Zack Snyder's Justice League Review

 

I LOVED this. I didn't think I would have the attention span to sit through four hours of movie, but I was very wrong. This movie was so good, I forgive Warner Brothers for Justice League. 

 

Watching the original cut of Justice League was the worst film-going experience I've had to date. I left the theater in the middle of the movie to get food. That's how monumentally boring it was.  That movie was so bad, I vividly remember leaving the theater after it was over. When the movie was over and the five of us watching walked out, we were all looking at the floor confused. And one guy looked at me in the face, and said with confusion in his voice, and an uneaten bag of popcorn in his hand ,"That was bad." And me and the four other people all said "Yes, it was." Everyone was very disappointed and confused. I wish I was exaggerating. Five random people bonded, albeit for seconds, over a bad movie. That's how mind-boggingly bad that movie was. I enjoyed the overpriced theater hotdog I ate during the movie, more than watching the movie. I was so mad when I got home, I unironically wanted my money back. Like no joke, I didn't even feel like I had watched a movie. And every opportunity I've had to watch Justice League again, I've turned down. And I've watched Suicide Squad three times. I've watched Birds of Prey, twice.

I always thought about how much of a monumental failure it was, to put the world's first superhero team on the big-screen, and make a bad movie. Everyone know the Justice League. Even my 50-year old Dad who hasn't watched TV or read anything but a Bible in thirty years, watched the Super-Friends when he was a kid. My grandparents read Superman and Batman comics as children. How the hell do you make a bad movie with iconic characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash? The odds HAVE to be against you. You have to actively be trying to make that movie bad. That's the difference between Justice League and the other bad DCEU movies. The other ones are just shitty superhero movies. Justice League is a catastrophic failure of American Cinema.

The Synder Cut erases all of that. Everything that was wrong with Justice League is fixed. The terrible CGI? Fixed. The lack of character motivations? Fixed. The horrendously bad dialogue and out of place humor? Mostly fixed. This is still a Zack Snyder film...

Zack "Batman Could Get Raped In My Movies" Snyder

This movie works as a follow up to Batman v. Superman. And now, it is a true Justice League movie, instead of six losers screwing around until Superman shows up.

And so I don't completely sound like a fanboy, there were some cons. The aspect ratio was weird as hell. Don't get me wrong, the movie looked beautiful but if you watch this movie on your phone,  you can't make it full-screen. And this being a Zack Snyder movie, everything is either grey, black, or dark blue. And I mean EVERYTHING. Some scenes were so goddamn dark I couldn't see anything. 

 

 

And that Knightmare scene was god-awful, for one reason...

I love Jared Leto. He's one of the most talented actors working, today and he's an amazing singer and frontman. Hell, he could probably write a better review of this movie than I could, too. Jared Leto is insanely good at damn near everything he does. But he is dog-shit as the Joker. He's awkward. His weird laugh sounds forced. None of his dialogue sounds like anything the Joker as he's presented in any other medium would say. (Hell, half of his lines don't sound like anything, anyone would say.) And he's visibly way younger than Batman. I'm fully aware that Jared Leto is probably going to jump off a building if we don't give him a Joker movie, but did he really need to be in THIS movie?

Also, I couldn't help but notice that Jared Leto filmed his scenes separately from everyone else. Whenever both Batman and the Joker were both supposed to be on screen at the same time, instead of having them stand together, you'd just see the arms, or the back of an obvious double. I don't normally notice stuff like that, but Snyder didn't do a good job editing that scene.

 

I maintain that the only good that ever came out of having Jared Leto as the Joker is Purple Lamborghini...

Also, maybe it's just been awhile since I've seen Man of Steel, but General Swanwick being Martian Manhunter was really jarring. I know it was the plan from the start, but narratively it seems like it comes out of nowhere.

"Are you effing stupid?" - Martian Manhunter, benevolent protector of the Earth.

