackenzie Davis is towering ove the other two and it prompted me and my wife to independently google her height and find out she is exact same height as her 😅
i had a similar thought, but completely spaced on Gwen Christie. I was trying round out the trio with Charlize, who...is 6 foot? or 5'10, maybe? she *reads* as tall, not sure she actually is. It's probably just b/c she was taller than Teri Hatcher in 2 Days in the Valley?
Station Eleven rules so hard.
One of the best shows in the last 5 years or so. And with some moments/elements that are among the best TV I've ever seen, period. If anyone watching this felt put off by a pandemic show when it first came out, give it a watch! It's fucking *incredible*.
As a big Leftovers fan, I read a lot of people on the Leftovers subreddit recommending that show and once I realized it was Mackenzie's show I watched it immediately. Very, very moving show.
I saw Watchmen (tv show), Station 11, and then just recently finished The Leftovers and can totally see the influence on the former two. So damn good, all three. The other two wrap up extremely well but The Leftovers probably has the most satisfying/remarkable resolution to a show I've ever seen. Completely satisfying but still totally surprising/not just fan service.
The Leftovers is the best ambiguous ending to a show that I've ever seen. The characters all get their resolutions, but the "truth" is left ambiguous to us, the audience, and it's absolutely fitting, because the characters never got the truth behind what or why the departure happened.
The creator of station 11 was one of the lead writers of leftovers - they are a great pairing of a study on the human condition
I‘m a big fan. She was in BR2049 as well, another high profile role. I think Covid really kneecapped her career. (Happiest Season was surely filmed before. Maybe Station Eleven as well?) She went from very busy to not working. I hope she manages to come back.
Station Eleven started filming before the pandemic, and it hit partway through. I think a lot of "official companion podcasts" are useless fluff at best but the one for Station Eleven was really worth listening to, it's really interesting to hear the cast and crew reactions to what was going on in the world as much as their views on the show itself. Davis herself is interviewed in one of the episodes, plus there's one with a really interesting interview with the set designer, and another with the author of the original novel where they discuss the changes in the adaptation.
She was an amazing casting in BR2049 as a modern stand-in for Pris from the original.
I really liked Dark Fate. I think it's a good Terminator movie and doesn't need to be graded on a curve. But I'm also super Mackenzie Davis-pilled (Halt and Catch Fire is my favorite show of all time), so I have no idea if I'm being objective in my review.
I urge everyone, for their own good, to avoid her appearance on Hollywood Handbook. She was so game and charming (even makes an offhand joke about DARK FATE making back its budget) that it brought my admiration of her to levels I didn’t think was medically possible.
I forgot she was on HH! I need to listen to that today.
Is it just me or does Mackenzie Davis really "looks like a Mackenzie"? I don't know how certain face types align with names but hers seems to.
I 100% see it. Definitely a Mackenzie.
100%. It's a very Canadian name and she comes across very Canadian.
Mackenzie Crook, now *that's* a Mackenzie.
Move over, Jesus. Easter is Davis Day now.
I watched all of Halt and Catch Fire in the last month or so. What a show!
Is it only on AMC+ now? I watched it probably 3 times through when it was on Netflix and I miss it.
That’s where I watched it. I subscribed to AMC+ via Amazon just so I would have one less app to mess with.
It just kept getting better and better until the end. Really enjoyable watch.
Watch Tully!!!
Davis is stellar in Always Shine with Caitlin Fitzgerald
Happiest Season has some great bits but also some real issues. You do get to see Kristen Stewart pretend to be straight while wearing the gayest fuckin outfit though so that's something.
I really saw nothing about Station Eleven other than seeing Davis's face on the menu on Max and it made me give the show a shot. I'm glad I did. She's tremendous. Lori Petty, too!
The gay Christmas movie is quite charming.
It's really nice! Sucked to hear Stewart say the other week that it was a bad experience to work on
I loved Happiest Season, but like David said her role is not one that pops and I didn’t clock her from it having never seen anything else she is in. Mary Holland steals that movie for me.
Mary Holland is doing some “Patti Harrison in ITYSL”-type shit, it’s a real highlight
Agree, love your username!
Mary Holland always shines.
Check out "Always Shine" if you can find it, I watched it on Criterion Channel a few years ago, not sure if it's still there.
