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PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   395 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026

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With regards to Terminator, every time travel story ultimately has to take a firm philosophical position on whether the past is mutable or not. The original The Terminator was an enclosed, self-contained story which took the stance that the past was immutable: the ending reveals the entire story to have been a stable time loop. Terminator 2 set out to surprise audiences at every turn (oh my God, Arnie is the good guy this time!) which extended all the way to its ending and its reveal that, in stark contrast to the original movie, the past is mutable. The film ends on a note of optimistic uncertainty, with the protagonists' actions appearing to have averted the future apocalypse for good. This was made even more explicit in the original scripted ending which depicts Sarah, John and Sarah's grandchildren in an idyllic future Los Angeles, which was thankfully cut for being too sappy, on-the-nose and tonally dissonant with the rest of the film. (James Cameron has a recurrent problem with indulging his inner Spielberg and wanting to end his films on a corny sentimental note, only for cooler heads to prevail in the editing suite and instead opting for something more ambiguous and restrained.)

Not having seen any of the sequels following the first two, all my knowledge of them is secondhand, but my understanding is that every subsequent sequel has set out to follow the example set by Terminator 2 and have its philosophical attitude to the mutability of the past directly contradict the attitude espoused by the previous film. This leads to an interminable game of "the past is immutable – no it isn't – yes it is — no it isn't – is – isn't". With a binary question, the number of times you can surprise audiences by changing the answer is exactly one. When Terminator 3 revealed that Judgement Day was still going to happen, audiences didn't find this exactly as shocking as Terminator 2's implication that Judgement Day could be decisively averted; rather, it registered as a regression to the original film's status quo. In spite of Cameron's strenuous efforts to reinvent the entire franchise from the ground up with Terminator 2, by the end of Terminator 3 the franchise was back almost exactly where it started. Eventually audiences just got sick of being jerked around and lost interest: no permanence, no stakes.

Another reason might be a bit more mundane. The Terminator made the most of its limited budget, but some of its visual effects looked pretty ropey even at the time. Half of the appeal of Terminator 2 was getting to see a story very similar to the original (indeed, the plot beats and structure are so similar that in some ways it's more like a remake than a sequel), but with an expanded budget and VFX wizardry. The visual effects of Terminator 2 were mind-blowing on release and have aged incredibly well. But you quickly run into the law of diminishing returns: while I'm sure the visual effects in the subsequent sequels were marginally superior to those of Terminator 2, they could never hope to match the quantum-leap sensation of the transition from The Terminator to Terminator 2. "Come see the Terminator, with visual effects that will blow your mind" is an easy sell, unlike "come see the Terminator, with visual effects very slightly improved over previous Terminator films".

Another reason might be a bit more mundane. The Terminator made the most of its limited budget, but some of its visual effects looked pretty ropey even at the time. Half of the appeal of Terminator 2 was getting to see a story very similar to the original (indeed, the plot beats and structure are so similar that in some ways it's more like a remake than a sequel), but with an expanded budget and VFX wizardry.

See also the Matrix Trilogy.

They did their damndest to keep the visuals impressive and upping the ante thanks to unlimited budget. And sort of succeeded but also sucked the actual heart and soul out in the process.

Yes, hence the joke about how there weren't any Matrix sequels.

On the other hand, there was a very nice prequel called "The Second Renaissance"; 20 minutes of animated goodness exploring the backstory to the movie's setting. The allusion to "Saigon Execution" goes hard.

Hot take incoming: I think The Matrix Reloaded is vastly underrated. Although nearly three years after posting that comment, I still haven't gotten around to watching Revolutions.

I would agree, and quite a bit of the issues are editing more than anything.

One thing the first film thrives on is efficiency. Most sequences are short, aside from two major action set pieces. The highway chase/fight in Revolutions AND the burly brawl are too long, and aren't really serving the story in the way the subway fight does in the first one.

Lot of fun ideas at play though. The films at least had somewhere to go after the sequel hook from the first.

I saw Reloaded three times in theatres. The action sequences were just sublime for that era.

2003 also had The Last Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean, 28 Days Later, Kill Bill, Master and Commander, and X2 (which I also went to see three times).

Nobody hates Reloaded because of the action scenes (well, except for the highway scene that takes forever). We hate it for the shitty writing which takes a dump all over the original.

It had some really cool scenes. It's much better than the third film.

I think both Matrix sequels are vastly underrated. Leaving out the weirdness that the Wachowski brothers put in because they were all into gay sex clubs, the movies are cut from the same cloth as the first movie. Also, Monica Bellucci.

Also, Monica Bellucci.

If the music video for "Love Don't Cost a Thing" by J-Lo hadn't awakened my budding sexuality, Bellucci's dress in Reloaded would have done.

The visual effects of Terminator 2 were mind-blowing on release and have aged incredibly well.

Much of this is because they were used so brilliantly. A killer machine made out of liquid metal doesn't have to look realistic as long as it looks cool and plausible. I believe they only used fancy CGI for the FX that look like FX (ie. time travel, T-1000 morphing, terminator vision) and did most of the rest with traditional techniques where the viewers are going to be much more critical about realism compared to what was achievable with CGI at the time. Contrast this with Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs look almost like upscaled rubber toys because it turns out that people have a whole lot more practical experience of how real animals move compared to killer robots.

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