Another Pass at Terminator 3

I know now why you cry. But when it comes to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, it is something I can never do. To reboot and upgrade this underclocked film, Case and Sam are joined by Leo Goodman. Can they change history or is it all inevitable?

You'll have to tune in to find out, otherwise just "talk to the hand"

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Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Case
Since we're all recording, and I have no idea how this would fit into any sort of regular conversation, here is the story were talking about, Sam. All right, so, Sam, back in 2008, this was literally the Sunday after Thanksgiving that year. Was it? Yeah, because we only. We didn't have a full cast because some people hadn't gotten back yet from going home for Thanksgiving.

00:20
Leo Goodman
I don't remember that part of it. So for anybody living in New York or has, you might recall, you might have been to on East Fourth street, there is a theater called the Crane Theater, which is a pretty nice little off Broadway house. And then above that, there was, or at least used to be a bar called the KGB bar, which featured a lot of nice russian beers. And then above that, there used to be a little tetanus shot of a black box theater called the Red Room, which is where were doing a show, which, like, to get up to this place, you had to go. Do you remember that staircase? That was, like, halfway between a staircase and a ladder? I never invited my grandparents when we did shows there because that happened, too. Yeah, likewise.

01:05
Leo Goodman
It was just like, how am I not getting splinters going to this theater half the time? Anyway? So that's where were. And were doing a dress rehearsal for. It was an evening of short one acts. I was in the one that you wrote, which was super fun. I really enjoyed that show. Yes, that's right. And we're having our dress rehearsal, and we start hearing screaming from the floor below us. It was a woman screaming for help. And we all stop for a moment. We all froze. And have that moment that you have where you go, is that a rehearsal for another thing downstairs? Because there's a theater down there.

01:45
Case
Yeah. And we've been hearing noises earlier in the day downstairs.

01:49
Sam
Wow.

01:49
Leo Goodman
We were okay.

01:50
Case
Yeah. Just like, little stuff. People bringing stuff in, random noises. But then we heard breaking glass, and it did not sound like a thing that was supposed to happen.

02:02
Leo Goodman
Again, we're hearing the screams, and we all have that, like, oh, is that real? Is that a rehearsal? I was like, no, that's real. And we'd rush down in the little hallway out between the bar and the bathroom. That's there. There's this dude who is, I'm going to say, six foot something.

02:24
Case
Yeah, like, six one, maybe not a giant, but, like, taller than either of us.

02:29
Leo Goodman
Tall, blonde. I remember that. And he's got a shard of glass in his hands, and he's trying to cut his own throat. And there's this really petite girl trying to stop him, and case and me and one of the other playwrights. Was it Adam?

02:54
Case
No. It was such a narrow hallway that at first I was able to get in there, and then you were able once we sort of rotated a bit, but no one else could get in there at first.

03:05
Leo Goodman
Basically, we're just, like, trying to wrestle this guy down as he's just trying to stab himself. And he's like, mind your own fucking business. Yeah.

03:16
Case
And he had some success because there was a lot of blood.

03:18
Leo Goodman
Yeah. I remember one moment where case, you grabbed him from behind, and you go, I got him. And he goes, you don't got me. And he throws himself backward into the window. And the window had bars on the inside, and if it didn't, I swear you both would have gone straight through.

03:39
Case
Even on the outside, I would have been impaled with glass. It was, like, the weirdest. It's the only time in my life where I've ever been like, thank God the bars are on the.

03:46
Leo Goodman
Thank God that there's bars on the inside. Exactly. Always before, it was just like, what a weird design. And then I was like, oh, okay, that's good. And I remember there was another moment where he was down on his hands and knees, and I was on top of him, and he bucks me off and jabs himself right in the throat. I thought it was done, and I shouted, no. And later that night, as I'm lying in bed, I was thinking about it, and I was like, oh, man. People really shout that I didn't know people.

04:16
Case
Yeah, because we both shouted because he went limp. Because he went limp. And we thought it was done. We thought that, like, oh, my God, a person just died beneath us. But then he started to pick himself up again and tried to take the shard of glass and pull it down on his neck, at which point I grab his hand, and I slam it against the wall, and that's when the shard of glass goes right up my hand.

04:39
Leo Goodman
I don't remember how exactly. I remember it ended up with, like, he's on his stomach, I'm on his back. One of the other guys from our show was on his legs. Yeah.

04:51
Case
At one point, I was kneeling on his shoulder.

04:53
Leo Goodman
What was that?

04:54
Case
Yeah, I was, like, kneeling on his shoulder, trying to reach up to. We were right next to the women's room, and there was the paper towel dispenser, and I was trying to grab that to hold my hand while still keeping my weight on him.

05:05
Leo Goodman
I remember were on his back, and you were like, standing on his hand that had the glass in it, and we basically managed to hold him there. And that's how were until the cops came and they took him in one ambulance, and you and the girl got in the other ambulance because you got your hands cut pretty bad. I had sustained a tiny ass, little nothing of a scratch on my arm. Like, the scar that I have on my arm right now looks like I got scratched by a cat. But I still was just like, I still have kind of an open wound with a strange suicidal man's blood on me. So I still got in. I was like, I'm going to go to the hospital, too, and just at least fucking talk to somebody, get this checked out.

05:52
Leo Goodman
The moral of the story is, always take a cab to the hospital if you don't need the ambulance, because I got billed for that ride. And we're in the ambulance, and it's you, me, and the girl. And she looked, like, shell shocked. And then at one point, she just goes, you, who did really well, he's a ufc fighter.

06:18
Sam
Oh, my God.

06:20
Leo Goodman
And we're both like, I'm glad I didn't know that.

06:24
Case
I actually don't tell that part of the story unless you're with me, because it's so implausible for me to say that out loud.

06:32
Sam
You need the cooperation.

06:34
Case
Yeah, it does not work when it's like. No, I swear to God, he was huge, and he was a big friggin guy. And he was a UFC fighter.

06:43
Leo Goodman
I wouldn't call him huge. He was tall and he was lean, right?

06:46
Case
No, like I said, he was a couple of inches taller.

06:49
Leo Goodman
Yeah. So anyway, your fingers are still a little messed. I'm seeing nothing, and I never got his name or hers. I don't know anything. What happened to that?

07:09
Case
I don't know. It was a weird night.

07:14
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

07:14
Case
I still have a pretty big scar. A lot of it's healed, but if you look at the digit. Yeah, you can kind of see it. And that's actually the weirdest spot. That's, like, super sensitive. It feels like pins and needles when you touch it. Like that scar and then the tip of that finger. I have no feeling. Anyway, it was a weird day. That night got so weird because then I was taken to get x rays, and then they forgot I was in the x ray room. And so 45 minutes later, I'm like, hello?

07:46
Sam
Anyone?

07:48
Case
Yeah. They're like, we didn't know what happened to you. I'm like, they said they'd be right back.

07:54
Sam
Oh, my gosh.

07:57
Leo Goodman
And then we finished dress rehearsal the next night and had a good show.

08:01
Case
No, we opened the next night.

08:04
Leo Goodman
We never finished dress rehearsal. No.

08:06
Case
Well, so we did two dress rehearsals that day. We had a big chunk of time. And so when it occurred was actually right after we finished the first run and were giving notes. And that's why I was standing next to the door, because all the cast was sitting on the chairs in theater, and I was like, going through, it's like, here's a thing I noticed, blah, blah. And then, yeah, we opened the Monday after because it was cheaper to rent Mondays. And so it was pretty crazy.

08:30
Leo Goodman
Yes.

08:31
Sam
You know what else is crazy? Terminator three.

08:35
Leo Goodman
Whoa. Hey, Terminator three. Let's talk about it. Welcome to certain point of views, another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

08:54
Case
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another pass podcast. I am case Aiken. As always, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

09:01
Sam
Hello. Fanfare.

09:05
Case
Well, and we should have the real fanfare for today's guest. Today we are joined by Leo Goodman. Hello.

09:11
Leo Goodman
How you doing?

09:12
Sam
Woo. Woohoo. Yeah.

09:14
Case
And I say we should have this fanfare because Leo is an amazing actor who I've worked with multiple times back in the day in our New York theater scene. Depending on if the cold opening that we just recorded happens or not, we'll find out what the editor does. You may have heard a crazy story, but just a great actor who is continuing to do cool stuff.

09:34
Leo Goodman
Thank you.

09:34
Case
Such as, do you want to give any quick plugs?

09:36
Leo Goodman
Yeah, sure. So something that I actually shot right before the world shut down, which is now airing, shot with Nickelodeon, called SpongeBob docupants. It is a mockumentary series about iconic SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, like in the style of a Business Insider episode about Eugene, the genius of Eugene Krabs. And like an unsolved mysteries thing about the nasty Patty episode and stuff like that. And it has started streaming. It's on Amazon prime. It's like a bunch of 15 minutes episodes, and I'm in three of them. So if you're a SpongeBob fan at all, that's fun. You should definitely check that out.

10:20
Case
That's awesome. Is that with the actual license or is it like a fan?

10:25
Leo Goodman
Oh, no. Nickelodeon made this.

10:27
Case
Nickelodeon soldier cool with that.

10:30
Leo Goodman
This was shot with Nickelodeon's Viacom digital Studios. And, yeah, it's on there.

10:37
Case
That is fantastic. Well, that sounds like a much more interesting thing than the movie that we're talking about today because today's movie is like a great example of one that is blah. Today we're talking about Terminator three. The rise of the machines.

10:54
Leo Goodman
Machines rise in this movie.

10:55
Sam
Yeah, they do.

10:57
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

10:57
Case
And I was saying before we started recording, this is the only Terminator that I've actually seen in theaters.

11:02
Leo Goodman
Really?

11:03
Case
Yeah. Because two came out in 1991, which was. I was a little too young for that one.

11:08
Leo Goodman
Two came out when were in, like, middle school or when I was. Or in high school, something. Yeah.

11:13
Case
And then this is the reason why I've had a hard time getting excited about future Terminator properties.

11:19
Leo Goodman
Fair.

11:19
Sam
Yeah. Fair makes sense.

11:21
Leo Goodman
Yeah. I remember when we decided on this one for this episode and I chose it because I was just like, oh, I remember seeing that years ago and I don't remember much about it. I just a vague sense of disappointment. So let's check that out again and see if it's still there. And it is. I do not think it's a terrible movie. I do not think it's that terrible. There's a lot of good stuff in this movie. The issue is that so much of this movie is making scenes that are direct callbacks to Terminator. Two scenes.

12:02
Sam
Absolutely.

12:03
Leo Goodman
That manage to fall flat. I feel like this movie was a studio head said, let's make next Terminator. It's got to be Arnold and he's got to fight a girl. Terminator. And that's what it's got to be. And it doesn't have the same creative team as the first two. And they're clearly trying to emulate the first two. Like Terminator one and two had James Cameron and other writers, I forget the other names, but it was the same writers for Terminator. Same writer director for Terminator One, Terminator two. And this one has an entirely new creative team. I think, like, one of the producers was the same. And that's pretty much it. And so much of it, again, is just them trying to do scenes that are. Remember when this happened in Terminator two? Here's it happening now, but slightly different.

13:00
Leo Goodman
And falling just a little flat.

13:03
Sam
Yeah, it's very nudge, wink, wink. Oh, remember this? Remember the thing you loved? We're doing it too, but like a little different. Yeah, they definitely made that mistake. There's so much patterning. And then they also made an attempt at. Lots of attempts at humor. A lot of the humor in this does not land. Like, it just doesn't. Actually, I will say maybe it's because I'm older now and we have moved away from talking to the hand. But I actually did appreciate Arnold talking to the hand. Maybe it's because more of my friends make dad jokes now. And that was definitely a Terminator dad joke. But I think when this was shot, that was so old, we had stopped saying talk to the hand. And so it was like. But now I was like, oh, I kind of appreciate that. That was terrible.

13:58
Sam
And yet I'm laughing.

14:00
Case
Yeah, eventually, sidestow Bob steps on enough rakes.

14:03
Leo Goodman
So you were saying that the dad joke was actually him saying talk to the hand? I thought you meant the dad joke was Arnold grabbing it and going, no.

14:10
Sam
Oh, yeah, no, that's the dad joke. Like, him talking to the hand. Literally talked in the like. That was just something that was said for those of you who are too young to remember. But there was him actually reaching forward and literally talking to the hand. I started dying and I was just like, this is terrible. And yet I'm laughing.

14:33
Leo Goodman
And the thing about that moment is that it didn't make sense with him as a terminator. Like in Terminator two, like he says, the more time I spend around humans, the more I will learn. So unless they took the time to teach him humor before sending him back, he wouldn't have learned that yet. There's no reason why he'd be doing stuff like that.

14:53
Sam
Well, I thought it was because he was being literal. For real. We just thought it was funny. He was like a new robot and he was just being very literal. The guy was like, talk to the hand. And he was like, okay, I will step up to the hand. Hello, I would like your clothes.