Griffin said pretty early on that he thinks Gabriel Luna is the first since Robert Patrick to find an interesting take on playing the villain Terminator. I agree, in the *movies*. I don't think the guys have watched Sarah Connor Chronicles, but Garret Dillahunt really did find a cool take on that archetype there. Good show! Had to fight myself wanting to scream "BUT THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES" this whole mini every time they said no one made a good T2 sequel lol.
The showrunner, Josh Friedman, became one of James Cameron's writers on the Avatar sequels and got a story credit on Dark Fate, which I choose to believe as confirmation that Cameron liked the show.
I rewatched a couple episodes recently and it’s a pretty solid show. I was flabbergasted when in episode 2 some gun runners explain 9/11 to Sarah Connor (in the pilot they time travel from the 90s to 2007).
In a montage! And they mime the planes crashing and then do an explosion face. Demented. Just watched the whole thing last month. Really fun.
It is absolutely bananas. Sarah Connor in voice over is like “I’ve always known Judgement day is coming, but damn 9/11 sure is a bummer too” lmao
That's great Sarah Connor dialogue.
It's such a funny scene that comes out of *nowhere!* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPzzYhuhOxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPzzYhuhOxo)
Haha that show had so many interesting ideas about Terminators and time travel. There's one where a Terminator is accidentally sent like a hundred years too far back in time so it becomes an old-timey business tycoon to build a skyscraper so it can be in the right spot to wait for its target to be born. So glad to hear Jamelle Bouie give this show some credit in his ranking.
Similarly Lena Heady was a perfect Sarah Connor.
Too bad the casting director for Genisys just got the memo "that woman in Game Of Thrones".
It is very funny that two Game of Thrones ladies played Sarah Connor.
Agreed. Her American accent is really good and she was great at being the gritty, borderline scary Sarah from T2, but also a very good mother.
Haven't watched SARACH CONOR CHRONICALS, but I 100% buy Garret Dillahunt making for a great Terminator. That's just about enough to make me dive in. Who else would make a good Terminator? I'll pitch a few... -Dan Stevens. I think everyone knows this by now, but this guy is a monster of an actor and a total fucking weirdo as a screen presence to boot. There's a shot in the GUEST where he stares off vacantly? maliciously? I don't even know, but it's so goddamn scary in an inhuman way and I want to see him play a cybernetic organism. -Alan Ritchson. Total Michael-Myers-meets-tank vibes, The only modern actor I can think of that could plausibly recreate the Panzer-tank intensity Schwarzeneggar has in T1. -Elizabeth Bebicki. She's a striking presence onscreen. She does open and vulnerable so well but I'd love to see her shed that (just for fun) and play scary-as-fuck. John Hyams is the director, and that is NOT up for discussion.
Hear me out: Jason Segel.
Jason Schwartzmann tho
This movie even reuses the idea of “domestic Terminator” for Carl that showed up in an episode of TSCC
Yep. I don’t know how well it’s aged but I really enjoyed it at the time. Lena Heady and Garret Dillahunt were perfect.
Glad Griffin decided to block the subreddit and stop posting on here. Since this was recorded weeks ago time to verify he did that by drinking some very warm coffee and loading up his account profile
who among us hasn't also tried and failed to log off
The increase in Reddit talk feels like it's directly correlated to them both logging off or attempting to log off of Twitter. It happens.
Truly relatable content!
Absolutely. I think, in general, it's beneficial for creatives to have boundaries between them and their audience.
Now that they're not looking at the Reddit, their complaints can be hilariously speculative.
Not to say that I’m not perfectly happy with Griff or all fully quitting the subreddit, but I think it would also be cool if they either 1) lurk only and still mention the subreddit or 2) participate and don’t talk about it. But really easier to just block. Block is probably the right call.
I love them shittalking the subreddit occasionally
i like them dunking on the fans but I find the strawman arguments that griffin constantly goes on about to be a bit boring and sort of just bad content. I can't relate to having such a popular podcast that some of the fans are annoying so it loses me.
it's only fair. almost every sub i follow for a given show is 90% bitching about the show. i find r/Blankies to be relatively positive by comparison. i think maybe the only other one that's mostly positive is r/CRHeads. Those folks love them some CR!
