The Weekly Planet - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

Terminator: Dark Fate sets to pick things up after T2: Judgement Day BUT before this happened it had another sequel in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The 2008 TV series recast the roles of John and Sarah Connor to continue their war against Skynet. How does this cancelled series hold up over a decade on? This is out Caravan Of Garbage review.Video Version ► https://youtu.be/XHa2UpFmNxcJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownBuy The Terminator Collection ► https://amzn.to/2ocHVoDTWP Itunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4TWP Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetTWP YouTube Channel ► https://goo.gl/1ZQFGHPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2TLEL6CT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies#Terminator #DarkFate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On May 10th, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is coming to IMAX and theaters everywhere. What a wonderful day! This summer, one movie event will reign. It is our time. Apes hunt humans. That is wrong. Bend for your king.

Never. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Only in theaters May 10. Tickets on sale now. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network

Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates I can't believe we're getting the real Terminator 3 in Terminator 3 Dark Fate But did you know that a few weeks back we covered the real Terminator 3 I remember covering the real Terminator 3 Terminator 3 Rise of the Mithril and the Sheems And then we covered the real Terminator 3 Terminator 2 3D Battle Across Time Well thank god we've covered all the real Terminator 3, Terminator 2, 3D, Battle Across Time. Well, thank God we've covered all the real Terminator. But this week, we're covering the real Terminator 3,

Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the TV series. The hardest to pronounce Terminator franchise expansion. But in my opinion, the best Terminator 3 that there has been. I think you might be right yeah more time to breathe i well that and it's just it's just generally better i went back and i watched every episode of this show i wasn't really planning on and i knew it ended on a cliffhanger but i got sucked right into this 10 year old show and at the end when it ended i went god damn it well i was similarly i was like okay what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna watch episode one and then

jump to the final one just to see how it evolved and to see if it made any sense yeah exactly and then but i was compelled i'm like i'll watch like the first three or four so and then i jumped to the end and i think for our efforts that should definitely get a like on this video no doubt i think so too but yeah there's some stuff in this show that i think it it is limited by budget, but a lot of things really, really work well. For one, some of the special effects and the new elements of the lore look really great. For example, the first Terminator who shows up to kill John Connor. In the dream sequence?

Or in real life? Well, there's that one. Yes. He's like a, this show opens up with a very, very specific dream sequence. Like it's a very, it's a very literal dream sequence in which Sarah Connor fears that John Connor will be killed by a Terminator at school.

And then he does show up and kills him. And then the nuclear apocalypse happens immediately afterwards at school. Yeah, there's quite a few. That's a half day, if you ask me. There's quite a few dream sequences of John Connor being killed. There's at least two in this series. But yeah, I love that. So one of the key villains of this is Cromartie

and he turns up at John Connor's school and you see him kind of cut open his leg and he pulls a gun out and you see like the mechanical components like sliding away

inside of him. Is that a Sly Robocop reference? I wonder if it might be. Maybe it is, yeah. Well, they are connected in some universes, aren't they? Robocop v Terminator. The good one

and then the not good one, the comic. Absolutely. You've seen them. I love though how the Terminator stops to turn around and go, class dismissed. There's moments like that where I think they're so efficient and so bare minimum in terms of things they have to do.

They even talk about that in the making of where things like the Cameron character won't even brush the hair out of her face because they're so like, I'm going to do the bare essential things to kind of function. Yeah, and I think maybe the pilot, they were still testing a few things out. Oh, 100%, yeah. But there is some excellent practical stuff. I mean, even when they eventually kill Cromartie,

I don't know if you saw this episode where they blow the side of his face off and you see the mechanics inside there. And it actually looks like movie quality terrific. I'll talk about some like not as good special effects later. Whenever they show like a fully CGI Terminator, it's never great. No. But again, it is TV budget. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

10, 11 years ago when this actually came out. How did you feel about the new elements this introduced to the franchise? I don't know what you're talking about specifically, but some of the stuff that I liked, I enjoyed the fact that it started in 1999, so like a couple of years after the events of Terminator 2. Yes. But before the events the events of Terminator 2,

but before the events of the real Terminator 3, Terminator 3. Yes. No longer canon in this universe. I don't know which one you're referring to. It doesn't matter. But at the end of the pilot to this, they time travel forwards. Yeah. I enjoyed that there were some mysterious elements in the future.

Like there seemed to be different factions in the future that are building towards stopping the apocalypse or restarting the apocalypse. And one team has sent back a time displacement core, send them forward into the future. I thought that was very cool. I enjoyed the fact that their first nemesis, Cromartie at one point gets absolutely wrecked. De-skinned.