15:08
Leo Goodman
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

15:09
Case
It's weird looking at this movie, because I have a term for third movies that try too hard to emulate the movies before it's the third movie syndrome. But normally I'm talking about they try too hard to emulate the first movie. Like, normally when I discuss third movie syndrome, they make a sequel that deviated in ways that they thought might be successful. And then when they make the third movie, decide, oh, shit, we should actually go back to the first one. Like, if you look at alien three, it is that to alien one, even if you're looking at Return of the Jedi to the first or to Star wars, it's all about the Death Star. It doesn't feel at all like Empire strikes back.

15:48
Leo Goodman
Okay.

15:48
Case
And a lot of trilogies kind of work that way. This is weirdly the one where they're like, oh, no, the successful one was the second one. We have to do that all over again.

15:56
Leo Goodman
Well, and it's also because Terminator two also had things that were clear similarities to the first one just ramped up a little bit and then this one was, okay. So now we do the same thing and we ramp it up a little bit more, going back to the humor stuff that falls flat. And again, in that scene that you're talking about where Arnold goes into the strip club, I remember there's the moment where Arnold goes in there and you see the women start going crazy. And then he looks at the sandwich board that says, it's ladies night. And the camera does this quick over to the ladies night board. That is a sitcom camera move. And then Arnold, look.

16:43
Leo Goodman
And then the male stripper with the right clothes comes on stage and Arnold twists his head and the camera does over the head again, same thing. Like that is a camera move telling the audience, this is the punchline. And it just bothered me.

16:58
Sam
Oh. Muscular man walking into ladies night.

17:02
Case
Yeah. And then let's have some gay stereotypes with the strippers or the male strippers. Like this movie feels of its time.

17:12
Sam
That's true. It's very early 2000s.

17:15
Case
Yeah, I actually had to double check to see because it felt such of its time that I was like, wait, did this come out before 911? And it did, and it came out in 2003. But there's just this vibe shift that occurs after 911. A lot of things where this hasn't quite caught up with that yet. Clearly the script was already being written. Maybe there were rewrites and stuff. But it feels like a late 90s, early 2000s movie as opposed to a post 911. Like, everything is brown and gray, which I guess is good. I don't know. I have some thoughts about that when we get to pitches.

17:55
Case
But it's just a weird era for it to come out in because it just doesn't feel like the kind of movie that were interested in or even the kind of movie people were interested in making.

18:05
Sam
Well, someone made it.

18:07
Case
Yeah.

18:08
Leo Goodman
Like I said, some studio said, here's a cash cow. We need another Terminator. Let's go ahead and do it. Yeah.

18:13
Case
It's actually fascinating to look into the production history on this one because there was, like, all these deals going on in terms of who was trying to buy the rights to the Terminator franchise. And after Titanic, Cameron was like, I'm done. I don't want to do that again. I'm good and finished. And that's probably after the LSD incident. But whatever, he didn't want to do it. Arnie wanted to do it. Arnie and Cameron wanted to co buy it. Or that's like Arnold's side of the story because it was like only $750,000 for the rights at one point. And I say only, but like, no.

18:50
Leo Goodman
I mean, for property like that actually seems pretty small.

18:54
Case
Right. Arnold got paid $25 million for this movie.

18:57
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

19:01
Case
So he could have owned the rights and that could have been a totally different franchise. But it's clear that Cameron not being involved makes this movie bad because the second Terminator movie has a lot of callbacks to the first one on purpose. It's a lot of misdirections. One of the things that's hard to remember now in the Terminator franchise is that in T two, when you're watching the movie, it's like 30 minutes in before you realize that Arnie is not there to kill John Carnon.

19:28
Leo Goodman
Yes, exactly. And we all knew it because we'd all seen the commercials and we all knew the ad campaigns going in. I feel like most people kind of just were aware that was going to be the deal with this one just because of marketing. But the way it's shot is that if you had gone in not knowing what was happening until the moment that Arnold actually tells John, get down, drop, and shoots the T 1000, it's done. Just like the first one where you could very well think the T 1000 is the good guy there to protect. There to protect John. If it had been done that way. This movie basically just says, let's not even bother with that. Which I'm fine with.

20:18
Case
Yeah. To do some of that, though, because having Christina Lockhen as this beautiful female terminator, part of the excuse is just like, let's do the normal terminator style of showing up naked so that we can have attractive shots from behind of her going and stealing a car and all this stuff. It's like, come on, does everything have to be titillating?

20:42
Leo Goodman
The growing the tits joke. Oh, yeah.

20:44
Case
And then that's where's the thing.

20:47
Leo Goodman
Like, that moment also did not make sense at all. Because if the idea that the female terminator can decide, okay, I need to be sexier, grow my tits bigger, that makes sense. If she's about to infiltrate something, she gets pulled over by a cop. That machine knows the instant she gets pulled over by the cop, oh, this guy's got a gun, I'm going to kill him and take that gun. She's not about to talk her way out of the ticket. So it makes no sense at all for her to even bother with doing that.

21:16
Sam
And she kills everyone all the time indiscriminately, she asks people's names, and if they don't even have the same names as the person she's looking for, she still kills them. She just runs through just killing everything, which is fine, but just an observation. She doesn't need to do anything or infiltrate anything, really, because she's just a killing machine.

21:43
Case
Yeah. It's surprising to see how much better at the whole infiltrator aspect. Like Robert Patrick's T 1000 was in the first half of the movie. He doesn't kill a lot of people. It's only when he has a lock that things start to change. But up until that point, he's, like, trying to gather information. He's pretending to be a cop so that they'll be like, contact me as soon as you hear anything. He's doing all the stuff that you would do if you were trying to be successful at killing a thing. It's surprising that this Terminator doesn't feel more advanced than the T 1000. Well, right, okay, I get it. There's changes, but it's just like, for one thing, she has a solid structure that they're able to attack more freely.

22:26
Case
Yeah, she's got guns built in, but she doesn't seem to better at doing all these other stuff. And also, the T 1000 was a female at points in the movie, so it's not the first time we ever had a woman. Terminator, the T 1000, which is genderless, transformed into Connor's stepmom at one point and also transformed into Sarah Connor.

22:47
Leo Goodman
Yeah, I mean, I guess part of the thing is, like, if the Terminator has the liquid metal outside, then what's the point of it having any one face more than once at all? Why would it have it? I liked, actually the idea that the more advanced, because the T 1000, being all liquid metal, can take any form it wants, but can only make knives and stabbing weapons. And I like the idea that the next advance beyond that is enough liquid metal on the outside that it can change its appearance, but enough hardware inside that it can also hold the material to make an actual fucking mega man hand cannon. That makes sense.

23:29
Sam
That cannon is pretty cool.

23:31
Case
Yeah, I don't mind that part. Although I will say that they open up a new problem in this movie by revealing the nuclear power source in this renamed T 101. But it was T 800 in the previous movies. Or rather, it was T 800 cyberdited system 101 was like, I think the full serial number. They shorthand it in a way to make it more. Feel even more obsolete. That he has a nuke in his chest that he uses to blow up more than one thing keeps making you wonder, why didn't they put a better nuke in their chest and just drop it in the city that they knew it was at? And that was it.

24:04
Leo Goodman
True. Good point. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. I hadn't even thought of that.

24:10
Sam
Jeez.

24:10
Leo Goodman
Yeah. Because the Terminator one, he could have just gotten close to. He could have gotten within a block of Sarah Connor and blown himself up.

24:20
Case
Yeah. I mean, at least with this movie, she has multiple targets, so I understand her not doing it necessarily, but it does open up that element. And I wish that they had sort of played more with that question.

24:32
Sam
Does the series ever say why only one Terminator can be sent back?

24:40
Case
So the first one has an explanation for that particular movie, which I don't think they have a good explanation going after that point. The first one, it is revealed that the Terminator was sent back was the last thing that happened before the resistance takes over Skynet and wins.

24:57
Leo Goodman
Right.

24:58
Case
So it wasn't that they needed to prevent John Connor from being a worthy adversary. John Connor literally wins the day before the movie even happens, and they're trying to change history so he doesn't.

25:10
Sam
So in that case, since Judgment Day is inevitable, which we learn in this film, why not send back multiple terminators and terminate all those different people at the same time? It just seems like the machines are not efficient.

25:29
Leo Goodman
Good point.

25:30
Case
Yeah. When we get to pitches, I have a lot of thoughts about all that because I think that the problem this movie has, and we keep talking about is that it is just an emulation of the previous movie. And as you said, a worse one. Like, every single thing that we have really is missing that Cameron touch of being like, oh, yeah, the music's hitting just right. That thing's going to hit real hard on screen. It's going to be real fucking big. Every scene is less dramatic. It feels lighter. At one point, they're in a bathroom hitting each other with toilets. That could be really cool. And you know that if James Cameron was shooting that, those hits would feel like there was a lot of impact. Not in this movie.

26:12
Leo Goodman
The chase scene, specifically. Yeah.

26:15
Case
With a crane car.

26:19
Leo Goodman
The reason I think it is, the only reason that scene falls flat and it doesn't feel like it works is because there is no score for the first. It's like a four minute chase scene. And the first three minutes have no score, have no music under it. In Terminator two, when John Connor's on the scooter and Arnold's on the motorcycle and the T 1000 is in the truck. There's that driving ticket to ticket. The ticket, the ticket driving up. And Arnold gets down into the gully with them. And suddenly it starts. Like the music basically starts to go. Here comes the heroic moment. And Arnold goes and grabs John Connor and it does the bubba for a second. Here's the heroic moment. And the entire scene has that thing driving under it.

27:09
Leo Goodman
And then the chase scene in Terminator three is just Foley sound effects. There is no music under it until the moment that Arnold grabs the fire truck and goes, now I'll drive. And suddenly the movie goes, oh, yeah, music. And starts playing some score under it.

27:27
Sam
Yeah. I have to admit, I found that chase scene pretty boring. It's probably why I was just like, I'm bored now.

27:36
Leo Goodman
It's like they upped the action and they upped the explosion factor and forgot to put in the thing. That just makes it really hit you in the heart, which is a lot of the time is the sound, a lot of time is the music. It's such an important aspect of films.

27:55
Case
Yeah. And I feel like they're missing a lot of opportunities. Like, this movie is set in 2005. Just like, how so? It's ten years after T two, which was set in 1995, even though it came out in 1991. And I feel like we missed an opportunity to have a conversation about actually where the projected future would go. They present this world where Skynet is inevitable, that everything is going to happen, even though we pushed it back from the original date of Judgment Day being 1997. I am shocked that there is no commentary about the changing geopolitical landscape that would enable Skynet. The original Skynet occurred because were in the Cold War.

28:47
Case
And even when they get to Judgment Day, or when they make Judgment Day and that status quo had shifted, they said, well, but they're still there and there's still a lot of nukes. So if they fire on the Russians immediately, the Russians fire back, everything gets wiped out. It made sense, but it was bred out of Cold War era paranoia. It kind of feels like that Star Trek episode where they have the computer that just tells you how many people would die because it's been a cold war that's just gone forever. Yeah, that's the paranoia that created the first one and then the second one was still using it because that was still sufficiently there. But if you're going to shift it now so much further beyond. I wish they talked about it.

29:24
Case
I wish they were like, well, now we are trying to implement drones. We are trying to do all the things that happened in the real world in the wake of 911. Like that the war on terror is creating the situation that the patriarch. 2003 is late enough that commentary had started to occur.

29:40
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

29:41
Case
24 was well underway at this point as a show, they're at least having conversations about that kind of thing, and so talk about how that changes the world and this movie doesn't at all. They're just like, oh, all you did was kick the can, man.

29:59
Leo Goodman
It's amazing how I'm just so far removed from that. That that part of it didn't even freaking occur to me. Like, that's so long ago, and it's been just the thing for. Right.

30:09
Case
Unfortunately, the status quo has been the status quo for a while.

30:12
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

30:15
Case
Also, the TX is a terrible design. I hate the robot face of it.

30:20
Leo Goodman
Once the human face goes away.

30:22
Case
Yeah, I hate it. It has needlessly feminine qualities to it and also needlessly kind of alien sort of components to it or, like, alien and features. The classic Terminator is so good because it looks like a skeleton. It's so perfect for that reason. It also shouldn't be what they use for all the robots. I hate every time they show the future and all the robots are the T 800s because why? Those are only there so you can either put rubber or human skin on it, have it walk into your base. The robots that are walking around killing shit should always be more like what they show at the end of this movie. That was kind of good that they.

31:04
Leo Goodman
Had that in Terminator one and two when they have their scenes in the future, there is a mix. There's a mix of skeleton Terminators and also the things on the treads with.

31:18
Case
The miniguns going around, tanks and airships and all that. And I do want to say that the third act of this movie has a lot going for it, at least in terms of upping the stakes by having her take over the prototype of the Terminator program. I think that's great.