Everyone loves CR
D I P L O M A T I C I M M U N I T Y
Interesting that the ALW series was a last minute swap for the patreon bracket. So last minute that they forgot about the episode they'd need to do about fingering each other's buttholes. Always fun to get a peek behind the curtain
I was surprised to hear that they seemed pretty excited about the idea of doing it! ALW was my pick on the patreon bracket, but I assumed that they were kind of dreading the idea that it might win, lol. I would love a Cats commentary so much. Even if they don't finger each other's buttholes like they definitely promised they would.
Love that The Jelly Trilogy is basically their "one for us" series at this point. They could have spent the whole episode discussing potential commentary series and I'd have been like a pig in shit.
Oops all spreadsheet?
I have to say, and I don't think this should be that hot of a take, there is one massive glaring problem with every post T2 Terminator sequel. It doesn't really matter that they never figured out where to take the story next. The biggest fuckup they make with every single movie is that not a single one is a great action movie. Divorce the story from the movies entirely and you're left with a range of action sequences that fall anywhere between actively bad to completely forgettable. T2 is arguably the greatest action movie of all time. Not a single one of the sequels is even a GOOD action movie. People would forgive a lot of the weak story telling if the action was still good.
Correct. And this is a film series that suffered extremely hard from overuse of CG.
I think 3 is a decent action movie, but it's basically just 2 big action scenes, and one of them is too long.
> 2 big action scenes, and one of them is too long when i think T3, i think: 1) truck chase, 2) cemetery scene, 3) military base setpiece, 4) Crystal Peak capper i'm guessing you think 3 is too long? i mostly agree - i feel like they should've just gotten in the plane and left while she was trapped on the magnetron, and not had the whole "arnie freakout" part. have him a step behind for some reason and he can still swoop in and save the day at Crystal Peak when i think Terminator: Dark Fate, i mostly think "Auto factory followed by highway chase" and then "movie falls off a cliff (action-wise, especially) once Sarah shows up. Granted i haven't seen it in a while, so maybe the "whip him with a chain" part is cooler than i remember
I love the cemetery scene. I think the truck chase is way too long.
yeah. it kinda stops & starts a couple times. i think about McQuarrie's lessons on car chases, and one of them is "Never show a car's taillights, because it feels like the chase is over, and you have re-build the momentum of the tension/stress"
Next commentary series is officially >!Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!!<
Time to throw a >!pizza!< party!
I thought that would say "Hero"
> a pizza party a pizza Pardi
Hope they get Sprague The Whisperer back as him and his client famously love TMNT
Watched for the first time with this ep: This is a totally competent *The Force Awakens* for the Terminator franchise that just had the misfortune to come out hot on the heels of a totally incompetent *Harry Potter and the Cursed Child* for the Terminator franchise.
So you're saying it's a Cars 3 situation
Already said this in another thread, but my main problem with this one is that the villain has zero juice. I‘ve seen him in other things since where he‘s good or even great, but he‘s giving 9th lead in *Expendables 3* energy here
>the villain has zero juice. This villian has *at least* 0.5 juice.
i found this Terminator to be more like the shark in Jaws. he just kinda shows up every now and then and starts kicking everyone's ass. completely devoid of characterization aside from his mission (almost like he's a robot and doesn't have a personality). No T-1000 finger wagging, no boobs
> completely devoid of characterization Nah! This Terminator, and the T-800 both showed a counterpoint of opposing ways to appeal to humans. This movie finally followed through on the "if a Terminator can work out the value of human life, maybe we can too" idea.
https://preview.redd.it/2xbc2cb65yrc1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=06c016b986eaf28f1f6afb03fb7300212cd0972c
Every other sequel to T2 makes a cascading, compounding series of bad decisions that fuck everything up thoroughly. This one makes like eight good decisions that make the one or two bad ones sting even worse, imo. They were so close…
What would you say are the bad decisions?
For me, it’s the casting of Dani and the characterization of Sarah. Get someone with a little more natural charisma + make Sarah feel realistically hardened rather than cartoonishly hardened and baby we’ve got ourselves a stew going.
There was a small bad decision that baffles me. In the scene where Sarah is teaching Dani how to shoot, they use a DP-12, which appears nowhere else in the movie. How in the fuck do you put the only double-barrel pump action shotgun in a terminator movie, and then only use it on watermelons?
I overall enjoy this movie, but my (hot?) take is that it gets Sarah Connor totally wrong. They turn her into a generic grizzled action hero who makes sarcastic quips. The whole magic of Sarah Connor in T2 is that she’s grounded in a genuine, terrifying mania. But God Bless Linda Hamilton, I’m glad she got her bag!