 

 

 

 I just can't see the hot-headed angry General from Man of Steel being the cool, calm, and collected alien with an Oreo food-fetish.

 

Also wouldn't that mean he sat by and didn't do shit while Earth was being invaded by aliens? Three times? While being a massively superpowered alien, himself? He watched aliens ram a spaceship through a metropolitan city killing thousands, and he let his own soldiers kamikaze into them, instead of stopping them. Which he was fully capable of doing. Discharge this guy from the military and deport him back to Mars.

Either way, The Snyder Cut was probably the best thing I've seen all year. Let's see if Falcon and the Winter Soldier can top it...

© All images and videos included are the property of Warner Bros and its subsidiaries.

My Thoughts On WandaVision

 

As a whole, this was an okay show. There were a lot of moments that referenced the stories I grew up on like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M. And as a never-ending cycle of on-the-nose easter-eggs, it was enjoyable. The story was a bit of a closed circle and inconsequential.

 

Wanda is more powerful. There's probably another Vision running around out there. Photon is in the MCU. We got to see people coming back after the Snap. We got to see Wanda and Pietro's childhood. The MCU is basically at the starting point of Avengers: Disassembled, and if they go through with that arc, all but one of the Young Avengers are here now, too. This was a good world-building exercise.

Let's start with the pros -

 

It was awesome to see Evan Peters as Quicksilver in the MCU, even if he was just a random guy. (Which I'm not totally buying. I don't believe the man who tried to get Hugh Jackman's Wolverine onto the set of the first Spider-Man would just hint at the Multiverse as a throwaway gag.)

I like the way that they established that it probably wasn't the mind stone that gave Wanda her powers. I like that Darcy was utilized properly. She always felt out of place in the Thor movies, since they tried to use her as comic relief. She would say stuff that messed up the tone of the scene and it was usually more annoying than funny. 

 

 

But using her here felt way more sensible. She's written as being aware of how annoying she is, and that makes her snarkiness and terrible sense of humor more bearable. I don't think anyone has ever cared about Monica Rambeau. She's been an Avenger since the 70's, and has never done anything significant. And Captain Marvel was the weakest MCU movie, literally no one is hyped that there's going to be a sequel.

Hayward is a terrible character. Hayward's nonsensical lack of motivation really hearkens back to the early MCU days of poorly-written villains, like Abomination and Yellow Jacket. And when we've had villains like Thanos, Baron Zemo, and Ego, these kinds of cartoonishly bad antagonists just pull you out of the story. And this is made even worse by the fact that we've had far more time than usual to develop Hayward's character. I don't see the guy we met in Episode 4, shooting at some children, super-powered or not. Especially not after we see him acting somewhat empathetic in Episode 8.

 

The fact that this is the same Universe, makes Hayward look even worse...

 

I'm not forgetting Agatha Harness, she just also didn't really do much, either. I can at least say that Hayward and SWORD were scared after Thanos, and wanted to use Vision as a defense mechanism. Agatha Harkness is just evil. But why? We've seen witches in the MCU before, and they weren't evil. This isn't a comic book. People can't just be evil for no reason...

Also, the "Agnes is Agatha" twist was very obvious and that song was goddamn annoying. 

But goddamn, Kathryn Hahn is stunning...

A lot of times, I actually found myself saying "This show isn't really for the fans." It was like the exact opposite of Endgame or Guardians of the Galaxy, which are just nonstop fanservice. This was just a linear predictable tale, with a few easter eggs thrown in to keep the nerds happy. The only thing this show did that caught me off guard was having Evan Peters as Quicksilver. The rest of it was very predictable. Including Vision still being dead, Wanda not getting to actually keep her kids, and the name "Scarlet Witch" being bestowed upon Wanda. I could see it all coming from a mile away...

 

 Plus they didn't even have the balls to kill the kids off the original way...

This series was just meh...