31:32
Leo Goodman
Yeah. I'm going to bring up another thing where they were like, well, let's bring this over from Terminator two. And it didn't make sense that they did it in the scene where they're in the cemetery and Arnold takes the minigun and starts driving the cops away and makes sure not to kill any of them. Why?

32:01
Case
I thought about that too. I imagine that they actually said they put those provisions in place, why? Before they sent them.

32:08
Leo Goodman
No, no, seriously, because Catherine Brewster, who know second in command and presumably first in command when John dies, who is also a mother, is sending a terminator back in time to protect her husband, and by effect, their unborn children. She's mama bear protecting the family. And any stipulation she puts on him makes his mission harder. Why would she tie his hands? Why would she make his mission harder by telling him that he can't kill anyone, that as far as she is concerned, are all going to die in less than 24 hours in a nuclear explosion. Every single person that he encounters other than her and John Connor is dead.

32:57
Case
You know what? That's actually an interesting point. And I kind of wish I had thought about that because I just did a hand wave on that. And this was an era where Schwarzenegger was trying to cut down on the amount of violence. This is about the same time he said that he would no longer do posters where he's holding a gun. He just felt that he had contributed too much to a culture of violence, which Arnold Schwarzenegger is a complicated figure in terms of.

33:22
Sam
That's putting it, like, social views.

33:24
Case
But I am constantly fascinated because he does think about stuff. He's a weird, not easily defined political figure, social figure. But like I said, he actually does think about these things. And I find myself agreeing with him sometimes and disagreeing with him other times. So I get that. But you know what? You're totally right, because it would have been great if they had a scene where John tries to tell it, you're not allowed to kill something, and he says, you are not able to command me. I have a directive not to listen to you about that. Who said, yeah, that would have been great.

34:05
Leo Goodman
And again, it's the aspect of they're all going to die in less than a day anyway. And even without that, this is a mother protecting her kids. She is going to say, you kill every single person you have to keep us alive.

34:21
Case
Yeah.

34:23
Leo Goodman
And so all that scene becomes is, it's such an obvious callback to the scene in Terminator two and doesn't like, for so many reasons, Terminator two, it's at night instead of the day, so just the visuals are a bit different. He's above them, shooting down, so he's got a bigger gun. And he's also got that. It makes sense in that moment in Terminator two that he should be keeping them all alive, and it doesn't in this one. And just everything about it just. Yeah, just like, if you're going to do the obvious callback, you have to make it different in some way.

35:07
Case
Yeah. And that's my problem with this whole movie.

35:09
Sam
And especially since Catherine went through the trauma of, and we learned this when they're in the truck. She must have watched her husband have this fondness for this cyborg who walked in looking like the one that saved him and then he got killed. So she knows that the terminators can change forms. Any one of those terminators can act. Any one of those cops could be a terminator. So I don't think that she would actually, at all. She would just be like, trust no one. Just save us. That's the only directive.

35:43
Leo Goodman
This woman has been dead centuries kind of thing.

35:47
Sam
Yeah.

35:48
Case
It's a bummer that this is the movie that we got, because, like I said, this is the only one I saw in theaters because I loved Terminator one and two. Terminator one is one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, Terminator two. I constantly forget how good it is until I rewatch it and I'm like, oh, my God, it's amazing.

36:06
Leo Goodman
Like, Terminator one is great. And it's important to say that Terminator one is great because Terminator two is so much better. Terminator Two just turns it up to such an epic scale for all these. And again, I'm going to bring up music again. You both watch Terminator three. Can you hum me the hero theme from it? Is there a theme in the movie Terminator two? Blah, blah. It's such a simple song, but it has that heroic epic quality. And a movie like this needs that.

36:48
Sam
Yeah.

36:51
Leo Goodman
I also want to bring up, because we're talking about all the ways in which this movie is clearly, could have been so much more different. It could have been such a different. I mean, there's an argument, and since you said that, since you're talking about your pitch wanting to be very different, there's an argument to be made that John Connor didn't even need to be in the movie at all. Since the actions of Terminator two, it could be judgment Day, is inevitable. And when it happened, someone else survived and became the leader. There's so much different stuff that could be done.

37:30
Leo Goodman
But again, and when we get into my pitch, I'll be going with this because I'm going with the idea that there's a studio head saying, it has to be Arnold, it has to be John Connor, it has to be a girl Terminator. And that's what they're going with. And so with all that being the stipulation, my biggest issue with the thing is that John Connor is fucking useless the entire film. You're telling me that this is the guy who spent his entire life training to be a mythical warrior and leader of the human resistance? When he's a kid in Terminator two, he can do shit. He's hacking into ATM machines when they're getting attacked by the T 1000 in the car. It's his mother and the terminator that are shooting at the T 1000, but he instantly goes into ammo mode.

38:23
Leo Goodman
He's, like, taking the weapons and checking the clips and putting all together. He's doing stuff. He's getting involved. And now as an adult, he just whines the whole time.

38:30
Sam
Yeah, I'm okay with him starting off a little broken, kind of losing his way after losing his mom, but there was no actual growth into something else. I'm okay with where he started because you could say, like, sarah's dead. Sarah was a very driving force. The future that was supposed to happen never happened. So a lot of times, even I think the Internet talks about this a lot when people are gifted as children. The disappointment of getting older and realizing that you're just like everyone else. But from a very young age, he's told, like, you have this purpose. And so he could find it as, like, it's useless. And there's traces of the trauma of being told that you have to be careful all the time. So I'm kind of okay with where he starts, but the fact that he never kicks.

39:27
Sam
Like, I was just like, this is Sarah Connor's kid. This is fucking, like, this is not Sarah Connor's kid. Who is it?

39:34
Case
He only kicks into it at the very ending of the movie when he's already at. This is.

39:39
Leo Goodman
What does he do? He turns on the magnets. That's it.

39:41
Case
I know.

39:42
Leo Goodman
That's it.

39:43
Sam
Not enough.

39:45
Case
It's not enough there. And it should have happened earlier. It should have happened. Break into three.

39:49
Sam
Yeah, it had to happen much earlier.

39:51
Leo Goodman
And then he gets into the place and he picks up the thing, and they go, who's in charge? I am. And no one goes, fuck.

39:58
Case
Are you right?

40:01
Sam
I think also, if you had to pick a moment, and this feels like pitchy territory, but if you had to pick a moment when the Terminator pulls out the fucking casket, and this is, like, his mom's last dying request, that her ashes be spread somewhere else, but she should leave behind a casket of weapons because she's always fucking prepared. That should be a kick in his ass. He should be, like, grabbing that shit and trying to load up I appreciate, I guess, that they give a moment to Claire Daines to be all like, I'm going to try to escape this person that I. She wasn't even tied up. That's besides the point. But I was just like, you walked willingly in, right? And then all of a sudden, you see the weapons, but there's enough weapons for everyone.

40:56
Sam
You're going to grab it and be like, get out my way. And it's like, I get it. They just want to do the shot and the tooth and like, haha. The terminator can catch the bullet. But I don't know, it just didn't work for me. But this should be like a moment for. Right? Because if anything, Sarah has always directed his life. Like, Sarah taught him everything he has. So this is like a message from mom. Like, we thought it was over, but clearly it's not. Yeah, I made provisions. I made fucking provisions, kid, get off your ass. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Like, that should have been a turning point in the movie.

41:32
Leo Goodman
That's true. Yeah. You know what I would have loved to happen in that scene is if she just shot the terminator and it ricocheted off his head and hit John.

41:43
Sam
And then it was all about Catherine.

41:46
Leo Goodman
Because that's what I was thinking when she's pointed at him. Why isn't he going, no, don't do this. John Connor's in the room.

41:54
Case
Yeah.

41:55
Leo Goodman
God, but that's true. That should kick his ass. And Sarah.

42:03
Sam
I think it's okay for, in the beginning of the film, for John to feel empty and for him to feel broken, and I think that's okay. But I think that the fact that he waits so long to kind of accept things, it's like, bro, you've clearly been waiting for this all of your life, right? You've been, like, adrift since your mom died. And since this future didn't happen, now the future is happening, and you know what's going to happen, so why are you still fighting it? I don't understand. I feel like he should have come to his acceptance much earlier.

42:45
Leo Goodman
Yeah. The scene where he starts saying, why me? I'm not the guy you want. I'm not the guy you want. And the terminator has to grab him by the throats and be like, anger is more useful than despair. Yeah, but that him having that moment of despair right there just falls flat and is just irritating when it's just like, you've seen too much to not believe at this point.

43:10
Sam
Also, I just felt like it was very. I don't know how old. He's supposed to be here. But I felt like he was playing a 15 year old and Claire Danes was playing someone in her late twenty s. I just felt like he was really stunted. I was just like, okay, I get it. You've lived this life where you're always transient and shit like that, but you have the complaints of an adolescent boy right now. You could be angry and be like, I don't fucking want this shit. Give it to someone else. Fine, but I'm not the person you're looking for. I'm not good enough. Kid, you've always known. You've known since the minute you were born. You were trained for this. For the minute you're born. You may want to reject that.

43:58
Sam
Maybe you want to be like, you know, this is bullshit, and maybe that's a better way to go. And I've toyed with this a little bit. I don't know if this is actually my pitch, but I've toyed with it a little. Like, after his mom died, nothing happened. He joins the real world. He's like, what the fuck? Because, honestly, there's two ways that John's could go, right? He could just become a computer analyst, get a real job, go to college. He saved the world. So, I don't know. There's just so many things that you could have done with him, and he just seems so wasted in this film.

44:36
Leo Goodman
What's the other? You said there's two ways John could go. He could be a computer analyst saying.

44:41
Sam
We save the world. No, the way that they did in terms of being broken, and then have him wake up so still, like the gifted child syndrome, and then realize that. Know, step up earlier in the movie, and instead they just kept him flat throughout. And, I mean, it's fine that they gave Catherine more of a leadership role. I'm fine with that. But it was just kind of. I don't know.

45:09
Case
Yeah. So John Connor in this. If you're going off of the previous movie, it's supposed to be 20, as is Kate, which is weird. The writer apparently head cannoned it to 23. So Edward Furlong was supposed to be ten in t two, but he's a little bit older. I think he was actually 13 when they filmed it. So they were like, well, he was older, so maybe it's a 23 year old character, because if you go off the timetable, 85 is the first movie, and then the t two takes place ten years after that, and then this movie takes place ten years after that.

45:51
Sam
Is she just a vet tech?

45:53
Leo Goodman
A little bit older.

45:54
Sam
How did she get through all that education? I'm sorry. I'm really bothered by that. Even a vet tech has to go to school for, like, four years.

46:04
Leo Goodman
Her father pulled a lot of strings.

46:07
Case
Okay, that's true. I mean, I get the idea of having him be underground so that he is not the target. And that works either way because he could also be using, like, a fake identity. He's a good hacker. Maybe he could be a student and.

46:22
Leo Goodman
Be.

46:25
Case
Under a fake name. Or they go with this whole, like, I'm a junkie hiding away kind of whatever deal that the character has, like, this ptsd story, which I don't know.

46:36
Sam
I mean, honestly, there would be a certain amount of trauma from his experience in t two. So I'm okay with him being. Again, I'm fine with him having trauma. I'm fine with him wanting to lay low. I'm fine with him being a paranoid human being. It's just he's also got to know how to do shit. He can't just be sitting in the background whining and depending on his robot servant. It felt like he had a butler. That's what Arnold Schwarzenegger was like. Robot Butler. Go defeat those cops, but don't kill them. Let's just get out of.

47:20
Leo Goodman
Like.

47:20
Case
It's interesting to look at all of the Terminator sequels after two because they're all bad in very different ways. This one has zero ambition. It's a Gen X slacker. That's the classic thing that we're dealing with right now. It's just doing all the beats from T two, but worse. But it feels like part of that original chunk of movies because it's t three, whereas the other ones have subtitles with no number. And Arnie is still a bit younger, so it works a little bit better as like, he's 54 in this movie, which is crazy, but he still looks like the Terminator. He got into shape sufficiently, then with the next three are weird in different ways. Salvation, I think, is a good idea as a setup, but it was so panned as just being a bad movie that I've never actually watched it.

48:16
Leo Goodman
So what's the setup?

48:18
Case
Salvation is set in the post apocalypse.

48:21
Leo Goodman
As it should be. It's about time. Get there. Yeah.

48:24
Case
It's Christian Bale as John Connor trying to lead the resistance in this era after Judgment Day. Genesis is a time travel story full of recasting and continuity nods. It feels like fanfic or like a fan film. It feels like the Star Trek movies that I've worked know, it's just like, oh, don't you love all the stuff? And the fact that everyone's recast makes it worse.

48:50
Leo Goodman
I haven't seen that, but I've seen the time travel Snake episode of Rick and Morty, and I feel like if I were to watch Genesis, there'd be a lot of moments of, like, oh, that's what they.