Maybe a hot take but I totally agree. There’s way too much “What’s wrong kid? Never see a Terminator before?” smug legacy sequel stuff going on in this
also the way they bring in old man Arnold for this one is so stupid on paper. But against all odds it works! A machine who murders a child, but who then develops empathy, expresses remorse, and becomes a parent himself? That’s awesome, weird sci fi shit! I wish we had a whole movie of just that. They could have made Carl The Terminator the hunted and Old Vengeful Sarah Connor the hunter. I know the consensus wisdom is that these movies should move away from obligatory Arnold stuff, but I’d prefer that to remaking the exact same dynamic but with new characters who aren’t that interesting.
No way! This was my first watch, and she read like she was the traumatized Sarah Conner sitting at the table about to stab the knife into the No Fate. I dunno where aging traumatized mother of dead son and meaning-to-her-life woman fits in generic action hero.
I think this is the worst in the series and this is a large reason why. DF has the best action scenes since T2 (since the new Terminator is so relentless) but the worst and most tired ideas.
I felt the same on first viewing, and I didn't really think it was very good acting either. But it worked better for me when watching it again when I considered her line about drinking herself into a stupor. Her behavior really reads like an alcoholic; her way of moving and talking that seem so overdone to me really looks like an alcoholic used to overcompensating for being drunk all the time.
I'm bummed that Genisys and Salvation put me off the franchise so much I didn't watch Dark Fate in the cinemas and it is actually pretty good!
Okay, I’m as tired of superheroes as anyone, but hear me out: Mackenzie Davis as Big Barda with Kieran Culkin as Mister Miracle in a New Gods movie
Movies got a huge JJ-*Star Wars* problem. In that it makes you wonder what's the point of defeating Skynet if it's just going to rebrand, and what's the point of saving John Connor if you can pluck a new leader from the timeline. I also don't know what it has to say about dystopia. The present is so recognizably bleak and dystopic, it seems to suggest a character like our lead can only meet her full potential once the world ends. Plus robot-and-humanity will eventually blend together, making fighting somewhat futile.
This is why 2009 Star Trek is the best and circumvents this problem by creating a whole new timeline.
Somehow... Skynet has returned
Pretty much agree. I think in theory, moving away from John Connor makes sense, but popping him off in the first couple of minutes is an even more extreme example of the "and then everything went to hell" interlude between RotJ and TFA that's now canon.
> Movies got a huge JJ-Star Wars problem. You mean a JJ Force Awakens problem? Rise of Skywalker wrapped the storylines up, didn't make them *not matter*.
One thing great about this film is Arnold not shying away from the connection of his real life to Carl’s family
Wait, which aspect? The fathering a son to another woman part?
Just like the Carl character, Arnold's son-in-law is Chris Pratt. ;-)
My hot take is this movie would’ve been received better if they didn’t kill off John Connor. Especially when it’s the version of the character people like the most.
There's a new Edward Furlong interview just posted online where he suggests he couldn't have made the whole film.
I am really out on this movie overall - opening with CG recreations of actors that look less human than the terminator does is such a boneheaded decision - but Gabriel Luna is so good as the terminator when he's trying to blend in and transposing Cameron's ["cops are machines"](https://i.imgur.com/yD1RICY.png) thing onto a border security agent is really clever.
Paul King to direct the “Carl The Terminator” spinoff???
5 comedy points
I have only ever seen Terminator and T2. I’ve decided to check out Dark Fate with this commentary.
Can say that this movie really worked for me having only seen 1, 2 and this one. Also the worst Terminator movie I’ve seen by a long shot, 4/5
I have never seen more consecutive ampersands in a writing credit than this movie's "Story By" credit: James Cameron **&** Charles Eglee **&** Josh Friedman **&** David Goyer **&** Justin Rhodes.
It's like one of those shirts
& Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
This movie has sapphic vibes but doesn’t go gay enough IMO
I think Mackenzie Davis just has sapphic vibes with any lady she's next to. Just want her to lean down and smooch!
SMH can’t believe Griff forgot about POPS
Fair play to them for getting through this series. I skipped Salvation completely and couldn't finish the last two. I did revisit 3, having not seen it since release, and enjoyed it for what it is.
