The worst thing about 4 was they had the right idea about where to take the franchise (these movies really should be concentrating on the future war now—-this latest movie shows there is nothing new to be done in the past) but they botched it so completely that I don't think anyone will dare to take it there again…

No fate was only in T2—T1 was actually as fatalistic as 3 was, assuming that judgment day was going to happen and her needing to get her son ready for the coming war.

Judgment day was actually a given in T1—she basically ends the movie talking about raising her future son and getting him ready for the coming war…

WHO CARRIES A GIANT STUFFED BEAR INTO A POLICE STATION!!!?!!??!? Just one more fucking thing about this movie that makes no goddamn sense.

Nah I totally get it. People are pretty unfair to T3. I really feel like the RT scores on the Terminator movies are fair: T3 sits at 70% (T1-100%—though older movies skew like that sometimes—and T2 is at 92%—4 is 33% and the latest is at 25% or so). The humor in T3 was pretty bad, but the story was actually okay…

What's weird is they explain that he grows his own skin…which would pretty much negate the effects of aging, right? All new skin? Sigh—-so very little of this movie even tried to make sense.

Well, they tell us he did, but it never really explains how or why.

This was Transformers 2 levels of bad. Your degree of fun may vary.

You will HATE the god-awful helicopter sequence in this movie. It's the height of ridiculousness in a pretty ridiculous movie.

This exactly. It's why the first Jurassic Park was amazing while this latest one felt like watching a really well-done computer game cutscene. Which is pretty much how this Terminator registered with me as well. T2 ushered in a shitload of the special effects we see nowadays, but at least Cameron understood you had…

Yes, it did. I hope someone got fired over that.

They try, except they also make the point that he regrows skin, which I think would pretty much do away with any signs of aging. He also has about 30 years on his own that apparently he spends working construction and getting haircuts and stuff. I swear I'm not making this up.

And puts on sunglasses even though it's dark out? At least the first film put him in sunglasses due to his eye being damaged. Yeah, there's some bad moments in T2 for sure.

Bill Paxton is still around too—would have been awesome if he could have done a little cameo…

He is the best part of the movie bar none, and he's not in it nearly enough.

I did. It's the best movie of the summer so far, barely edging out Inside Out. I may go see it again. Such an amazing film.

Hey—only what you see on the shelf.

Cameron still thinks he's a genius too. If he really can pull three more movies and a theme park out of a decent but not great (and really kind of silly) 3D movie I guess he just might be.

The unfortunate thing is T2 shits on T1's established time travel rules, but the twist of making Arnie a good guy and then not showing the other time traveler was pretty smart. Cameron filmed it so that you didn't know if Arnold was a good guy or bad guy and you assume from the filming style that the cop is a good…

That is actually one of the better scenes in the first one, as it's the first real look we get at how terminators operate externally (the repairs) and internally (choosing the list of responses). It really was a clever and witty scene. What I'm saying is your friends were right about the scene being brilliant, but…