 

All Pictures and Videos used are © Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios

 

I'm Going To Private Those Old Posts

      When I first started this blog, it was a way for me to archive the daily journal entries that I'd write. (Because they were hilarious.) Anyone that has read this blog within the past two years, or looked at the sidebar knows that purpose did not last for long. But when I was writing those old posts I was a dogmatic, ritualistic kid who was obsessed with processes (You'll see that if you read even one of those old posts.)  And I wound up making posting on this blog a daily commitment. 

And I was posting about nothing important. Nothing that was important to anyone but me. And in the place I am now, some of that shit is a bit personal and embarrassing. I write about music, and sometimes politics. You don't need to be able to click through the sidebar and see an eighteen-year old me ranting about how much he hates school. And quite frankly, I don't want that stuff on the internet, even if some weirdo wants to read it. 

     I'm going to be taking down the more embarrassing and awkward posts. This place didn't take off until I started reviewing music anyway, so if you're the weirdo who was reading those posts at 2 AM, I'm sorry, bro, but no more of that shit. 

 

Anyways. Ciao.

 

 

 

- Joe

Fucked Up Reference in LEGO DC Supervillains?

Lately, I've had a lot more free time (Yes, the song reviews are coming back, shut up.) So I've been entertaining my inner child and playing a few LEGO games. And I know I don't usually write about videogames but I've been consistently seeing mean-spirited, fucked up shit in this one game; Lego DC Supervillains.

Like in one mission you have to help this henchman do acrobatics so he can bust out of jail. And after five minutes of walking tightropes, jumping off platformer and fighting cops you've bonded with this dude. And then this shit happens. (Watch it with the audio turned off. It makes it way more fucked up.)

 

Yeah, that guy gets killed and the game doesn't even acknowledge it. Usually when you beat  someone up in this game they lie on the ground with cartoon stars circling around their head. The game tries to emphasize that they aren't dead, and you're not a murderer. I jumped down there and didn't see anything. That guy just blew up and died. Fuck him, I guess.

Before that, there's another guy dressed up like Evel Knievel who's going to motorcycle ramp into the prison. As you fix up his bike you find out it's because he's trying to break out his friend. And so you fix up the bike and the guy chickens out. So you ride the cycle over the ramp yourself. Take a look at what happens.

What the fuck? That guy would have died! Imagine this happening on a kids tv show. The villain smashes into a tree and dies while trying to jailbreak his friend.  What the fuck is wrong with this game? 

And I wouldn't be writing this post if inappropriately morbid shit like this didn't happen constantly in this game.

Some really fucked up highlights are having to solve a puzzle that genetically merges two guys into an alien, while they scream bloody murder and having to kill a bunch of old ladies to "test their combat abilities."

You can probably already tell with most of these things it's the implications that are messed up. A dumb kid wouldn't notice any of this. Which in my book makes it all the more messed up. Because someone wrote this stuff into a kid's game.

And now for the main attraction. All throughout the game you see posters for a movie called 'It Came From Krypton." It's clearly a parody of 50's science fiction movies except with Doomsday as the monster.

It's plastered everywhere and the NPC's even talk about it. It's a Joe Biden would say ,"A big fucking deal."

 During one mission you have to hack into a locker and you need a six-digit code to open it. If you look to your right you happen to see this poster -

It's an 'It Came From Krypton' movie poster with a release date under it that opens up the locker.

But wait did you see that date? It says '28-01-86'. (January 28, 1986 for my fellow non-Europeans.) 

That date on its own doesn't really stand out. But try asking Google Now (or whatever personal assistant you have.) what happened on January 28, 1986.

 

What the fuck??? 

Are we sure these guys should be making kids' games?