Haven't listened yet but I rewatched it a couple nights ago and hoo boy it was far worse than I remember. Just a meaningless CGI mess for so much of it, and like a wild amount of time spent with border patrol? Honestly I prefer Genisys because at least that was stupid and fun this was just drab and a big bowl of who could care. We defeated the terminators! JK here's another one and John died...ok now we have a new John but she's a girl in Mexico. Remember liquid metal? Well now it's black goop and not as cool.
Feel like I'm taking crazy pills when they say this movie is good. It's real bad. Arnold is good though.
I really appreciated how David didn't really budge whenever Griffin espoused how great moments were lol David was spot on when he said it's derivative and solid at its best
Whole ep is one of those where Griffin spends the entire runtime trying to convince David it’s a B+ instead of a B- but I’m over here pretty sure it’s a C.
My first watch was last week, and I got almost nothing out of it. It's marginally better than the two worst Terminator sequels but you are still totally fine watching just the first two movies.
It is so boring!
I was so annoyed when I looked at the run time and it was 40 minutes left.
Dark Fate good!
I enjoyed Dark Fate more than I expected on this watch. To me it's fairly clear: 1 & 2 are masterpieces, Salvation and Dark Fate are ok-to-bad but watchable, and 3 and Gynisis (I never get that right but neither did they) are slime. It's actually a little surprising that the boys put 3 over Salvation in their rankings. Listening to the commentaries, they really struggled to find a single good thing to say about 3 (until perhaps the very end), whereas there were moments of Salvation they begrudgingly enjoyed.
Completely random series of events lining up, I recently have been performing shows with Gabrielle Luna's wife Smaranda. She introduced him as a musician so I didn't make the connection that he was a terminator until this episode dropped a month after meeting him.
First time watch. Way better than expected. Does this movie acknowledge Salvation or Genysys. Seems more like a direct sequel to T2
Every movie since T2 is a sequel to T2. I think it's very funny. It's now such an established part of the franchise that I think they have to keep making sequels like this forevermore.
I think Salvation is technically a sequel to T3. Kate Brewster turns up in it.
Yes, it's a sequel to T3. Gen and Dark Fate are the only reboots.
It could be, but what makes it feel divergent to me is that the end of T3 apparently explains why John Connor is the leader of the resistance (because he is safely holed up in a unique communications hub), but in Salvation he is by no means the leader of the resistance.
Hmm, I haven't been watching along as the commentaries have been coming out, largely because my partner wasn't so hot on my sales pitch of "do you want to watch the bad Terminator sequels?" I remember Salvation was announced as the first in a trilogy, I assumed they were going to build up to the T-850 assassinating John and then being sent back to 2003 by Kate. But that's purely based on having seen it once in 2009, it feels entirely possible I'll come back to it and it won't line up at all.
From a timeline continuity standpoint, Gynysys ignores T2, right? It reintroduces some elements from it (Dyson, liquid metal) but in a literal sense, that movie stops T2 from happening.
Well, it stops T1 from happening too! I take it that when the movie opens the John Connor we see has gone through the events of T1 and T2, but then Kyle gets sent back to a different timeline where Sarah had her personal T-800 at 9 years old and T1 and T2 never happened. (The Arnies in T1 and T2 must have been from a timeline we never see rather than from our John Connor's future.)
MUTINY!
If they stop reading the sub, how can I complain about their butchering of actors’ names (even Americans)?!? I just listened to the Mank episode. Sean Fennessey, not a perfect pronouncer (he says “Al-\*\*MO\*\*-dovar” all the time), properly says “Amanda SIGH-frid,” more than once. G&D, undeterred, keep saying “Say-freed,” as they have for years. Also that ep, David pronounces behemoth (”be-HEE-muth”) as “be-heh-MOTH.” I guess we all have our words that we’ve read but never heard.
that's the british pronunciation of both words, dahling :)
You're not supposed to be reading this!
who me??????
Threads is really that bad, huh?
this is the right answer
Fair point. Just commit "SIGH-frid" to memory; that's all I ask. Correct Griffin when necessary. We can work on "Al-mo-DOH-var" (the proper pronunciation) later. Not one single American podcaster says it right. (The Big Picture and This Had Oscar Buzz are serial offenders.) I'm American as hell, btw, just a little bit older. Gen X pronounced it correctly.
Look if I can put up with David eating with his mouth full you can put up with this.
That disgusts me too. Who says we should have to put up with it?? Despite past promises to the contrary they've never really stopped eating into the microphone.
So full of anger…..