Realized a couple weeks ago that I may actually love Terminator 2, so spent the week watching all of its follow-ups.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines- Had no real expectations for this and went in just expecting some dumb fun. And man was I still disappointed. Nick Stahl is bad as John Connor, to the point that I thought the twist was going to be he's no longer the savior of mankind. The new female terminator is easily the worst antagonist of the franchise. None of the humor worked for me and actively dragged the movie down. The action was decent and I actually enjoyed the ending, but outside of that this was just a much much worse version of T2.
4/10
Terminator Salvation- Again never heard anything good about this one, so went in just hoping to get through this. But, unlike Terminator 3, I ended up borderline loving this movie. Thought the dystopian depiction of the future was great. Loved the realism of John Connor being seen as a savior to some of the human resistance while being viewed as thorn in the side of the remaining formal military leadership. Thought Anton Yelchin was great as young Kyle Reese. Seeing all the different versions of terminator/machines Skynet uses was awesome. Really liked some of the more subtle connections to T1 and T2. Really my only big issues with this movie come with the ending action sequence and some of the more overt callbacks to past films really didn't work for me.
7.5/10
Terminator Genisys- The only movie of the four follow-ups that I'd already seen. And my reaction on rewatch was about the same. Action was good enough, story was crazy enough and there was enough fan service that it was fun. But felt enough like a generic blockbuster that nothing really impressed me. Just kind of a turn your mind off popcorn movie to me.
5.5/10
Terminator Dark Fate- Easily the highest my expectations were going in, as this is basically the only one of these film I'd heard good things about. Really enjoyed the first act, the opening action sequence/fight between the new terminator and protector is great. On that same note, really enjoyed both the new terminator and human protector. But after that first act my enthusiasm dropped like a stone. The action sequences felt enough like a marvel or Fast and Furious movie that, outside of the opening, I just didn't care. I really have no interest in watching terminators fight in zero g or parachute a car out of a plane. I'm pretty split on how they used the legacy characters. The opening actually didn't bother me, and I like a lot of the stuff with Linda Hamilton. But she's a 65 year old woman and seeing her get thrown around and keep going was a little far for my suspension of disbelief. Arnold I was also split on, how storyline was interesting but there were massive logic issues there. Overall this is just more of the same old shit, rehashing T2 but worse.
6/10
My mind is honestly kinda boggled seeing how much people dislike Salvation and enjoy Dark Fate. To me Salvation is easily the third best film in the franchise and could definitely see myself bumping it up to an 8/10. Whereas the more I think about Dark Fate the more I feel like it'll drop down to Genisys's level or even bit below.