 

 

Edit: I am now aware that the date clearly says 29-01-86. Which was the day after the Challenger explosion. (Which has some weird implications in itself. Is this game trying to say Doomsday was responsible for the Challenger explosion?)  I am indeed tempted to say that this is just a coincidence, but given all the weird shit I showed you above, and the fact that no one passes up a chance to make these kind of references; nah. Also, there's the fact that this game is clearly not set in the fucking 80's. That specific date was selected for a reason. I just don't know why. Hell, maybe the designer's favorite character debuted on that day. Who knows? Am I overthinking this throwaway side-quest in a videogame for ten-year-old kids? Yes. Am I onto something? Probably...

 

All Lego DC Supervillains Images and Footage are © 2019 Warner Brothers, Interactive.

Shotgun Shuffle Song Review

Okay, so what I've done is hit the shuffle button on my songs to try to make getting through these reviews a little bit less tedious. That's probably going to mess things up in the future but it is what is. Now let's see what we're reviewing.

 

 

Okay, let's do it. 

Bruce Dickinson - The Ghost of Cain  

 © Universal Music Group

 

I like this track. Hell at this point, I think we all know that no one from Iron Maiden can do anything wrong. 

 

Well, anything too wrong... 

 

But when you break up the members shit just doesn't go right.

Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson are like the soul of Iron Maiden. As a whole, Iron Maiden is like a sports car. Bruce is the amazing paint job and Adrian is that kickass horsepower. And the rest of the guys in Maiden are like the brake system on that car. You separate them and it's a recipe for disaster. Sure, you've got something amazing for a little while. But you have no way of stopping the car when things fly off the rails. And what the hell are brakes without a car?

Pictured: The musical equivalent of brakes without a car.

And this song is a perfect example of that. It's Bruce Dickinson crooning and swooning ... about something. The lyrics don't really make much sense. It sounds amazing. But lyrically it's repetitive and it doesn't make any sense. Which is not something you could ever say about Iron Maiden. I like it, but I don't like it as much as regular Iron Maiden. 

 

Next song.

 

Ten Masked Men - Push It to the Limit

© Ten Masked Men 

 

Ten Masked Men have been making black metal covers of pop music since the 90's. They covered N'SYNC back when they were actually popular.  I like Ten Masked Men. I don't know this song, though. And most of the value of a death metal cover is how much it adds to the original song. Yes, this is a decent sounding song, as Ten Masked Men are some decent musicians. Just judging this song as a standalone song and not as a cover, it's great. It reminds of that mixture of death metal and rock that Carcass did in their early days. I could listen to this one again and again.

 

Edit: I just went back and gave the original song a listen. What in the hell was that video?

 

 

It Dies Today - Blood Stained Bed Sheets

© Trustkill Records

 

Right off the bat, this edgy fucking title turns me right the hell off. And the crazy riffing and screaming does not help. This song is pure early metalcore. It doesn't sound melodic enough to listen to for pleasure and the clean singing and weak screaming would make it a bad listen for when you're angry. And Jesus Christ, the production is so shitty, it sounds like I recorded this song off the radio. This is bad metalcore and I don't even know why I have it saved. I could've gone without ever hearing this. 

 

Intermission From Doom 

© Id Software

Are we really doing this? 

 

This song reminds of all the times I rage-quit or put on invincibility, because of how many times I'd die repeatedly on E2M3. Especially in that big fucking room towards the end with all the flashing lights. There's always an imp or an invisible fucker waiting around the corner to kill me right when I let my guard down. I can't find any pictures of it, but if you know, you know.

I don't know how I've never mentioned this here, but I've been a religious Doom player since high-school. 

 

Also, apparently Bobby Prince ripped off this Pantera track to make this song. I don't really hear it but this article IS suffering from a severe lack of Pantera.

 

 

Attack Attack! - AC-130 (Remix) 

© Rise Records

It's been so long since I've heard the original AC-130 (or listened to Attack Attack! for that matter) that I have no clue what it sounds like anymore. This remix on the other hand, sounds like Deadmau5 if he made music exclusively for the niche demographic that both take ecstasy for fun and frequent hot topic. Which is to say that it's decent. I ain't actively seeking out to listen to music like this, but it was decent background noise as I wrote about Doom for five minutes. 