49:02
Case
And then Dark Fate is the one that were talking about where it's like, well, the timeline is different. We get to the same result, but it's different people. It's not Skynet. It's a different thing. This one has been sent back to not go after John Connor. It's going after someone else. Also. Haven't seen it. The only one I've. So I've seen now I've seen the original three, and I've seen Genesis. I actually haven't seen either Dark fate or Salvation, both of which have better sounding ideas, but none of them have been successful since Terminator two. They just can't capture that magic.

49:34
Sam
I feel like part of the thing, though, is by setting up the fact that Judgment Day is inevitable and these things cannot be prevented or stopped, it really just sets the tone for failure overall in the movies, at least in the first film and the second film, you got to have hope at the end of it, right? There is no hope for this. Look, this is actually a fine movie. Like, if there were no Terminator one, no Terminator two, it'd probably be like an okay action film. You'd be a little bored at times, but you'd get some good special effects, you'd have decent acting, you'd have some really bad jokes, but you'd be like, whatever. And you could turn it on in the background and clean your house to it. You'd be fine.

50:29
Sam
But because Terminator one and Terminator two exists, this film is blah. Because you've got something that's, like, so amazing. And the thing is that Sarah Connor, well, in both movies, but Sarah Connor, especially in the first movie, because it's mostly focused on her. She's kick ass. She's amazing. You feel like she figured it out. She's protected humanity. She's protected her baby. You feel like, yeah, maybe there's a hint, but she's given hope. She's hope to humanity, and she's saved this child. And in the second movie, they bring down everything. And in who this Terminator who sacrifices his life and they have to say goodbye to him, even though, I mean, it's kind of like homeward bound. Or free Willie, right? Oh, no. My Terminator. Fred, be free now. Except he's going to death. But it's still hopeful.

51:26
Sam
And that great score is playing behind it while it's happening, swelling your emotions, knowing that this sacrifice has been made for humanity in this film. That does not happen. It doesn't happen. It ends in a very nihilistic, like, well, at least we survived. And that's supposed to be the hopeful thing. But John sucks in this movie, so it's not actually hopeful. And, you know that eventually he dies and that his wife has to send someone back to save his ass again. How many times do you have to save one guy's ass, really? Honestly?

52:11
Leo Goodman
You got to wonder, though, will it go the same way now that he goes into the future knowing, okay, the next time I see that model Terminator, it's definitely about to kill me. You got to figure that moment in the future happens differently now.

52:29
Case
Yeah. It's also interesting with the time travel thing. So the first movie is supposed to be a closed loop. The time travel that occurs all is predicting the things that actually happen in the future. So, like, the photo that they take at the end of the movie and the conception of John Connor both happen so that in the future, John Connor can give the photo to Reese and send him back in time to conceive himself and probably knew about that. So, like, that whole timeline, everything plays out. There's no history changing because of time travel.

53:04
Leo Goodman
Yeah. It's just all paradox. But this is how it happened. Yeah.

53:11
Case
Right. And then two actually allows for a change of the future. It introduces that as a possibility where they completely fix everything. This movie then doesn't really have a real statement on it. It's just. Shit got moved.

53:27
Leo Goodman
It's just so lazy.

53:28
Sam
Yeah, absolutely. And then really, honestly, I feel like, honestly, the Ed. The way that they constructed it was just like, all right, guys, so this movie, we bought this property so we can actually make ten more movies. So we have to end it where everyone is fucked, so we have to make more movies. I really feel like deep down, that is why it ends the way it does. And I actually don't have a problem with the third act. I think it's actually where the movie moves the best and is the most compelling. And I actually feel like it was a nice moment to know that the Terminator, yet again, sacrificed himself. He tricked them, but it was again, he completed his mission. He protected them. So I was like, oh, that's a nice touch.

54:20
Sam
I actually thought the adding that he was the type of robot that showed up to kill him. And that's why the wife, I was like, oh, that's good. Because it actually tells us why this older model is coming back again. It's like he came in to the camp, killed you, they captured me, reprogrammed me, sent me back here to save you right now.

54:46
Leo Goodman
Yeah, because actually the point with that you're bringing up is that in Terminator two, it makes no sense that they have an Arnold model. Yeah, like, we know that other Terminator models exist because in Terminator one, they have the scene in the future where the Terminator infiltrates their base and it doesn't look like Arnold. So we know that many different models exist.

55:15
Case
It's actually a plot point in Terminator one that he doesn't know what the Terminator is going to look like until he sees.

55:19
Leo Goodman
Yes, he says, I didn't know who it was until he made a move on you because they could look like anyone. This is the only one of them that actually makes a point of explaining why he looks like Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger. So that's a point in his favor. I'll also say another point in his favor is, you know what I really like the Terminator on Terminator fight. In the last one, when they're fighting with each other, the way that the TX moves. The moment that I rewound and watched several times because I loved it, was when Arnold's grabs the TX from behind and the TX just wraps its legs around and turns his torso around and turns his head around and then has.

56:03
Sam
It birding his face. She was like, I'm just going to light your face on fire. That was really good. I also liked the moment where the TX was the boyfriend in the back of the cop car. I thought that was pretty good. It was pretty solid. And the hand going through, straight through the car seat and the cop and the way that the partner reacted, I was like a plus acting. This is the best acting of the film. Oh, shit. That was amazing because that's like a real reaction and I loved it.

56:39
Leo Goodman
Also going back to with the boyfriend as well, with the fiance. Fiance wakes up in bed and the TX is sitting on the bed and just the torso turns around. There's something about that is just such exorcist style creepy. That's just a great. Just.

56:54
Case
Yeah, we should probably give some shout outs to the cast in this movie or at least discuss them. Christina Lockhen as the TX, I think is actually pretty good casting. I have some issues with the way they try to sexualize her in Edward spots. But in terms of. She apparently did a lot of mime training to get weird body motion kind of stuff down for it, really. And they play it up really well. We just keep talking about all this body stuff she's doing that, I think, really sells the alien nature of the character.

57:23
Leo Goodman
So you're saying that actress can really just turn her toy store around.

57:28
Case
And obviously exaggerated, but they do good stuff with it. They make the effects like she sells it.

57:36
Sam
Most of her facial expressions were really great as the Terminator. I liked her. I liked what she did with it, except for the weird sexualization that they did. It's a new hot Terminator.

57:52
Leo Goodman
Are you talking about. It makes sense that she dips her finger in blood and tastes it to analyze that. That makes sense. But the way she puts her finger on her mouth in the ultra blowjobby way is just like, why are you doing it like that, machine?

58:08
Case
Well, and then she gets hot for it. But overall, I think she was fine. And I think this is probably more of a direction thing for her, that those are limitations. Was anyone else really distracted by Claire Danes?

58:23
Sam
You mean just because she's.

58:26
Case
I couldn't. I couldn't separate her from being Claire Danes?

58:29
Sam
I think there were definitely moments I was writing in my notes, and instead of writing Catherine, I wrote Claire. But those are both c names, and my family is notorious for messing up people's names, so it might just be a genetic thing. Sorry, Claire.

58:43
Leo Goodman
You know what? I wrote Arnold in every single one of my notes, so I didn't write t 101.

58:51
Case
800 cyberdime system model 101 every single time. You have to write it that way.

58:58
Sam
I think maybe, like, the first few scenes, I was like, oh, Claire Danes. Oh, hi. And then it was just kind of like, okay, let me. Yeah. I think as the movie went out, she was fine.

59:10
Leo Goodman
This was before.

59:16
Case
Yes. The TV show I've never watched had not actually come at this point.

59:22
Leo Goodman
She was big enough. This was before the thing that got her all the awards. But she was still definitely big enough to be, like, a draw. Like, it made sense for her to be there.

59:35
Sam
And I thought she wasn't. Yeah, she wasn't an actress who did a lot of action films, and that's was. I thought she was fine in the were. There were a couple of moments where I was just like, oh, but other than that, yeah.

59:50
Case
I mean, it threw me a little bit. There's never a spot where I stopped thinking about it being Claire Dane's. I think overall, she was mostly fine. It is weird that she seems to be further along in her career than she really should be, just as a person. Like, she seems to be significant others. I forget, were they married or was it just like her?

01:00:11
Sam
They were engaged. That was her fiance. They were getting ready for their weding.

01:00:15
Case
She's supposed to be 23. It felt like a little off in terms of the timeline, but overall, she's a fine actress in general. Overall, fine. Nick Stahl. Most of the issues, I think, are writing issues. I didn't really mind the recast overall, because it's supposed to be a big enough time jump that whatever. Edward Furlong would actually be the right age for this because they just, like, twelve years later.

01:00:41
Leo Goodman
Do we know why they didn't go with Edward?

01:00:43
Case
Frank? I think it was a contract thing. Although I know Furlong has gone through some personal stuff, and I don't think he's like, he came back for the most recent Terminator, but I don't think he has really been as big of an actor, especially not in this era.

01:00:58
Leo Goodman
Yeah, I thought Nick Stahl was. I thought it was good. That's the thing. We got so many problems with him, and someone was just like, I don't know if. Is that his acting or is that just him being given this weird ass direction and writing? The moment of, yes, it all makes sense now. There's only so much you can do with that.

01:01:21
Case
I have to wonder if it was furlong, if he would have had those moments of like, no, I should be trying to help here. Like, I should be doing the things that I did in the previous movie.

01:01:29
Leo Goodman
You mean like how Linda Hamilton completely said, no, we have to change how you wrote my character in Terminator two?

01:01:35
Case
Yeah, exactly.

01:01:38
Leo Goodman
Sam, you know what we're talking about.

01:01:39
Sam
Yes.

01:01:41
Leo Goodman
For anyone listening, if you're wondering. It's just that Linda Hamilton, when they did Terminator two, apparently the original script had her basically, like, the same character in Terminator one. And Linda Hamilton was just like, fuck, no, I would be a badass. And probably in a mental hospital. And that's how it became. Yeah, maybe Furlong would have done the same thing.

01:02:02
Case
She had to sell, like, no, I will work out so hard, guys. And she did before the Marvel movies. Yeah.

01:02:09
Leo Goodman
She looks like someone who's spent the past ten years convinced the world is going to end, and she has to be able to protect it and train her.

01:02:19
Sam
That's the other thing. I felt like even if he's a gifted child that got lost along the way, I feel like he would be more adamant about working out the way his mom did. And this is not to body shame. I'm not body shaming the actor. But I feel like even if you're, like, living on the run or that kind of thing, I just feel like John would have made sure to do a hundred sit ups a day, a hundred push ups, a. Like, he would have been one of those people that he would be constantly training for war all of the time, because that's how you were. Like, I imagine that growing up, that's something that Sarah would have had her kids do. Like, okay, all right, it's after dinner. Now we're going to talk about how to disarm a person.

01:03:14
Sam
Come over here.

01:03:16
Leo Goodman
And he would have kept up with it, too, especially if we're going with the idea that he has been living off the grid, just in case another robot comes back in time after him. So he's still living with the idea that it may still happen, so he's still going to be preparing for it.

01:03:34
Sam
Exactly, which is why I think you could have gone the opposite direction where this kid who's been really good at everything ends up being a hacker who hacked his identity to become a college student instead. Because it makes more sense for him to let go of it, because he's like, we saved the world. Mom died. I'm going to move on with my life and live a normal life. That almost makes more sense and is more interesting to like. I believe that this still might happen. I'm running away from fear, which is still valid. It's a valid choice. But then you're not doing anything actively other than staying off the grid. You don't have supplies or weapons on you at all times. I don't know. He's so unprepared. How is this Sarah Connor's child?

01:04:28
Case
Yeah. He doesn't have a network of people to work with the way that he did in the second one. It's weird that we just remove all the buffs.

01:04:38
Leo Goodman
I mean, that was her related. That was her network.

01:04:40
Case
Yeah, but he knew them. They were happy to see him.

01:04:43
Sam
But honestly, that would be his, right? Like, why wouldn't she pass that on? If these people believe Sarah, why wouldn't they believe in John? John has been set up. He's the chosen one. He's the person that's going to bring salvation. He's going to bring humans out of this horrible oppression by robots. And these people believe in it. So why would they just be like, sarah's dead now. Bye, kid.

01:05:13
Leo Goodman
Was it ever actually established that those people in Terminator two, was it ever actually established that they knew why she was the way she was?

01:05:24
Case
I forget if they were just regular doomsday preppers or a specific doomsday prepper. Doomsday versus judgment day preppers. But it doesn't matter. I mean, he had a network of people who had plenty of guns and were happy to see him when he showed up. It's weird that he doesn't have anything like that in this movie.

01:05:43
Sam
He should have a bunch of crazy people with underground bunkers that let him couch surf all of the time. That's how he should be getting by, like weird physical day jobs and bouncing from doomsday. Well, judgment Day preparers to judgment day preparers.

