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China didn’t like Genisys any more than we did, and Dark Fate opened with $29 million this weekend for a likely over/under $55 million total.Ĥ Series Coming To Netflix In October That Are Worth The BingeĪrnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t been a movie star in 20 years. Terminator: Genisys made headlines by opening with a near-record (at the time) $27 million opening day, but A) it was the end of a local blackout period and B) it flamed out with $113 million. But China can say “Yeah, once was enough” as well as we can, and the last X-Men movie only earned $65 million in China. X-Men: Apocalypse earned a $121 million in China, which pushed the film over $500 million and made Dark Phoenix look like a safe bet. Warcraft earned $219 million in 2016 in China, but it earned $90 million of that in the first 48 hours, showing that Chinese moviegoers didn’t like it any better than we did (it was their Batman v Superman). Considering the damage done to the franchise by the last two films, and the new normal (where folks no longer go to the movies just to go to the movies), Dark Fate needed to be Fury Road-level good to win folks back.Ĭontrary to popular belief, Chinese moviegoers do have taste. But “the best Terminator movie since T2” consensus doesn’t mean much when most folks hated the last two and liked or were indifferent toward Rise of the Machines. The film has its pleasures, such as strong performances, a solid dialogue-driven second act, some big, if muddled and poorly edited, action sequences. So, the word got out early and that word was… fine? Look, I’m on the “no” side of the fence, but only just barely (I like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines just fine, thank you much). The reviews were better, but not good enough.įox opened Terminator: Dark Fate a week early in 12 overseas territories, critics saw and reviewed the film well in advance of its global rollout. Point being, had Dark Fate cost $85 million (which, like Gemini Man, looks like it cost around $85 million), instead of $185 million, we’d be having a very different conversation. Maybe, like Paramount’s mega-budget Star Trek reboot flicks (which overspent chasing Marvel-sized overseas grosses), the Terminator franchise was never really meant to be a tentpole-sized action spectacle and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (released at the prime of Schwarzenegger’s stardom and unique unto itself in the summer of 1991) was the exception to the rule. Like Star Trek, there’s a case to be made that the stuff folks like about the franchise aren’t exclusively the mega-budget spectacle elements.
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I will admit not having watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but those who did have generally nice things to say about the two-season Fox drama, namely that it offered decent TV-sized action and spectacle while dealing with the various issues and possibilities brought about by the initial sci-fi premise. Terminator movies need to stop costing $150 million-plus. Like Saw VI paying for the mediocre Saw V, even Dark Fate being “the one you’ve been waiting for” wasn’t enough when moviegoers had already said “Eww… no!” twice before. Moreover, those two were not themselves box office hits, earning $371 million in 2009 on a $200 million budget and $441 million (including a frontloaded $113 million gross from China) in 2015 on a $155 million budget.
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Well, Terminator: Dark Fate may have been better than Terminator: Salvation and Terminator: Genisys, but audiences were still burned by those two. Think, offhand, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Addams Family Values and (relatively speaking) Ouija: Origins of Evil. I talk all the time about the “ Tomb Raider Trap,” which is when a lousy franchise-starter becomes a hit through preordained interest and hype despite being lousy, and then the superior sequel (in this case, The Cradle of Life) pays the price.
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Terminator: Salvation and Terminator: Genisys were rejected by audiences.