De-skinned, loses his head. And then over the span of several years, it seems puts himself back together. Like he, he reattaches his own head and then over the span of several years, it seems, puts himself back together. He reattaches his own head and then he goes to a scientist and forces him to build a synthetic skin formula and then he gets turned into this skin golem covered in gross human flesh and then he goes to a plastic surgeon and gets himself a beautiful human face again.

And a sweet head of hair somehow. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think those elements of self-repair are really great because we kind of get hints of that in the other movies. Like when they've been injured, they'll cover it up with like a glove like in Terminator 2 or sunglasses when he has the eye injury in part one. Yeah, but I think a lot of, especially like the more recent Terminator movies, infiltration of these dedicated infiltration units

lasts about four seconds, and then they start shooting lasers out of their hands, and you're like, maybe you can go into deep cover for a little bit longer. You know what I mean? Well, that's an element. Like they're supposed to stick around for years. Well, that's an element, though, that I think is interesting because there are some Terminators that show up in this who are doing that. There's one that gets married and is just living a suburban life,

and it's interesting to me that they can learn enough and get by enough to trick a person into thinking they're a real person. I mean, you would never suspect that it wasn't a real person, but it's also what kind of lunatic would hang around with a person like this. But I guess also there are people who, you know, were looking for love and will take a very compliant robot husband or whatever. You know, yeah. I think the time travel stuff of going forward, which I should point out they did borrow from T2 3D, the ride. Oh, the real Terminator 3. That's right, exactly.

That's really an effort to be like, well, let's not set this in 99 because then we've got to do all the cars and the technology. We've got to change everybody's hair constantly. Yeah, exactly. What I did like is going from season one, a few episodes into season one, to the final episode of season two, is that John Connor's hair evolves from floppy down 1999, it's kind of Caesar cuts,

to super gelled 2007 hair. That's some Nick Lachey shit happening there. Oh my god, you're absolutely right. I really also enjoy the Cameron character in this. I think they de-humanify her after the first episode because she quite convincingly tricks John Connor and she seems much more normal in the pilot episode. And then later on, there's a lot of like,

she gets weirder and more out of places and unsettling as the kind of show goes on. And I think, again, that's like a pilot thing where it's like, well, we're trying out this particular aspect of it. Yeah. I do really like the element of this, of Sarah Connor's got this ticking bomb, not only in the Judgment Day that's going to arrive in 2011 because it's being pushed back, but she knows in the future she's going to get a form of cancer. Yeah.

And it's kind of this running thing throughout the show, which is never really solved. And we don't know where it's coming from. So we don't know what kind of cancer. She works in a nuclear power plant at one point. So she thinks it might be that. solved and we don't know where it's coming from so we don't know what kind of cancer is she works in a nuclear power plant at one point so she thinks it might be that she thinks it might be she ate those plutonium isotopes that could have been it could have been it but also isn't it exposure to terminators yeah themselves yeah lena heady i think aside from linda hamilton is the best representation of that character i mean there's only been a few but would you say of

the two game of thrones actors who portrayed portrayed Sarah Connor, she's the best one? 100%. All right, then. I have no problem with Emilia Clarke, but Lena Headey feels... That's a bold statement to take. I have no problem with unbelievably lovable actor Emilia Clarke.

Look, I think that that movie Genesis is miscast in a lot of ways. For one, I like the Kyle Reese from the original Terminator because he's muscular muscular but he's thin because he looks like he's just been living in the sewers. He rats. And Jai Courtney's this big buff man. The version of Kyle Reese that turns up in this,

because they've all been recast, feels more like that version than the one that we got in Genesis. I think they get a lot of that right. And speaking of Kyle Reese, we of course get Derek Reese. His brother, played by Brian Austin Green, who's from 90210. That's right, yeah. And I think he's quite a good addition to this as well. Well, I couldn't tell you because I only saw two minutes of him at the end.

What I also like is they don't really play with the idea that him and Sarah are going to get together. Like, it's not really a thing. Maybe that's something they would have developed as the kind of story goes on. But it's just kind of like... We don't time yeah we're just we're just trying to stop a bloody war i did also feel like what what was good about this is that it felt like the time war was evolving you know again that we're in this situation where but it's when the apocalypse when we when we destroyed cyberdyne but that didn't happen so we're at a loose end now what

are we what are we kind of what are we even looking for specifically right in the age of the internet and the cloud is a fast approaching. Is Skynet in your phone? Is it a man who's got a computer plugged into the back of his head? It can be many, many things. But it is that one, I think. Maybe? It's never really resolved properly. Initially in this one, it's a chess computer called the Turk. Well, they think it might be.