01:06:06
Case
One last thing I want to talk about before we move on to pitches is I think that the positioning of this movie has hurt the franchise a lot. It coming out and being as lackluster as it is has screwed over each one. Because literally every Terminator movie has had some critics being like, no, the franchise is back to being good now. And then everyone's like, is it as good as t two? And then it's not. And then they hate it. That's how it goes every time. The cycle just keeps on happening. It's like Judgment Day. It's just inevitable. This movie being bad has meant that what are fundamentally good ideas for movies? Like, I don't know if I love doing a time travel movie with a full recast, but there's some good ideas going on in there. The setting it post judgment day.

01:06:53
Case
Also great idea. History has changed. The inevitable stuff is happening, but now the details are different. Also great. All of those would have been good things that it's hard not to talk about when we're talking about how this movie could have been better because each one of those is a better pitch.

01:07:08
Leo Goodman
We're not even going to mention Summer Glau as a Terminator helping John.

01:07:13
Case
Oh yeah, that's the other thing, which is arguably the best Terminator thing after Terminator two.

01:07:20
Leo Goodman
I only saw like one or two episodes that, but it's praised like crazy.

01:07:24
Case
And it has Lena Heaty as Sarah Connor and she's great in it. Obviously the first two movies are the best. That's just always going to be the big problem with the series is that it peaked so early and then they haven't come out that frequently. So I don't know. Everyone just remembers those first two and that's about it.

01:07:45
Leo Goodman
Every now and then they make a Terminator movie and people are like, maybe this is going to be the one.

01:07:49
Case
Right?

01:07:50
Sam
I think that's what it is. They're waiting for you to forget the pile of crap they served you. So they're waiting a few years. Like, every five to six years, they try to clean your memory, and then they're like, it's a Terminator film. And you're like, oh, yeah, I remember Terminator. Terminator one and Terminator two. And then you go and see it, and you're like, oh, my God, that was terrible. So I think that's what's happening. Yeah, they're just waiting for you to forget. It's a paradox. It's a time loop.

01:08:20
Leo Goodman
Yeah, they're waiting for you to forget, but you can't forget unless you remember what you need to forget, and that's the paradigm.

01:08:28
Case
Yeah, I just lost the game.

01:08:30
Sam
You did.

01:08:36
Case
I don't know why that one triggered it.

01:08:37
Leo Goodman
Okay, wait. Can I also say one more thing? And this is the thing just in the vein of how much of this movie is callbacks to Terminator two that ultimately don't work quite as well to me, it is fully encapsulated in the line. Get in. Do you want to live? Get in. That's not the line. That's not the line. The line is, come with me if you want to live. And John Connor has been waiting his whole life to say that line. His mother told him that line his whole life growing up. And don't tell me she didn't, because when the Terminator goes back in Terminator two and says that to Sarah Connor, there's no reason it would have said that unless John Connor had programmed him in the future to say that in case he met Edward.

01:09:31
Leo Goodman
So he absolutely knew the story, and he absolutely knew the line. And so it's not just fan service. It also would just make sense that's what he would remember. I remember texting you this case, because when we just figured out were going to do this, and I watched this movie, and I was like, I'm so mad that he just said that. He just screwed up that line.

01:09:55
Case
All right, well, let's take a quick break to give a shout out to one of the other shows on our network and then come back and see if we can rewrite history.

01:10:03
Sam
Okay. We've made difficult decisions, and there are.

01:10:11
Case
Still more ahead of us.

01:10:13
Sam
Two people aren't enough to save the galaxy.

01:10:16
Case
We need the toughest, smartest, deadliest allies.

01:10:21
Sam
We need you.

01:10:23
Leo Goodman
We need you to join us and.

01:10:25
Sam
Listen to reignite a certain point of view.

01:10:28
Case
Podcast about storytelling, love and mass effect.

01:10:33
Sam
Join us every other Thursday as we fight for the fate of an entire galaxy.

01:10:39
Case
You can find us everywhere you get.

01:10:41
Sam
Your podcasts or@certainpov.com reignite.

01:10:48
Case
We're counting on you.

01:10:50
Sam
We should go.

01:10:51
Case
And we're back.

01:10:57
Leo Goodman
That's right. Step one is getting that music back in. Exactly.

01:11:00
Sam
We've all talked about step one.

01:11:04
Case
All right, Leo, you are the guest today. If you were possessed of a time machine and able to go back naked and then try to do your best to improve this movie, do you want to throw the first pitch on that?

01:11:17
Leo Goodman
Sure. So again, I'm going with the idea that the studio has basically said it's got to be Arnold, it's got to be a Terminator fight, and the other Terminator's got to be a girl, and it's got to be John Connor. And that's basically what we're going with and going with that idea. A lot of this is going to be going with essentially the same formula and essentially the same thing, just trying to up it and adjust it in little ways that we've been talking about. So starting off, starting with, instead of starting off with John Connor having his, I've been living off the grid. Voiceover we start in the future. We start in a future battlefield, and we hear a voiceover. And it's not John, it's Catherine Brewster. It's Claire Danes.

01:12:08
Leo Goodman
It's older Claire Danes, and she goes, 6 billion people, or however many billion people, died on whatever the date is. Fire rained down from the sky, entire cities reduced to dust in an instant. Those of us who survived faced a new nightmare, the war with the machines. At first, it was just a hunt, humans scrambling and hiding from the metal terrors that sought to render us extinct. Now the camera has come out from the battlefield into some of her makefield, makeshift fortress that they have, and it follows behind a soldier as she's walking along the edge of the building. We don't see her face yet. Eventually, we managed to regroup, to arm ourselves, to fight back. Heroes rose from the ashes of our civilization to show these things that humanity would not die meekly.

01:12:51
Leo Goodman
Men and women of courage and resolve who gave their blood to protect what was left of our race, and one man in particular who didn't seem surprised. One man who helped us all figure out how to face the enemy. One man who found the strength to give others hope. The soldier has now finished her walk to stand beside another, observing the carnage outside. The camera comes around so we can see their faces hard and determined. They're John Connor and Catherine Brewster, my husband, John Connor, who never let anyone see his fear but me. Opening credits. Credits are done. We start, we go into present day and similar things. The TX arrives. And at first I was thinking of an idea of having the TX be the one to go into the bar instead of Arnold and have to kill a bunch of dudes.

01:13:47
Leo Goodman
Except that I realized that the TX can just touch someone and instantly make their clothes. So that's why you don't need the scene of the TX going in and saying, give me your clothes. What the TX really got from taking that woman is just taking the car. So TX has essentially the same scene, and then Arnold has essentially the same scene, except playing it a little less for humor. Arnold goes in again. They clearly want to have this joke. They go in and the joke is simply the changing of it in being this new thing, but it doesn't have those weird camera things.

01:14:28
Leo Goodman
And when he goes up to take the clothes from the stripper, it then turns like instead of it just being nothing but joke, that scene's got to end with people running out of there and Arnold's chest like actually beat the crap out of some folks and taking his clothes. Again, I don't want it to be nothing but humor. It's got to turn into somewhat darker thing. And then he comes out and we keep the scenes of the TX going after the other kids because I like those and I think they work. And now we go to Catherine Brewster and she's working not at veterinary place, but at a hospital, and she's a machine tech at a hospital. She's working with the machines, and she's at work in a late night shift.

01:15:15
Case
Arnold that double crossing bitch.

01:15:17
Leo Goodman
Yeah, well, no, but the point is to make her someone who knows some stuff about working with machines.

01:15:23
Case
I know, it's just funny that you said it. She's working with the machines.

01:15:25
Leo Goodman
Fair enough. Yes, true. Well, this is before she's learned. This is before she's learned the error of her ways. And Arnold arrives there and he comes up to her and says, catherine Brewster, come with me. And she says, no, I am here for your protection. He grabs her, she fights off. Security guards get involved. He tosses them off easily. She runs. Little chase scene of Arnold going after Catherine Brewster and her trying to get away from him. And then the TX shows up. Moment where the TX tries to shoot at her. Arnold grabs her, shields her with his body. Quick little Terminator fight, finishing with Arnold. Since they're in the hospital in this part of white, but throws the TX into an MRI machine, and the magnetics incapacitates her long enough for Arnold and Catherine to get away.

01:16:10
Leo Goodman
He says again, I'm here for your protection. Come on. They get outside, they get into the car, and now we can have a chase scene like all Terminator movies so far. Need to have that chase scene. So, fine, let them have the chase scene. Except it's at night and it's got a fucking score. I cannot emphasize enough that is so important they get away. The Terminator is driving. Catherine demands an explanation of what's happening. The Terminator speaks, but the voice that comes out is hers. Is older, hers. And coming out of the terminator's mouth, it says, catherine, when you were twelve years old, you something. Something that you've never told anyone before. I know this because I'm you. And I'm recording this message on January Blah, 2000. And whatever, the thing you're looking at is a machine called a Terminator.

01:16:56
Leo Goodman
It was built to kill humans, but I've reprogrammed this one to protect you. It'll follow your orders. It'll answer your questions, use it to survive. Catherine, the future of the human race depends on you. The message ends. Catherine sits stunned for a moment, and finally she says, tell me what the hell is going on. And now we cut to somewhere else, some bar someplace. And a man is sitting at the bar having a beer. And he sees on the news is playing footage from the attack at the hospital. And he sees on the news and this footage, Arnold. And he sees Arnold protecting Catherine from the TX. And the man stares at it, stunned, puts his beer down, gets up, leaves. Come back to Arnold and Catherine. I'm getting rid of the fiance, by the way.

01:17:56
Leo Goodman
I really wanted to keep the fiance just to have the scene of the turning around in bed. I just love that scene so much. But noggin rib. So come back to Arnold and Catherine. And she's asking about judgment Day. She's expressing some disbelief. They get to the cemetery. They go into the mausoleum where Sarah Connor's grave is. Who's Sarah Connor? She's the mother of John Connor, leader of the future resistance. Blah, blah. Arnold pulls out the coffin, reveals the weapons. Catherine is amazed. Make a little point of going, oh, my God, is that a rocket launcher? There's guns in there. But there's also, more importantly, there's a rocket launcher, there's explosives. There's things that will be useful against a terminator, as we said. And most of them are sort of like bagged up.

01:18:44
Leo Goodman
Most of them are bagged up as though meant to be grabbed on the go, just in case you need to get them quickly because why would they just all be loose now? The cops show up because again, he just rampaged through a hospital and someone's been tracking. The cops show up. Arnold grabs the minigun. Not all the other ones, just the minigun goes out and fucking mows them down. And Catherine is horrified and demands why he just killed all of them. I thought you were programmed to kill people. No, I am programmed to protect you. Now the TX, and they talk about this, argue about this a little bit, and he can say, no, my only program is to protect you. All other things are secondary. And the TX shows up.

01:19:30
Leo Goodman
And we have the moment where Arnold shoots the TX a bunch with no great effect. The TX blasts Arnold with the hand cannon. Arnold is down the TX approach Catherine. Catherine trips and falls, and she's paralyzed by fear. The TX is standing up over her, aiming the cannon at her, charging up again. And suddenly the TX is blasted by a rocket and goes flying back. Catherine looks up and hears John Connor and he says, we all know what he says. He says, come with me if you want to live. I'm getting that fucking line in there. It's important. And they go to check on Arnold. Arnold is reviving enough, is still a little slow. They get in, and as they're getting in the car, the TX is coming back. John has clearly grabbed the bags that were in that thing.

01:20:23
Leo Goodman
And he goes and he throws like, he takes some sort of explosive thing. He throws two of them because the TX dodges one, gets hit by the other one. He's basically anticipated that something like that might happen and blasts back. They get in the car. John's driving. Catherine's in the passenger. Arnold's in the back. They hit the road. They're on the road. Not long before the TX is behind them on a motorcycle. One of the cops motorcycles is catching up. And of course while they're driving, we'll have the little moments of like saying, like, okay, so you're not the one from when I was a kid. What the hell are you? You come off an assembly line, correct? Catherine's going, what are you, who is this? What's going on? And John's saying, you can't be here. We stopped judgment day.

01:21:06
Leo Goodman
We stopped all this happening. And now the TX is showing up again and coming after them. Little bit of a chase. Finally, John slams on the brake so that the TX hits into them from behind, knocks off the motorcycle. The TX is slammed against the back windshield. Arnold punches through the glass, knocks it off, and now they have time to get away again. All of this is just to. I want to introduce John in a way that makes him actually capable. Like all. Everything that were talking about. He's a guy who is like, yeah, he's coming in for action mode. And John turns to Catherine and says, I'm John Connor. What's happening to you right now? Same thing happened to me when I was 13. So you must be somebody important in the future. Yeah, I guess so.