Edit: I'm listening to Smokahontas as I edit this and this song has the most insane breakdown I've heard in my life. It went-  ¡El pollo no hablas English hermanos! [Bubblegum pop music] 

 

 

Chasing Safety - Far Away

© Fearless Records
 

 

Speaking of metalcore, Chasing Safety is literally one of the first metalcore bands I started listening to. And to my surprise this song still holds up. Unlike It Dies Today, the singing is decent, and the screaming is pretty nasty. It's an excellent blend of two opposite ends of the musical spectrum. Melody and chaos come together as one. And dammit, that's all it takes to make good metalcore. Not two-minute breakdowns, endless uninspired chugging and cringeworthy crab-walking...

 

All That Remains - Two Weeks

© Prosthetic Records
 

As if the universe is trying to call me out for being a lazy fuck, somehow a song from the exact review that I've been putting off for the past six months is on the shuffle list. I've written about this song three or four times but I've never actually published any of it. So here's a sneak peek of The ABC's of Song Reviewing: All That Remains Part 4 via screenshot - 

 Don't say I never did anything nice for you. 

 

Darkest Hour - Paradise

© Victory Records
 

Jesus Christ, this is a perfect way to end this review. This song sounds exactly like In Flames with a black metal vocalist. And I never knew I needed to hear that until now. And the way they let the song end with the chorus and then just two more guitar notes is the perfect formula to make you smash the replay button. (Or whatever normal people have.)

I don't have anything else to say here. I'm pretty satisfied with my awesome music collection. I don't like that there weren't any outrageous tracks (And believe me, there's some RIDICULOUS stuff, that I can't even review saved on this phone.) But I think my music player tries to push the tracks you're more likely to listen to towards the top when you hit shuffle (Which is why there was an All That Remains song in the list.) I kept scrolling down and half the shit I've never listened to was towards the middle of the list.  So maybe if I do this again, I'll shuffle, close my eyes and then scroll down for a bit. 

 

Now fuck off, I've got to add a bunch of copyright shit so this article doesn't get taken down.

 

 

Steve Harris British Lion © 2012 Parlophone Records

Iron Maiden 'The Angel and the Gambler' © 1998 EMI

Evernote Premium Can Fuck Off

So Evernote, is a note-taking service that stores your messages in the cloud. You can write notes on your phone, and then you can access those same notes from any computer, using the Evernote website. I've been using it to write my to-do lists, and to take notes for the last three years. This is not a misplaced advertisement for Evernote.

AFTER THREE YEARS OF SERVICE EVERNOTE HAS DECIDED TO START CHARGING FOR THEIR WEB SERVICE.

It used to be that you could only connect two mobile devices to Evernote and you could connect to the web anywhere without it counting towards your device limit. Which makes sense. On the phone it's an application. On the computer its just a website. You can't connect an infinite amount of phones for free. That would be ridiculous. They have to make their money, somehow. That's reasonable. 

But now after three years they're counting connecting to the website towards your two device limit. Which as I just said. since Evernote is a fucking website, makes no sense. 

But I know why they're doing this. No one wants to buy their shitty premium service, because there's no reason to. Every other month for the past three years I've been hit with "Buy Evernote Premium for $4.99 a month! This is an exclusive deal. We sure as hell won't give you the exact same deal next month!" And since none of that stupid shit worked they're deciding to start changing shit up. Which in my case is fine. I don't necessarily need to use Evernote on my Tablet. I'll stick to using it on my phone and the internet. Or I could just find another fucking service all together. Either way, Evernote just fucked itself and did the opposite of what they intended. I'm not going to buy your stupid premium. It's not worth buying. If anything, I can just use Google Docs on an infinite amount of devices for free. And guess what? Now, since I'm not going to be using Evernote on my tablet, I'm going to uninstall it. 

 

 

 

Ranking the Terminator Films, I Guess...