And then it's like there's multiple AI that kind of show up over this series. And it's also like... And it's a Roomba with a gun. That's right. But it's also like a roomba with a gun that's right but it's also like could it even be a terminator that plugs itself into the system like they just don't even know where it's exactly coming from and speaking of that time war it's interesting that derrick reese and his girlfriend from the future jesse they're from different futures they've traveled back from different alternate realities oh interesting because one of them one version of

derrick reese the one that she remembers was tortured by this guy who was a gray which is travel back from different alternate realities. Oh, interesting. Because one of them, one version of Derek Reese, the one that she remembers, was tortured by this guy who was a grey, which is essentially a human who works for Skynet. I see. And that episode is terrific where they're interrogating this guy, which is like, I'm 100% sure this guy's from the future, and he's basically like a Nazi scientist for Skynet, and now he's here in the modern day and trying to figure out who he is.

But he has no memory of this guy because he's just not from that time period right I find that stuff really interesting and also the fact that there's various factions from both sides who are just doing different jobs it's not all John Connor Sarah Connor it's like well we gotta blow up this mainframe or we gotta infiltrate this thing or whatever you can't you can't bloody build up a whole bloody revolution on one emo kid and his mom, can you? No, you certainly can't, yeah. We, of course, also get Kyle Reese as a little boy. There's a few moments in this that I like that he gets to meet his dad or see his dad as a little kid,

which I quite like. But what I really want to ask you about is you're the world's harshest critic, I feel, of the T-1000 effect. Yeah, it's really bad. Based solely on what I saw, Shirley Manson as what I believe is the T-1001. Yes. That's a slightly more advanced version of the one we saw in T2.

Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, I think because you saw the bit where it turns into like a shield, right? Yeah, she turns into like a – in order to deflect a large explosion from a drone, she turns into kind of like a silver manta ray kind of situation. She puts her arms out. She looks maybe like a silver manta ray kind of situational like uh she she puts her arms out she looks like a maybe like a virgin mary statue yeah right silver and it does not look

great there's definitely some moments here with that improve on that i would say that is the worst kind of effect for that character but there's some other stuff that that doesn't look quite as bad okay yeah just so you know all right okay here's some things that i don't like about this speaking of um have i seen most of this? No. Or none of it? Okay, cool. There is an episode. Well, then I'll judge it having not seen it. Here we go.

There's an episode in season two where Sarah Connor has a dream sequence and some CGI cactuses grow out of the ground and then they hug somebody and it looks quite terrible. Okay. It's a dream sequence. It sounds like a novelty she bought in like a dollar store. Is there a point where she gets attacked by the big mouth Billy Bass? Does that happen?

Is that also another dream there's also even towards the end of season two terminators are coming at them and they're just using handguns on it like there's there's a moment in the pilot where they have like a future gun that they've constructed yeah and then it disappears almost immediately yeah i feel like that's something you'd probably want to source again yeah or find a weapon that's put in a different place or the modern day equivalent of that yeah But if you're using a handgun against a Terminator, if anything, you're risking that the bullet's going to ricochet and hit somebody else, including you. If you can't find a bazooka, find that regular gun they used in Terminator Genisys

that could kill young Arnold Schwarzenegger with one bullet. Exactly. And the other thing is that it's very disappointing, and this is not the fault of the show, that it ends on a cliffhanger because it ends with John Connor going to the future and they don't recognise him. And presumably it's because he's been missing for X number of years. So in him travelling to the future, there wasn't a version of him

that stayed behind and grew up to then lead the resistance. That's true. So I think that could have been an interesting element that I assume they were going to explore at one point. And at which point he also meets or he at least sees the woman who Cameron is based on, right? That's right, exactly, which there is a whole episode dedicated to. There was actually a fan campaign

in relation to the cancellation of this. The writer's strike happened between seasons, which I think hurt this a little bit in terms of its return and getting it back on its feet. And, you know, it was a pretty costly show. By the time the second season rolled around, it went from like 10.8 million viewers to 5.3 which is okay that's a bit of a dip yeah there was a fan campaign and creator josh friedman dismissed a crowdfunding idea in 2013

because he's like hey i don't i don't own this like i don't own the property it's the terminator franchise that's right but thomas decker who plays John Connor, who might be my favourite John Connor. Bloody hell. Yeah. I mean, Edward Furlong's like a kid, obviously. This is like a slight extension of that character. What about Nick Stahl? Nah.

All right, then. Actually, I have said before, my favourite version of John Connor is the one from Terminator 2 in the future, where you see him and he's just got the scar and he says nothing. Yeah, he says nothing. That's my favourite version, probably.

