Franshise Terminated

Rating: 1/10 (27 August 2013)

It is understandable why so many films are made with the lucrative 12A/PG 13 certificates in mind, however why on Earth write a script with 12A/PG-13 limitations, when the movie prequels already have high rated certificates! It makes sense to raise the certification from movie to movie as the core audience grows up, and it makes sense to keep the certification the same to capture a younger audience who have the option of seeing early installment on DVD, but it make absolutely no sense to lower the certification every single installment of a franchise! In the case of the Terminator, kids will have to watch the saga backwards as they age, and will have no interest in T-5 the PG, or T-6 the U! What the studio bosses realized was that adults who had dreamed of seeing James Cameron's depiction of the future for decades were going to disappointed with a PG-13 future, and since kids were too young to have legally seen the other films, they were going to have no idea about the various paradoxes so integral to the plot of the terminator universe(e.g. that Kyle Reese by traveling back in time actually fathers Jon Conner, and by the terminator traveling back in time actually leads to the existence of Sky-net), so the makers must have thought there is no way to explain and tie in the plot complexities from all the prequels, into the script in a way that young children will understand. So they try tried to simplify it, I imagine this was the original premise: Evil machines have taken over the world. It is the future. The Machines have set out to ambush Jon Conner leader of humanity, they have kidnapped his father, and sent word of his capture. The machines not wanting Conner to suspect ambush have sent a cyborg, named Marcus to infiltrate the group and relay the news. Marcus appears completely human and believes himself to be so, having had memories implanted of an actual Marcus who lived before the War. Once Marcus realizes himself to be a machine, he goes against his programming and helps with the rescue of Jon's father.
It doesn't sound like too bad a premise, it's fairly straight forward for kids to follow, and poses some interesting questions about humanity, i.e. Are we all product of our memories? However the problem is that it makes absolutely no sense in the overall terminator universe, and presents a massive plot hole. Sky-net does not know that Kyle Reese is Jon Conner's father!!! If it did, rather than set an ambush it would just kill Kyle Reese, and forgo the whole time machine building thing!!! This made the film unwatchable for me. I could forgive that they redesigned the terminators as transformers to appeal to the kids, removed all the violence, blood, and swearing to obtain a PG-13 cert, crow-barred in a love interest story to appeal to the girls, even that the future is no longer populated by the dirty, scarred, and malnourished, but by the immaculately clean, glamorous, athletic, perfect teethed. However by Sky-net renting T-1 and discovering that Kyle Reese is Jon's biological father the whole plot of the first terminator movie becomes worthless! This is unforgivable! 1 Star!!!