I was recently thinking about how amazing the first two Terminator movies are. And that train of thought got me thinking about how shitty the last few ones have been. So I decided to rank them. And I have a blog, so why not let everyone else know where these movies fall on my list. 

Alright, let's do this. Obviously from worst to best starting with -

6. Terminator Genisys

That's ... not how you spell that. Who let their 

ten-year-old name the movie?

There was a lot of amazing press for this movie. Arnie was back as the Terminator. Sarah Conor was back (and she was being played by Emilia Clarke). The T-1000 was also going to be in it. Matt Smith was going to be playing the villain. Jai Courtney was playing our favorite 80s everyman superhero Kyle Reese (Although, I don't know who was happy about that. Possibly Australians.) 

And then the movie was fucking terrible. They spoiled the big twist of the movie in all of the trailers. And the big twist was stupid as fuck. John Connor as the bad guy makes no sense. Matt Smith was in like one scene and had no lines. They cast some random Asian as the T-1000 (despite the fact that you could go to any trailer park and find like five dudes that look like Robert Patrick) and was only in one scene. Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney had as much chemistry as two drops of water. 

Remember when they first showed us this set photo at Comic-Con?

 Notice how Jai Courtney is the only one who doesn't look confused. 

I'm not going to lie to you, the only thing I remember about this movie is that something happened on a bridge. Also, old Arnie travels back to the opening of the first Terminator and kills the OG T-800. Although, I wouldn't have even remembered that if that scene didn't come up while I was looking up the director. This movie is the worst thing an action movie can be. Forgettable and boring. I honestly can't think of anything good about this movie.

5. Terminator Salvation

This movie had a lot of cool of Terminators in it. It's also the only Terminator movie that we've had set in the post-Judgement Day apocalyptic future. The scenes where the Resistance has to fight the machines are pretty dope.  It feels like Mad Max meets I-Robot (if all the robots looked like the Decepticons from Transformers.) The cast is amazing for a 2009 action movie. Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas-Howard, Anton Yelchin. All of those folks were on fire back then. Hell, Terry Crews was even in there as a dead body in one scene.

Don't ask me how I even knew that...

I would probably have loved the twist where the main character is actually a Terminator if it wasn't spoiled by the trailer. (And if it actually had any impact on the plot.) 

The movie is also, somehow, boring. Which is insane. You took the apocalyptic future scenes from the openings of Terminator 2 and 3, made them into a whole movie, and cast Batman as John Connor and it wasn't an instant classic? That's a clear cut problem. (I think the drastic tonal differences between some of the poster art accurately sums up the issue. This is the movie we could've gotten. This is the movie we got. This movie could be so much more badass than it is.)

Note From Future Joe: So I now know this film was a victim of the 2007 Writer's Strike. And in my opinion, that technically would mean there's only five Terminator movies. Despite what Hollywood tries to tell you, you can't make a movie without a writer. There was a script, but it wasn't finished by the strike and it went through so many different hands and rewrites, they might as well have been filming three different movies at once. All of a sudden, Terry Cruise's corpse but not his character being in the movie makes sense. The mismatch of cool looking posters and slow dialogue-heavy scenes makes sense. This movie isn't bad, it's just 2/3 of a movie. 

4. Terminator: Dark Fate.

This one was okay. I liked that Linda Hamilton and Arnie came back. I liked that the opening scene ties into T2. Apart from that, this movie was laughably bad. It kind of felt like this movie was trying to push a weird political agenda. The way they repeatedly emphasized Sarah and John as failures kind of felt like the movie was saying "Out with the crotchety old white people and in with the young people of color!" I think at one point, they even free everyone in an ICE detention center. The main character has asthma or something. I'm not against all of that shit, but I don't think it belongs in a Terminator movie. 

On top of all that, Linda Hamilton seemed like she didn't want to be there. A lot of her dialogue was TERRIBLE. Hell, most of the dialogue in this movie was terrible. Honestly, the only good parts of this movie are the scenes with the T-800. 