But he said, in the end, it came down to this show, our show, and Dollhouse. And the idea was that this is expensive and Dollhouse is a lot cheaper, so Fox just went Dollhouse. Also, we cancelled Serenity, so we'll just give Joss Whedon another season of Dollhouse. Uh-huh, sure. Which I never finished Dollhouse,

so I don't know whether that's a good thing or not. I know there are fans of that series, but having not seen it, I would have much preferred season three. Is Summer Glow also in Dollhouse? No, you're thinking of Elijah Dushku but also, maybe she is in it That's what I'm thinking, yeah The other thing is, I think because this show

ended at the start of 2009 and the upcoming release of Terminator Salvation, which also came out in 2009 in the mid-year, I don't think would have helped this being renewed Would have confused the general public But quite frankly, which is better? Obviously, it's this series because that is a... It's tough to watch that one.

Good use of squibs in this also, I must say. Terrific stuff. Right at the end of the final episode of season two, Cameron cops a lot of bullets. Yeah. It's very impressive actually, especially for TV. Definitely. The practical stuff in this is terrific.

Like the makeup effects are really great. And I liked the newly designed, the T888. It's a slight variation on the T800 where it's got modifications where like you can see, if you see its skeleton, it's got like pistons in its shoulder so it can like clean punch through a door or wall much easier. Yeah, right. It's got blades in its thigh so if it gets you in a grip, it can decapitate you. Yeah. It's got a cup holder. It's got a cup holder in the top of its head. Yeah, right. It's got blades in its thighs, so if it gets you in a grip, it can decapitate you. Yeah. It's got a cup holder.

It's got a cup holder in the top of its head. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so all that stuff I quite like. But Josh Friedman, who, again, created this, he would later go to work on Terminated Dark Fate 2019 with a co-screened story with James Cameron. There you go. But he did reveal in an interview that James Cameron never watched the show,

not because he had anything against it, but he was just like, well, I didn't make this, so I don't care. I'm in a submarine. I've got stuff to do. Exactly, yeah. Now here's a section of the show that I've decided to start including sometimes. It's called, hey, I can't believe you didn't mention this very specific piece of trivia that people are going to mention in the comments

if I don't bring it up. Why did you put this segment in, James? Because I'm sick of people giving me trivia they already know that I decided not to include because I didn't think it was that interesting or it was blindingly obvious. Okay, so what I think, if we continue to do this segment, this eventually will contain all human knowledge. That's right. Like Skynet.

Exactly. All right, I'm excited. This is the catalyst. I'm excited to learn some new facts that I might already know. I've got two things. Okay. Cameron, the Terminator, was named after James Cameron. Yep.

I know that. But I think it's worth mentioning. Because people will tell us otherwise. People will tell us. And two, Shirley Manson is the lead singer of Garbage. Mm-hmm. Two things. We are aware.

Yeah. If you have any other facts that are blindingly obvious, look, we'd love to hear about them as well. But I feel like this is a segment that's worth including. Hey, you might be the one person that gives us a blindingly obvious fact that we don't know. That's right. And then we will praise you and shower you with riches.

Correct. And then you're blocked for showing us up. Anyways, this has been Caravan of Garbage. Believe it or not, we do this every week. You want a hint towards what's coming up next week, Mason? Yes. Well, here's a clip of it. In the audio version, you haven't seen anything,

so you're just going to have to tune in. No, I haven't seen or heard anything, to be honest. There was just silence there for me. So thanks for nothing. Just imagine the best case scenario. Oh, my God. But I've done something else. Oh.

Also, there's videos here every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, so if you do want to subscribe for that, and, of course, we've got the previous Terminator 3 videos up on this channel, but we are going to do a podcast episode this Monday on Terminator Dark Fate. The real Terminator 3. You know it's the real Terminator 3. Oh, my God. I'm so excited.

Yeah, me too, I think. Yeah, it might be a good one. Yeah, it might be. I can't imagine it would be better than this. But you know what? I'd love to be surprised. That new Terminator, though, is going to have a lot of cup holders. You know it.

Four in the head alone. Oh, my God. That's why he's got the big divot in there. That's why the divot's small. For holding cups. Anyways, I'm at MrSundayMovies on Twitter. I'm at WikipediaBrown on Twitter. What do you think of this show?

I'd be curious to know what you think, but also if you've got a suggestion for Caravan of Garbage. Yeah, what's your favourite episode of this show? Yeah, is it the cactus one? Could be the cactus one. It probably is. All right, guys, thanks for watching. Grab that gem, you guys.

We will see you next week. Goodbye. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want. It's up to you. FX's The Veil explores the surprising and fraught relationship between two women who play a deadly

game of truth and lies on the road from Istanbul to Paris and London. One woman has a secret, the other a mission to reveal it before thousands of lives are lost. FX's The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss, is now streaming on Disney+.