01:21:53
Leo Goodman
John laughs a little bit, goes, come with me if you want to live. I always wanted to say that. My dad said that to my mom. And now they talk a bit and they have the moment of, you shouldn't exist. We stopped judgment Day. And Arnold says, no, you postponed it. The creation of an artificial intelligence and its reaction is inevitable. You can say that instead of saying Judgment Day is inevitable. John's furious. They worked so fucking hard to stop it. Ever since then, he's been staying off the grid, keeping so nobody could find them. And Arnold says, yes, that's why Skynet sent the TX after Catherine instead. She's your second in command, and without her, your children can't be born. And now we have the moment. Oh, wait, what? You just told us that we're going to be married.

01:22:34
Leo Goodman
And we literally just met. Okay, that's weird. And we can also have here the same revelation that Arnold killed John in the future. They have the scene where John asks what the TX's other targets are. Arnold lists them off, including Catherine's father, reveals who the father is and the role in the creation of Skynet, and also that he survives the initial blast and helps form the initial resistance. I think it's important to say that because one of the thing that we forgot to say was a problem in the initial movie is, why would she be going after him? He starts Skynet. They didn't give a reason for why she'd be trying to kill him. He's the guy who forms Skynet. She should be helping him. But no, the important thing is that he survives.

01:23:26
Case
I have notes about that.

01:23:27
Leo Goodman
Oh, do you? Okay, cool. Sure. Now John insists. Oh, maybe if we get there in time, we can stop everything. Catherine insists, no, we have to save my father. Come on. Have the scene where they convince him to go. And at the military base, we can be cutting in some scenes very similar. I think the stuff with the military base can be relatively similar to what it was in the initial thing with him.

01:23:59
Case
Really?

01:24:00
Leo Goodman
Resisting the idea of starting Skynet up, not because there's a virus, because the idea that Skynet is the virus, even though Skynet's been causing the virus before, Skynet's actually been activated. I don't quite get that. Like, either it's activated or it's not. Either it's activated enough to create this amazing virus or it's not. It's simply that they have this amazing computer program, Skynet, that everyone else in the military and the president really wants to implement. And he's the guy being like, no, let's not do this. This is a bad idea. And finally they do, and everything's going haywire, and somebody suggests, hey, maybe we should get to Crystal Creek in case there's really an attack going on. The TX shows up. Arnold and crew shows up, and it goes largely the same way, except.

01:24:52
Leo Goodman
Except that while Arnold is fighting the TX, which, again, keep that fight is great. John and Catherine are able to save a few other military personnel while taking down some of the killer robots. They're not able to save the father to Catherine's father, but they're able to save a couple others, because what's important here is that there's others who will survive this moment, who actually see John doing some stuff and taking charge, establishing that other people actually see him being a leader here. And Catherine's father tells him to get to Chris Greek as he's dying. And so instead of getting into a plane like that little two person plane, like a few of them, including a few of these other military personnel, they can get into a helicopter and go.

01:25:50
Leo Goodman
And again, there can be moments here know John is coming up with innovative ways of using various technologies and using whatever cover they have to take out these machines. He can use the terminator, get behind the terminator and use to cover him while he mows down to the machine with a gun, stuff like that. And they get to Crystal Creek, and again, a lot of this can be largely the same. We can have the TX finally get killed in largely the same way. Keep that magnet scene that made sense of keeping it back like that. And they get there and they get to Crystal Creek, and they get there. And again, it's John, it's Catherine, and it's the couple of military personnel that they managed to keep and survive. And they have the moment of, oh, my God, it's nothing. There's nothing here.

01:26:45
Leo Goodman
There's nothing but us surviving. And there's a moment of John and, like, apart from the others, as John is basically starting to break down and going, I can't believe it's happening. We tried so hard to stop it. This is crazy. And then they hear that the attacks are starting and she basically tells them, know, get up, be strong. Whatever's happening, we have to fight it now. And so John can go. And then the ending scene can actually be, again, very similar to what it was in the film, except John's got a little more strength in his voice. These other folks have actually seen him taking charge and doing stuff. And then the final voiceover is her speaking instead of him. And again, largely the same stuff of the fight starts now and we will not stop. And that.

01:27:57
Leo Goodman
Yeah, the point being, what were saying with one of the main issues of this movie was John Connor is just useless. I feel like so much of it can be saved by just reversing that.

01:28:09
Sam
So I've decided I just want to see that movie. So I don't need a pitch that was pretty complete. I want to see that film. I would like that film to be made. And I was just like, oh, this is way better than my pitch. Oh, I really like that. Oh, that's lovely. Oh, that's fantastic. You know, actually, I'd really like to see that. It's so funny because I also recast or I changed her job, but I actually changed her job where I wanted her to kind of have an internship with her father to kind of have like. And I did. I actually had her working on small robotics hands. She's a college student. Her dad pulls a little strings. She's very low level. She doesn't really know the full scope of what's happening on the base.

01:29:03
Sam
But because of her dad, she has this internship at the base, which gives her access to the base. Right. So for later on, that's kind of nice because when they need to get on it's not like you can just visit your family on secure, secret basis. That's true.

01:29:22
Leo Goodman
How do they get in there?

01:29:23
Sam
Yeah, she just walked in and they were like. She was like, daddy. And they were like, oh, yeah, it's his daughter. We always let, yeah, this is a totally secret thing for the government. But yeah, she can just walk in anytime. She's his princess.

01:29:38
Leo Goodman
And two other people.

01:29:40
Sam
Just random. But in my imagining, I had her actually working as an internship, very low level, working on some robotics hands. She's really into those robots fights that used to be on the Sci-FI network and things like that. She's very into that, which is why I thought it'd be really funny if when she meets the robot and realizes that, meets Arnold and realizes that he's a robot, instead of automatically being super frightened, being more amazed and poking at him and kind of like, how do you work? Okay, so what's your core made of? And trying to peel back the skin and having the robot just be like, she's such a weirdo kind of thing, but in a totally robot kind of way, which would actually be kind of the humor, right.

01:30:37
Sam
This very straight man to this very like, oh my God, I want to take you apart. It's like, we don't have time for you to take me apart because I need to save your life and we have to go. And then when the TX shows up, she's like, that's a robot too. So instead of being like, yes, that's a robot and it's about to kill you, she'd be like, oh, shit, it is. She can kind of run off. And I think that would be very interesting to, an interesting opposite to John's very much like, I hate robots. Robots are evil. I've been taught all this time to fear technology. She knows technology, she knows robots. She's building them. She's interested in building them. And then she realizes like, oh shit, there's like heavy downsize to some of this.

01:31:26
Sam
And so I think that can also add attention to them later on because she can kind of, like, a lot of scientists kind of think that some of it is just absolutely fantastic. Like, you know what, I am going to keep the fiance because I really liked that moment. So I'm going to keep the fiance. I'm just going to have it happen a little earlier in the movie so that he dies a little earlier, so you can build a little grief and romantic bonding later.

01:31:56
Leo Goodman
I like that we both had the same reason for wanting to keep the fiance and only that reason.

01:32:05
Case
I mean, he's got like three scenes. Like, if one of those scenes is the good one, who's surprised?

01:32:10
Sam
Honestly, those scenes, his scenes are pretty good. The minute you realize that he could just be a boyfriend. He doesn't even have to be a fiance because we don't have to do that scene in the beginning where she's talking to her dad about and they're clearly registering for their wedding. That doesn't have to happen. But he could just be like her boyfriend, like her live in boyfriend kind of thing. Because I imagine that in my brain we're sticking with 23. So she's a college student, she's got this internship, that kind of thing. So she's still like, that age, John is still a badass. John has a network of people that he stays with underground. John works out all the time. He always has a knapsack with everything he needs. Like his essentials. He does fiddle around with stuff, but it's mostly explosives.

01:33:11
Sam
But he is good at fixing things. He's still good at fixing machines when he needs to, because he has to be able to fiddle with things because he wants to know how to take things apart, too. So he can meet her at the level of. He could technically build something, but he doesn't want to, but he has to know how to take them apart. And then I'd keep the last half of the film pretty much the same. I'd also get rid of the weird makeout thing, like, the reference to their pitch that was so weird. And the fact that they talked about it more than once and that, like, didn't remember it, but she remembered it. So then. And I was like, well, I guess the next day, Arnold did show up. So that would be pretty traumatizing to a person.

01:34:01
Sam
Like, you might forget things that happened in your life, but also, it just kind of felt like he was nagging her. Like, oh, I don't remember you, but you remember me. Wow, I must have meant something to you. And it was like, ew. So I do not like that.

01:34:15
Leo Goodman
Yeah, you kissed me and then just didn't come to school ever again. It's weird.

01:34:19
Sam
Yeah, that's why I remembered you. So, yeah, I would basically change around their stories that way. But I really liked the opening. You said I liked your movie completely. My tweaks are just my tweaks.

01:34:33
Leo Goodman
Thank you. One thing I forgot to say is just the reason that came, knew where they were and came to the Sarah Connor place was just. Why the fuck wouldn't he know that all the weapons were there?

01:34:48
Case
Yeah, I figured that's.

01:34:50
Sam
She. Honestly, his mom would have told him. I was like, oh, his mom's friends took care of. I was like, first of all, Sarah Connor has a network of acquaintances. She doesn't have close friends. What are you talking, like? Was she on some beach hanging out with her? She's all of a sudden a like, I don't. Like. I just imagined her. She was, like, in Baja and living on the beach somewhere. And she lived just long enough to find out that the world wasn't going to end and passed away. And all of her friends celebrated her life in a fire visual. Like, no, that's not Sarah Connor. Are you fucking kidding me? Her kid took her, cremated her he was the only one who showed up.

01:35:30
Sam
He sent out coded messages to all of her network to let them know that Sarah passed, and then that he would be dropping by when he could. And then he basically went and filled her mausoleum with the guns and went on with his life. Hiding the way he's always hidden. Changing his identity, having that kind of stuff happen. Building an army secretly for the possibility that they were wrong. Because that's how Sarah was. She always believed that she could be wrong, and so would he.

01:36:04
Leo Goodman
Yeah, I like the idea of her being. Of Catherine being at the military base in some work capacity and fiddling with robots. Yeah, I like that a lot.

01:36:16
Sam
Because she would also know how the base. Like, she would have access, at least to the lower level, but she would also know who to steal from to get access to other things. You could also have a really nice moment with her and her dad when she realizes how dangerous Skynet is. Like, a confrontation. Like, are you really going to activate this just because they think it's appropriate or because there's this external threat? I mean, like Kay said, this is a military kind of operation. So is there outside forces that are making them turn this on? Yeah, like, dad, you know it's not perfect. You know that there's something wrong in the coding. You know that it's not like. You know that there's a potential. And I just talked to this guy, and he could be like, what guy?

01:37:05
Sam
Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like some crazy know kid you might even like. If you want to do parallels, maybe have put John inside of a mental institution. Like, have that be a parallel after his mom dies, what protection does he have? And if he's seeing signs everywhere, what if something happens and he does something that's, like, super weird, and he gets locked up for a little bit, sure.

01:37:33
Leo Goodman
But then how does he get out? And how does he get involved in the story?

01:37:38
Sam
You know, I do, like, a good jailbreak, so I don't.

01:37:46
Leo Goodman
Mean, yeah, it could be the same thing. He could see Arnold on the news from the mental institution and then decide to break. Because until this moment, he's been like, fine, maybe I'll just stay here. And then he's like, oh, I could have broken out anytime. Now I'm going to.

01:38:00
Sam
Yeah, it's like three meals a day.

01:38:03
Case
Which would be him fulfilling the role of his mom.

01:38:05
Leo Goodman
Yeah, that works.

01:38:09
Sam
Three meals a day, comfortable bed, if.

01:38:13
Case
You do it, three hots and a cot. Yeah, you could just work out all the time. And he's built a really good network inside the prison.

01:38:19
Leo Goodman
Yeah, I like that better than my transients in a bar. Actually.

01:38:27
Case
They'Re both fine. The thing is, this is all better than what we got.

01:38:33
Sam
Case is like, as long as it's better.

01:38:36
Case
I like both of these a lot. I took a slightly different tact in that I was really hung up on the whole, why did they go back to this time? Why did time just get shifted? Why did judgment Day just get pushed? Not just that, is it going to be inevitable? But why are the details so similar? Why are all the things that happened in the first judgment day of 1997 playing out the same way now, eight years later, without more substantial changes? And so that just kept on floating with me while I was watching this movie. So my take on this is assuming this movie comes out in 2003 and is set in 2005, what if the TX came back in 1997? I realized, as I was like, is that the same year?

01:39:28
Leo Goodman
Same year as T two?

01:39:30
Case
No, T two is set in 1995.

01:39:32
Leo Goodman
Right. Okay. Sorry.

01:39:33
Case
So 1997 is the date of judgment day of the actual apocalypse that was supposed to happen, which is why the naming convention makes this all weird and hard to discuss. So what if 1995 plays out the way that we saw in T two? And then in 1997, two terminators were sent back. And what I'm thinking is that these were ones that were sent back at the same time as the judgment day, or rather, as the T two terminators went back. So it's same situation where they're trying to hit multiple spots, like what Sam was saying. Why do they only send one? In this case, they actually sent ones to different points on the timeline to try to make sure things happened appropriately. The T 1000 that was sent back to 1997 found that Judgment day didn't occur.