Unlike Salvation, where the worst part is when the T-800 is on screen.

Arnie saves this movie from being completely unwatchable. 

It may not make sense why I ranked it above Salvation, but if I had to rewatch one of the two, I'd pick Dark Fate in a heartbeat. I have to give it to this movie because there's an intense action scene at least every five minutes. I can't say the same for Salvation.

3. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Yeah, I haven't seen this movie in a while. I wouldn't mind watching it again though. I can't say that about the three movies that came after this. This movie is genuinely funny at times and it's arguably the very last classic Arnie movie. Nick Stahl is also always fun to watch (Have you seen Sin City? It's a shame he hasn't done more movies) and the T-X is an interesting villain. 

Although, the movie is indeed a tad bit silly. 

Just a tad bit...

The final fight is a lot more boring than a fight between two cyborg assassins from the future should be. This movie isn't bad in my opinion. In fact, it's miles ahead of all of the Terminator movies that came after it. But, it's just average. And the first two Terminator movies are anything but average. 

2. The Terminator

This is a classic. I can probably watch this movie over and over again and still enjoy it. And I love how as I got older the way I watched this movie changed. The Terminator can be viewed as a stand-alone sci-fi tinged slasher movie. Think about it. You have the emotionless, inhuman killer, who just keeps coming back. The Terminator is basically Jason Voorhees, merely sharing a scene with him is a death sentence for most characters. All of the important characters are picked off until we're left with one final girl. And this movie is from the mid-80s, the height of the slasher genre. This is a slasher movie.  

Apart from that, this is peak Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hell, this is peak Michael Biehn. The man only did like three movies and is a bonified 80s action hero. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is James Cameron's (second) best movie. Fight me. 

1. Terminator 2

Imagine you just made one of the most successful sci-fi/slasher movies of all time. Now take the villain from the first movie and make him a genuinely lovable action hero. And then replace him with another villain that's just as terrifying as the original villain was in the first movie. Then take the kid of the protagonists of the last movie and make him the main character. Also, ditch the horror undertones this time and go for straight-up action. 

Do you know how hard that would be to pull off? It would be insanely hard, and James Cameron pulled it off so well, there was nowhere else to go. 

I don't have to tell you about how awesome Terminator 2 is. This movie is a bonified American classic.

What Now?

I honestly think they should call it quits and stop making these movies. The big issue here is that none of the sequels since 2003 are even canon anymore. And all of them have been at best, mediocre movies. Another gigantic issue with the franchise has been shitass marketing. Salvation was marketed as a kid-friendly, action-packed blockbuster and its mostly pointless talking, shooting, and running in the desert. Genisys was obviously just a bad movie to begin with, but they put everything that could've redeemed it in its trailers.  And I don't even remember seeing any marketing for Dark Fate. Which is just shameful, because I'm a twenty-something nerd. You know, the exact target demographic for the goddamn movie?!? I didn't even know there was a new Terminator movie, until we got to the theater and Joker was sold out.

And not to mention, that anytime these last movies have had even a slight plot twist, the ad company made sure to put it into every trailer. 

I don't believe that Disney owns the rights to the movies, but this is one case where I think it would be better if they did. In the state this franchise is in, I don't think the House of Mouse would even attempt to make any more sequels. And if they did, they'd do a better job than Skydance. They wouldn't allow trailers that reveal key plot points. They wouldn't keep recasting everyone. They wouldn't make sequels that retcon each other. And if Disney is good at anything, it's knowing their target audience.

Honestly, the best thing to do would be to make a loose sequel to Dark Fate and move on from there. It doesn't matter if Dark Fate sucks and this new movie is going to be completely different. The Child's Play franchise is a perfect example of working around bad movies. You acknowledge the good parts of those movies, and you mock the bad parts. You don't just ignore them and start over. 

The Terminator Series is Owned by Skydance Media