Battle Angel Alita (movie) VS Grace (Terminator Dark Fate)

[Kuro]

Battle Angel Alita is sent back in time to protect John Conner from Grace who wants to make Dani the new leader of the resistance by assassinating Conner.

Yes, this is an insanely stupid ass scenario but in my defense, the movie isn't exactly respectful to the Terminator mythos, so why should this be.

Alita has her berserker body and Zipang's sword.

[Nik Hasta]

Alita wins this pretty easily. Grace strong, fast and pretty deadly but she has a hard limit on her abilities while Alita doesn't.

Grace burns out in short order and then Alita kills her.

Also, what do you mean "not respectful"?

[Oswin]

Alita wins this pretty easily. Grace strong, fast and pretty deadly but she has a hard limit on her abilities while Alita doesn't.

Grace burns out in short order and then Alita kills her.

Also, what do you mean "not respectful"?

I think he means what they did with John Conner. and kinda slapping T2 in the face.

[Iron_Twister]

I think he means what they did with John Conner. and kinda slapping T2 in the face.

Granted, I figured there was no way any sequel to T2 was going to avoid this.

I mean I didn't watch the film but it's kind of subtle what's up at least to me.

[Totoro Man]

I can see how people think this is disrespectful. however, the idea that somehow ONE person gets killed and changes the future of the entire world is, on the face of it, a bit silly. but it fits in with this romantic notion writers have about the value of the individual.

yeah, the idea that somehow John Connor was a "problem" that was "holding the franchise back" must have come up during the writing stages. of course, the problem wasn't the character of John Connor... it was that the sequels had terrible scripts!

so then they give Skynet a new name and then they replace Connor with another character. as if that somehow "solved" the earlier "problem". it's like switching out Megatron for Galvatron in the G1 cartoons at this point. a bland, goofy villain who suffers from epic levels of villain decay gets replaced by an even more bland, even goofier villain as a way of "raising the stakes".

since John wasn't even the main character in the first film... I guess it's not a deal breaker for everybody. I enjoyed T2 as a fun action movie... but "Terminator" never should have had sequels to begin with... it "breaks the world", so to speak.

as per the Rumble.... Alita could probably solo dozens upon dozens of terminators without even breaking a sweat. I have a hard time imagining her having trouble with Grace.

[Nik Hasta]

I think he means what they did with John Conner. and kinda slapping T2 in the face.

Again, I don't understand how this somehow translates into a "lack of respect". Like I literally don't understand what that's meant to mean.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

Again, I don't understand how this somehow translates into a "lack of respect". Like I literally don't understand what that's meant to mean.

Because from what I understand, the principle behind the Terminator movies has been Skynet needing to defeat/kill/stop John Connor.

1: Tried to kill his mom.
2: Tried to kill him.
3: Tried to kill him and his future wife/closest future allies.
4: Tried to kill him and had a cyborg created to fit in better to possibly kill him.
5: Managed to defeat him only for his mom/dad to beat the system.
6 (newest): Apparently decides John Connor doesn’t matter.

Now, the new movie is only canon with the first two, but still, Connor is a heavy plot point that, apparently, gets heavily discarded in the new one.

[Nik Hasta]

Because from what I understand, the principle behind the Terminator movies has been Skynet needing to defeat/kill/stop John Connor.

1: Tried to kill his mom.
2: Tried to kill him.
3: Tried to kill him and his future wife/closest future allies.
4: Tried to kill him and had a cyborg created to fit in better to possibly kill him.
5: Managed to defeat him only for his mom/dad to beat the system.
6 (newest): Apparently decides John Connor doesn’t matter.

Now, the new movie is only canon with the first two, but still, Connor is a heavy plot point that, apparently, gets heavily discarded in the new one.

I still don't get what is meant by "respect" here.

This reads to me like a "lack of respect" here means "changing stuff".

This is a bad take not least because Dark Fate "respects" T2 enough to give the Connors their victory.

Part of the whole premise of Dark Fate is that John and Sarah /were/ successful. They stopped Skynet from happening in T2 and the future changed.

However, it did not stop the rise of a machine intelligence conceptually because humans keep building smarter AI regardless of the actions of the Connors.

Legion is not Skynet but the future is still similar because machine war is, on some level, inevitable.

Saying it's not respectful because it carried on the plot of the previous film just doesn't make sense to me.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

I still don't get what is meant by "respect" here.

This reads to me like a "lack of respect" here means "changing stuff".

This is a bad take not least because Dark Fate "respects" T2 enough to give the Connors their victory.

Part of the whole premise of Dark Fate is that John and Sarah /were/ successful. They stopped Skynet from happening in T2 and the future changed.

However, it did not stop the rise of a machine intelligence conceptually because humans keep building smarter AI regardless of the actions of the Connors.

Legion is not Skynet but the future is still similar because machine war is, on some level, inevitable.

Saying it's not respectful because it carried on the plot of the previous film just doesn't make sense to me.

Sure, but on the other side of that the movie apparently means John Conner didn’t matter, but then decided to have the same story (savior human, evil AI using time travel to stop them.

So why ditch John Connor at all then?

[Nik Hasta]

Sure, but on the other side of that the movie apparently means John Conner didn’t matter, but then decided to have the same story (savior human, evil AI using time travel to kill said human) anyways.

So why ditch John Connor at all then?

Since it’s been shown they can put Judgement Day off, why not have John ‘die’ naturally (say in his forties) and have Skynet pop up/fully take over after that? You could still have Connor mean something, honor the first two movies, and still have a ‘new threat’ show up with new characters.

At least that’s what it seems like is the issue to me. Dark Fate got spoiled to me a while ago, I haven’t actually seen it yet.

I'm not going to go too much into this because I feel asking you to defend a bad take you didn't make about a film you haven't seen isn't really fair.

But...

Why is John dying "naturally" before the rise of the new AI any better than him being killed by a Terminator before the rise of the new AI?

Also, you talk about "honouring the first two films" when Dark Fate literally has Sarah Connor, the only consistent character in the first two films, play a major role in this one. Like, what else do you want?

To be clear, I'm not saying that people have to like the decision but I find the term "a lack of respect" being flung against a film pretty disingenuous because it presupposes that there some kind of idealised perfected version that meets some arbitrary standards of "respect".

Dark Fate, in my opinion, goes out of its way to pay homage to its predecessors. It's not as good as T2, not even half as good The Terminator, but it's easily the third best Terminator film.

This lack of respect thing just doesn't hold water to me as an argument.

[Cleric of Hell’s Brigade]

Fair enough. I’ll look closer into it when I watch the movie in full instead of just spoilers.

I also somehow edited out a good chunk of my previous post when I was spell checking, so I’m glad you still got it.