01:40:21
Case
And so since 1997, its mission has been to get things back on track. And here's my thought. The T 1000 versus the TX. The T 1000 wasn't insufficiently scary because it didn't have enough weapons on it. The one thing that it lacked was that it wasn't good enough at dealing with humans. The T 800 was even worse, but it was getting better. But it didn't understand things. Like when it, as a cop, went to go interrogate teenagers. Those teenagers lied because he was a cop, and they just didn't understand those things.

01:41:01
Leo Goodman
Not all of them. There's kids there.

01:41:05
Case
Some people answered appropriately, but John's friend was like, hey, man, a cop's looking for you. Got to get the fuck out of here. The point is that he thinks that things are supposed to be the way that they're officially on paper and doesn't understand the idiosyncrasies. So I'm saying that this one has been living since 1997, up till 2005, integrating itself with humanity and getting smarter, and that its mission is actually to create Skynet. Because at the end of T two, they destroy all of the research that allowed for Skynet to occur. That's how they stop judgment day. They prevent all the technology from being developed. So now this one has infiltrated everything to push it forward. But here's where we get it's important. We don't know who it is.

01:41:52
Sam
Nice.

01:41:52
Case
The movie should be.

01:41:54
Leo Goodman
So how do we, the audience, know that it's there?

01:41:57
Case
So the movie starts with various government controlled squads in very patriot act, kind of like counterterrorism, things being sent into homes and gunning down families. And those families are the people who were supposed to be on John's list, like his group of compatriots. And at first it's just these random murders occurring. So this is going to have shades of the original Terminator now, where just random family is being taken down. But instead of being by a terminator, it's government death squads. They're terrorists. They're being sent in. We have all the evidence, and we should have a red herring in this program who we think is the person doing it, and then it turns out to be Kate's dad.

01:42:44
Leo Goodman
And when you say that there are people on John's list, which, I mean.

01:42:49
Case
Like, the list of his associates in.

01:42:52
Leo Goodman
The future, like the ones that. The resistance fighters, right?

01:42:55
Case
Yeah, the resistance fighters in the future. And this one has just been slowly working their way through the list. It's been identifying who could be potential threats. A little bit of like the Captain America Winter soldier thing, where it's like, anyone who could be a resistance fighter in the future, they're trying to identify and kill. So some of these were ones that they knew from records, and others were ones that the change in circumstances they just figured out were different. Meanwhile, I like this idea to have Kate be the POV character. I think that's actually really good. I'm going to steal that for this one because I think it works really well because it helps then justify John's position. And I realize this is where it becomes really similar to Genesis. When John shows up, he's with the Terminator.

01:43:38
Case
The T 101 that was sent back into 1997, linked up with him, and they've been underground building their network. And like I said, that happens in Genesis. So I do realize that part's not that novel.

01:43:50
Leo Goodman
So in 97, a T 1000 came back, and a T 800 came back, and the T 1000 started infiltrating the government, and the T 800 started building a network with John.

01:44:01
Case
Yes.

01:44:02
Leo Goodman
Cool.

01:44:03
Case
And so at this point, now we just think that this very attractive businesswoman who's, like, with a military contractor working with us all, is just, like, a person. And maybe she's like, what I would say is she hands files of this new information, new intel on potential domestic terrorists and so forth. It's like, oh, this would be a good opportunity for us to test out these defense drones and that this guy keeps on pushing. And so we think that he is the terminator, or at the very least, he's the bad guy of the movie. And then it turns out that actually, she's been manipulating him this whole time. She is the terminator. And so that should really come out somewhere at about the halfway point in the movie where she's on site.

01:44:48
Case
And that's when it's revealed that she has integrated into her body weapons, like projectile weapons, that she's been developing for these Terminator drones. Because, like you, I like the third act. I think that it's so cool having basic ass OG terminators as drones that are under her control, but this is stuff she was developing, so I like it. Kate's, like, confused. She doesn't understand why her classmates are getting killed. They keep hearing about stuff like. Like, it's not just her classmates, but it's weird that four of them have. It's just enough where it's like, that's strange, and it's the people that John had personal connections with. It starts building up that way. And so maybe John can play kind of the reese role where he's trying to find Kate or find people.

01:45:39
Case
Like, he keeps being too late at first, and people keep dying because the T 101 would have the same records of people who are known associates. Once the first two happen, he would have access to that same list, so he would try to go identify them. And we can have a scene with Kate where it becomes a road movie because they kidnapper, but instead of being afraid of a single terminator, they're actually being actively pursued by the. And I have a. There's a note when I was reading up on the production history that they wanted a bit of a travel thing going on because that happened in t two as well. And also in t one, where there's a bunch of driving around from location to location. So you can kind of still have that kind of vibe here.

01:46:24
Case
And then we get the reveal that the person that we thought was a bad guy was actually just this manipulated military official who is, in fact, Kate's dad. Maybe that could even be the way. Maybe when he finally sees the file on the person, like, maybe he never actually looked at it. He sees the file on the person who was sent to be killed. That's where we get the reveal about that part. And he tries to bring her in, but we get the. This is why they're back at the base. And then the TX sort of makes a play more directly as she interfaces with the computer system that they've been developing, that she was building so that she basically becomes the mother of Skynet.

01:47:05
Case
And that rather than just being like, oh, it's inevitable, like, literally, there's a Terminator trying to set things back, what they see as. Right. Like, trying to correct the timeline.

01:47:15
Leo Goodman
And that's a parallel to the paradox of the first one, where the soldier sent back becomes the father of Connor. And now, like, the terminator sent back becomes the mother of Skynet.

01:47:30
Case
Yeah, and I would love that they figure it out because they find footage, like, maybe they were in her office or something. And they find footage of her arriving that she has suppressed, but she still has on file in her computer because.

01:47:42
Sam
She'S sentimental or something.

01:47:45
Case
Or maybe they find a different source that she forgot to wipe, but they identify what she looks like based on video. I just think it's like we've seen the time travel sequence so many times. How cool would it be if this time, it's like we're watching the security camera footage of it.

01:48:02
Leo Goodman
Of the time travel. Oh, yes.

01:48:03
Case
Okay. Yeah.

01:48:06
Sam
I think it's fine for a robot to actually be kind of sentimental about keeping records, actually.

01:48:15
Leo Goodman
Well, especially if this is a robot that has spent years learning to be more human.

01:48:20
Sam
Yeah.

01:48:22
Leo Goodman
That's one thing humans do, is they keep things. This is what I keep, records.

01:48:27
Case
Yeah, I mentioned the 911 thing, but maybe the first four years that she was back here, she wasn't very good. She was, like, working at it. She was, like, trying to get better. 911 happens. All of a sudden, there's a change in the way the military works. There's a heightened paranoia. That's the moment where she inserts herself, where she's able to get better grounds. Not saying I want to make this all a 911 movie, but the increased importance of the war on terror has actually led to us developing automated drones that we can send out to go murder things. It's exactly the scenario we're talking about.

01:49:05
Case
Well, and again, this allows for scenes that are kind of like 24 of people being brought in with bags over their head and tortured by government officials and have that be a bad thing because they're being manipulated by a killer robot.

01:49:18
Sam
I mean, on some level, though, that whole first concept of her coming back, that could be a very dark sitcom, too. That's comedy gold of her learning how to human. Not that's the tone you want to go with, but I'm just saying that could be its own separate thing.

01:49:40
Leo Goodman
And just occasionally screwing up and being like, I got to kill this person now.

01:49:44
Sam
Yeah, just being like, all right, well, I guess it's time to bring out my blowtorch. And then she just burns their face off because that was the most amazing part.

01:49:54
Leo Goodman
And then Wanda Maximoff comes in and is like, no, don't do that.

01:50:03
Case
But I think this works because we can still call it a TX to distinguish it from a T 1000. She has upgraded herself a lot over eight years. Yeah, maybe she does have an endoskeleton that she can eject and is a bomb. She needs to, and it's got all the weapons built into it. Maybe we can give her all the things that we want to give her to show, like, hey, this is the new hotness. But at the same time, this keeps the timeline and the time travel components logical without having to go into just doing dark fate, doing the like. All right, well, it's inevitable, but now the details are going to be different.

01:50:37
Leo Goodman
Yeah, I like the idea of instead of all the talk of this is your destiny simply showing, well, no, this is the paradox that makes that happen. And are we going to have a discussion on would any of this happened if you hadn't come back? No, we're not. That's what happened and that's what we're going with. Yeah, I like that parallel a lot.

01:51:03
Case
Also, I have a note, and I don't know if this would be a thing that we would do necessarily, but it would be fun to see. I feel like Arnie should be burned away down past his neckline. I think that one of the fun things about the T 800 specifically is how visceral the damage they take is in a way that the T 1000 and the TX don't have. The first terminator, you see how badly it gets beaten up. And every time Arnie gets beaten up really badly, I think it'd be really fun if by the end of it, we are really just dealing with for marketability. Standpoints or purposes? His shoulders and up so we still have his face, but really, see, he's almost completely stripped down to machine by the end of the movie.

01:51:50
Leo Goodman
Leave him his feet just so he can walk better.

01:51:54
Sam
Agree.

01:51:55
Leo Goodman
Yeah. Other than that, don't do that to him. Sounds odd. Well, I'm just talking about in Terminator one, once he's lost everything but the robots. I was like, okay, you clearly walk better if you have human feet. But, yeah, I like that. Yeah, you're right. And they actually don't let him get beat up as much in Terminator three. And I wonder how much of that is just like, Arnold being like, no, I don't want to spend that much time in a fucking makeup chair anymore. Yeah, but in this case, it's just.

01:52:22
Case
A green suit that he's wearing.

01:52:23
Leo Goodman
Exactly.

01:52:23
Case
And then they cgi in, like, the robot, and you could have it, like, dripping blood and stuff. Like, you could have it be really gross.

01:52:28
Leo Goodman
Nice. Yeah, I like that. It's good pitch. You should get that made.

01:52:35
Case
Like I said, I don't know how much of this is too similar to either Genesis, because it's been a while since I saw Genesis, and I thought it was fairly forgettable. And then dark fate, I just haven't seen.

01:52:47
Leo Goodman
Well, maybe the whole point is that if the stuff that Genesis did had happened in this one instead, it would have managed to actually have been better. I don't know. I haven't seen Genesis. I can't say.

01:52:59
Case
I think one of the problems with Genesis is that they try to be way too affectionate towards both of the first two movies with a totally new cast. Aside from it's. It's Clark as. As Sarah Connor, and then it is Jai Courtney as Reese, which is weird because Jai Courtney is in way better. Not better shape per se, but he's way more muscly than Kyle Reese was in the first movie.

01:53:31
Leo Goodman
All of it's weird, but does it take place in the same year?

01:53:35
Case
There's time travel that happens at multiple points, so they keep going back to different times.

01:53:39
Leo Goodman
Okay.

01:53:39
Case
But at one point, they send back the T 800 model to meet up with, like, a child version of Sarah Connor, and then that one ages up with her, which is why Arnold's older, because the fleshy side has aged, but she's super prepared, even though she didn't go through the events of Terminator one because this Terminator was basically her dad. The ideas sound like good pitches. It just didn't end up being a good movie, which is the problem here.

01:54:06
Sam
Yeah.

01:54:11
Case
But I think that the big problem there is that because it was recasting pretty much everything and it was all the parts that we actually kind of care about, like Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor. It's weird not having her be Sarah Connor, but no one cares about Connor, like, well, Edward Furlong, sure, there's a big age gap, and we only had one movie with him, and he's been played by different actors every time, including the flash forwards. So we have seen various John Connors. We can recast him if we want it to be Nick Stahl in this movie or someone else, that one doesn't matter as much. But Linda Hamilton not being Sarah Connor feels real bad. And also reese being recast also feels.

01:54:48
Leo Goodman
Real bad, partly because you're just like, man, I like that guy. Throw him some work. Haven't seen him in a. Yeah, it's. Yeah, he's in Tombstone. Come on. An alien. Yeah.

01:54:59
Case
So that's for, as always, I tend to find areas where I'm like, this one bugged me from a Sci-Fi nerd standpoint and focused on that. But, Leo, I really loved your take on John being kind of a badass. I really dig that. And I really dig the idea. I love your pitch of the MRI machine on it. That's really cool.

01:55:20
Leo Goodman
It's the only reason to have it in a hospital. And I get then later on, when he does the magnet thing in the military base, part of it is like the same sort of thing. Okay, that works. But how are we going to get rid of here? But that's what we got there. Got it.

01:55:36
Case
Yeah. So stuff like that. But just in general, I feel like we kind of all agree John needed to have more purpose in that movie.

01:55:44
Sam
Yeah.

01:55:46
Case
A lot of it just didn't kind of work timeline wise. The score or the lack thereof is really bad, fundamentally. Most of the stuff in this movie is fine. It just doesn't stick, the landing. Nothing about it is exciting. And there's no reason to go rewatch this when you could just go rewatch Terminator two.

01:56:04
Sam
Agreed. Yeah, just watch Terminator two.

01:56:08
Leo Goodman
I really just want to play the music of the Terminator two fight scene right now because it's in my head and I just want to hear it.

01:56:15
Sam
Honestly, I think if Terminator two, like I said, if Terminator two didn't exist, it would probably be okay. Movie. Like, it's lazy. Like, there's a lot of just, you know. But there are things that, like I said, like, they actually made a reason why Arnold is in this film and the boyfriend scenes. All of the boyfriend scenes are pretty good, except for the shopping for stuff. And I thought the acting was okay. It's just John. John needed to have more of a purpose. Needed to kick it into high gear by the second act. First act, he could wallow a little. You know, he's got gifted child syndrome. He's got the one syndrome when the one isn't needed. All right, fine. But then you realize that it is happening, and then your instincts, what you were raised on, should have kicked in.

01:57:10
Leo Goodman
Yeah. In fact, you should be a little bit relieved at times, just being like, oh, fuck, I wasn't just crazy.

01:57:20
Sam
Finally I get to fight the machines.

01:57:24
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

01:57:25
Case
And be horrified by it. Like, horrified by that relief.

01:57:28
Leo Goodman
Yes.

01:57:29
Sam
Feel guilty.

01:57:31
Leo Goodman
What a great scene that would be is having the guy talking about how I'm relieved and I'm horrified at how happy I am. This is kind of happening.

01:57:42
Sam
Yeah.

01:57:43
Leo Goodman
As much as we would all love to go out and shoot zombies, if you're doing it means bad things have happened.

01:57:49
Sam
Yeah. The script really plays this off as, like, John's just kind of like, yeah, it's happening. You're back. He's a robot. That's who he like, it's very blase about everything, but it's like, you're back. Oh, wait. You're not my robot. Okay. You're a different Terminator. Okay. But you're here to save me, right? Here. Protect me. Oh, wow. Okay. All right, so it's happening again. When is it happening? What are we doing? Okay. What's the plan, chief? He should actually be a little excited, because one of the things that really strikes you about t two is the relationship that this kid builds with the Terminator that has come back to save him. That's why it's free Willie.

01:58:42
Leo Goodman
Right.

01:58:42
Sam
Because this is like this. Almost like his best friend being melted down to sacrifice himself.

01:58:49
Leo Goodman
I know now why you cry.

01:58:51
Sam
Yeah.

01:58:52
Leo Goodman
Something I can never do.

01:58:54
Sam
So there should be something about seeing him that makes this john both happy and sad and excited, but also really anxious, because then this means that he and his mom failed, right? So there should be slight disappointment because we fucking failed. But at the same time, I got to see my friend again. This is my friend. Oh, you're not my friend, but you're just like my friend. Oh, man. This feels normal to me. This is my normal. Like that other life I was living, just doing construction od jobs under different names. That was just like what I was doing till I got back to this, which is my normal, which is waiting to fight the machines.

01:59:49
Leo Goodman
Yeah.

01:59:50
Sam
Like, John's a severely fucked up person and he should be.

01:59:55
Leo Goodman
Well, it's a parallel. Know, I never served in the military, but I've seen enough movies and TV shows where they have someone talk about missing the combat and wanting to get back there. Because that's where life makes sense.

02:00:09
Sam
Yeah. And that's where it's. That's. That's the part of this film that's missing the most, is that John's motivations, John's emotions, tied even from the second. Like, those things don't go away. I mean, think of how most of our generation just shops based on nostalgia, which is proof of the fact that now I can buy something that's really cute in Star wars or Star Trek. I can buy a dress that wasn't around when I was younger because people didn't shop based on their nostalgia.

02:00:49
Leo Goodman
You mean like how I shot a SpongeBob mockumentary that is now.

02:00:54
Case
Right.

02:00:58
Sam
Where can people find that again?

02:01:00
Case
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good point to get back to. I think we're wrapped up on talking about this. So, Leo, thank you for coming on. Give your plug.

02:01:10
Leo Goodman
Yeah. So again, go on Amazon prime and check out SpongeBob docupants. I think it's like ten episodes. I'm in three of them. If you're a History Channel fan, I'm in an episode of this season of the Foods that built America, which is all about history, stuff about the creation of foods. I'm in episode six of season two. I don't play the guy who created Fritos, but I play the guy who bought the recipe for Fritos and then used that to build a chip empire and eventually created Cheetos. That was fun. That was actually something that was supposed to shoot back last April, and then the world shut down and we managed to get it shot in October. That was the first thing that actually shot. Once things started actually being able to happen again and I just got cast.

02:02:03
Leo Goodman
I'm going to be recording something next week or maybe the week after a podcast called the Danger Chronicles with Archipelago Studios, which is a scripted podcast. It's going to be basically a parody of. They do parodies, I guess, of comic book and superhero stuff. And this is going to be a parody of the Snyder cut. I am going to be playing Steppenwolf in a parody recording of the Snyder cut, which is going to be a lot of fun. So I'll be doing that voice. And I got a meeting later this week with some filmmaker that I auditioned for like, a while ago, and I didn't get it, but he's got in touch with me about something else. So I got something else that I'll hopefully be working on soon.

02:02:48
Case
But, yeah, now, if people wanted to keep up with you, where can they find you on social media?

02:02:55
Leo Goodman
I am on Twitter at Leo goodman one. And I am on Instagram at l Goodman 1981. And now you can guess what year I was born. Right?

02:03:08
Case
But is it actually filmed three years earlier than that?

02:03:11
Sam
Yeah.

02:03:15
Case
Sam, if people wanted to find you, where can they find you?

02:03:17
Sam
They can find me here, but if they have complaints, they can find case at.

02:03:22
Case
You can find me on Twitter at case aiken. You can find the podcast on Twitter. At another pass, you can find all the stuff that we're doing@certainpov.com. There's so much stuff going on. We've got great shows. We've got a wonderfully vibrant discord community. We are currently having this call on Discord, but you can just come hang out. We've got channels talking about memes, talking about spoilers for cool Marvel stuff that's been coming out, or Star wars stuff, like lots of fun discussion. If you like Mass Effect, there's a huge amount of Mass Effect on the reignite section because that's a great podcast. You know what? I've said it out loud, so I'll plug that one. Reignite is a great show.

02:04:00
Case
MJ and Matt have been going through the Mass Effect video games and doing it kind of like a book club format, really sort of getting into why their characters made the choices that they do on what is a really interesting branching RPG. So if you like Mass Effect, check that out. And if you don't like Mass Effect, it might sell you on it. I actually played that franchise because they sold me so hard on it just by listening to the episode. So that's a good show. Check it out again. It's at certainpov.com. Sam, take us home.

02:04:28
Sam
Next time on another pass, we'll be doing Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you like this, pass it on.

02:04:41
Leo Goodman
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another pass podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

02:05:10
Sam
Oh, hi, Craig. They were murdering people. But did Craig come back because I said robots were good? Is that.

02:05:28
Leo Goodman
All right?

02:05:29
Case
If the story is the cold open, this should be the after credits.

02:05:33
Sam
This is the rise of the machines. Craig has risen again. Sorry. Now my pitch is absolutely everywhere, because I cannot stop laughing about our robot.

02:05:48
Case
Do you like comic book movies, particularly Marvel films? Because if you do. Hi, my name's Ian. I hang out with Mitch. We take a journey into mystery every single Wednesday. You can watch us live.

02:06:00
Leo Goodman
You can listen to us later in the car.

02:06:02
Case
When you're by yourself and you don't.

02:06:03
Leo Goodman
Want to tell people you listen to.

02:06:04
Case
Podcasts about Marvel movies, that's fine.

02:06:06
Leo Goodman
No judgment.

02:06:07
Case
But we're here for you. We watched all the MCU.

02:06:10
Leo Goodman
Now we're going through all the old ones. So buckle in.

02:06:13
Case
Mitch is going to take us there.

02:06:14
Leo Goodman
Boom. That's your ad right there. One.

02:06:19
Case
Cpov certainpov.com close.

AI meeting summary:

●      The meeting began with a detailed discussion about an incident at Crane Theater and KGB Bar in New York in 2008 involving **Sam** and others intervening in a distressing situation with glass shards. Themes of bravery and teamwork were highlighted during the chaotic event. Critiques on character development, particularly focusing on **John Connor** and the Terminator franchise's handling of continuity shifts, were examined. The need for enhanced character arcs and intricate plotlines, including government actions and terrorist simulations, to deepen the storyline's complexity within the Terminator universe was emphasized.

●      Reflections on film sequels post-Terminator 2 showcased varying levels of success and shortcomings, such as in "Salvation," "Genesis," and "Dark Fate," impacting audience engagement and critical reception. Suggestions included having two terminators sent back at different times to create suspense and exploring the evolution of **John Connor** post-Judgment Day avoidance with a T-800 ally. Ideas to integrate real-world issues and unexpected revelations, like Catherine Brewster being connected to a military base or her father's role in future threats, aimed to address inconsistencies from previous films.

●      The conversation delved into character dynamics, setting, and actions during the alarming incident, emphasizing the importance of explaining events within the film's timeline. Proposed concepts included using Kate as a central point-of-view character to enhance character arcs and introducing twists like deceptive human-looking terminators engaging in covert operations. The overall goal was to create a more intricate storyline with deeper character motivations while improving audience engagement through suspenseful storytelling elements.

Notes:

●      🎯 **Storytelling Discussion**

●      **Discussing a story with Sam**

●      Mention of finishing the first run and giving notes

●      📈 **Podcast Promotion**

●      Promoting a podcast called "Certain Point of Views"

●      Encouraging subscriptions, ratings, and reviews on iTunes

●      🔨 **Content Creation**

●      Planning to continue with the same formula but make minor adjustments

●      Emphasizing the importance of innovative storytelling techniques

●      🚀 **Scene Development**

●      Describing scenes involving John and the TX's targets

●      Incorporating innovative ways of using technology to combat machines

●      🔍 **Timeline Correction**

●      Sending characters to different points in the timeline

●      Emphasizing the importance of understanding details and idiosyncrasies

●      🎬 **Action Sequences**

●      Discussing driving scenes and correcting the timeline

●      Mention of importance of specific actions and details

●      🧠 **Creative Pitching**

●      Sharing and discussing various ideas for pitches

●      Evaluating the quality and potential of the pitches

●      🎧 **Podcast Engagement**

●      Encouraging engagement with the podcast through various channels

●      Highlighting discussions on Marvel and Star Wars content

Action items:

●      **Claire Daines**

●      Be more impactful in the movie (47:20)

●      Show growth and acceptance earlier, make a significant contribution (48:05)

●      **John Connor**

●      Show more action and less whining (37:50)

●      Accept his role and take charge sooner (41:06)

●      **Sam**

●      Develop the concept of two terminators sent back in time, one to 1995 and another to 1997 (01:39)

●      Create a storyline where the T1000 infiltrates government squads from 1997 onwards (01:43)

●      **Kate**

●      Establish Kate as a POV character focused on uncovering the truth behind the mysterious murders (01:42)

Outline:

●      Chapter 1: Podcast Introduction and Concept Discussion (00:00 - 09:01)

●      00:00: Introduction to the podcast and discussion about the mockumentary series on iconic SpongeBob SquarePants episodes.

●      08:47: Invitation to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on iTunes.

●      Chapter 2: Plot Analysis and Script Development (12:00 - 28:35)

●      12:00: Mention of scenes and patterning in the script for the podcast episodes.

●      28:35: Discussion on the lack of commentary on the changing geopolitical landscape in the script.

●      Chapter 3: Rewriting History and Scene Adjustments (1:10:03 - 1:29:08)

●      1:11:57: Proposal to start the podcast with a voiceover in a future battlefield setting.

●      1:16:18: Emphasis on the importance of including a chase scene in the script.

●      1:25:09: Focus on showcasing John Connor as a capable leader through innovative actions.

●      Chapter 4: Character Development and Timeline Adjustments (1:34:22 - 1:51:37)

●      1:34:22: Discussion on sending characters to different points in the timeline for story correction.

●      1:44:15: Suggestion to make Kate the POV character and incorporate her involvement in uncovering information.

●      1:50:24: Balancing dark themes with logical time travel components in the script.

●      Chapter 5: Podcast Promotion and Closing Remarks (2:02:03 - 2:06:17)

●      2:02:03: Information about an upcoming podcast project called the Danger Chronicles with Archipelago Studios.

●      2:04:23: Overview of the variety of content and discussions available on the podcast network.

●      2:06:17: Closing message encouraging listeners to subscribe and review the podcast on iTunes.