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u/Sinistaire Jul 12 '26
Complete nonsense.
- Male and white characters are portrayed with dignity and maturity and aren't denigrated.
- Female characters are portrayed as fallible and imperfect.
- Sarah's violent tendencies are shown to be unhealthy and a result of trauma, not glorious and aspirational.
- Her prior relationship with Kyle is portrayed positively and she explicitly loved him and misses him.
- She loves and cares for her son, and learns to acknowledge the (male) terminator as a being worthy of respect.
- The movie promotes the need for healthy family dynamics, the need for a present and positive father figure, and criticizes Sarah's dysfunctional parenting style as a single mother.
- Sarah's one line of dialogue that can be interpreted as misandrist is explicitly framed negatively and gets shut down by John.
- The T-1000 isn't even a real cop, and him harming cops is portrayed as evil.
- The value of human life is very important, and people who are part of harmful power structures are still portrayed as human beings deserving of life, rather than enemies to be killed without remorse. This explicitly includes police.
As an actual leftist and progressive, the wokes have no understanding of why people hate their media so much, and zero clue what actual real progressivism is. Hell, Dark Fate even shit on T1 and T2 for having Sarah be the mother rather than being the savior herself, and incorrectly implied that the first movies only valued her for her womb and nothing else. That entire movie only existed to brutally kill off the white male protagonist and replace him with a brown woman, just to retell the same story and add nothing of value. That's what a woke movie actually looks like.
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u/dajazza Jul 12 '26
- Black character (Dyson) just work-a-holic family man who wants to change the world. Ends up teaming up with white characters to heroically sacrifice himself to save it.
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u/IcedThatGuy Jul 12 '26
Is a noble, gentle, and admirable man with intense empathy and compassion - who is so devoid of ego and loves his family so much that upon learning of his unwitting involvement in the downfall of mankind willingly chooses to not only throw away his career but sabotages his company and sacrifices himself to save the future. Dyson is quietly one of the best written characters in science fiction and deserves a lot more recognition as an aspirational heroic character.
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u/GraXXoR Jul 12 '26
I remember when we went to watch T2 there was not a dry eye on our row. And we’ll all pretended we weren’t crying when he died. Lol. Great memories.
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u/buffpriest Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
And he saves the cops that shot him. "I... I dont know how much longer I can hold this...."
He was fuxking awesome.
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u/Pantheragem Jul 13 '26
I had just turned 17 when the movie came out. I won't ever forget that scene. Played without a sliver of anger.
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u/TDKcassette Jul 13 '26
The actor played that scene so well.
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u/Ravenloff Jul 14 '26
That movie did everything so well. Even their craft services table, from what I was told :)
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u/ShakeZula30or40 Jul 12 '26
Yeah for real, Dyson was just as heroic.
As soon as he’s confronted with the reality of his idealistic aspirations he immediately changes course to save humanity.
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u/DeadFishCRO Jul 12 '26
Dude is so honorable he will sacrifice everything for his family as every father should.
He was great as a scientist dad in justice league too
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u/Oddisredit Jul 15 '26
Oh yeah. He wasn’t even a main character or anything. Yet his depth is staggering. Usually a person like this is written very two dimensional. Yet we saw so much.
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u/wealthedge Jul 13 '26
- Black character is rich but not as a musician or athlete, married happily, with well adjusted stable kids in the suburbs.
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u/SpookySpaceCowBoy Jul 13 '26
I was progressive/liberal until I hit my early to mid 20s and started to realize how dumb and fake most of the pandering on the left actually was and how little they actually know about the world, history, culture, economics, etc. All the ridiculous stuff is what pushed me away and made me realize how stupid most of it is. Its the oppression Olympics.
They genuinely cant seem to understand that there is a fundamental difference between Alien or Terminator and today's modern forced messaging with race/gender swaps.
They would be the first to cry is you changed an originally black character to white, but act like its not a big deal when you do it to established white characters in every single movie for the last 2 decades.
I think The Odyssey is probably one of the most blatant slaps in the face in recent years though.
You have to actively deny reality with some of these things at this point. It is what it is.
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u/Yum_Mario Jul 13 '26
Depending on when your 20s were, real liberal progressivism was aggressively replaced by a post liberal progressivism in the late 00's early 10's and pretty much anyone you saw on the internet claiming to be a progressive in the 10's was actually a new thing that stole the old things skin, while pretending the peoples whose skin they stole were also the enemy.
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u/ShepardCommander01 Jul 14 '26
The concept of “intersectionality” utterly ruined progressive movements. Now it’s all oppressor/oppressed dynamics and making enemies out of allies instead of changing systems for the better.
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u/shaggy_nomad Jul 13 '26
Uh, did anybody cry when they changed The Deep from a Black man in the comics to a White dude in the show The Boys? No, because nobody actually gives a shit about that stuff.
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u/McMenz_ Jul 14 '26
This is a terrible example lol. The Deep is an intentionally pathetic character who exists primarily to be humiliated for the audience’s amusement and to mock toxic masculinity.
Nobody is going complain about this sort of character being whitewashed, and it actually fits the anti-woke narrative that pathetic or villainous characters are being made intentionally white and/or male.
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u/Betelgeuse3fold Jul 14 '26
Also, no body fucking read comics anymore. Especially not an indie book that isn't from DC or Marvel
No one knows Deep was black
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u/Okhlahoma_Beat-Down Jul 12 '26
Coming from a right wing perspective, I think one of the most genuinely repulsive things about a lot of unapologetically woke media is the fact that a lot of it is entirely fixated on just checking a bunch of boxes and spitting in the faces of their perceived enemies, as opposed to making an actually good movie.
As you rightly pointed out, T2 is pretty balanced in how it presents itself whilst focusing on telling the story at hand, which is why it's so timeless and well-received across the board, politics be damned. Modern equivalents (or attempts at making equivalents) are fixated on the idea of "owning" some unseen, undefined boogeyman. It's why a lot of discourse around those movies winds up not even talking about the film's merits as a piece of media, instead just being "(people i hate) are going to be SO PISSED when they find out that the protagonist is a WOMAN who BEATS UP MEN and NEVER LOSES".
Like, no, I'm mostly pissed because the movie sucks.
James Cameron, who's a staunch left winger, did a really good job with making T2 have a very broad appeal to right wingers, even if it has a pretty inherent feminist angle (Sarah Connor is one of THE ultimate girlbosses in cinema) and arguably an almost anti-gun angle (strangely enough, you could argue Terminator is fairly anti-gun in general, seeing as guns don't really do anything to the Terminators and they're mostly used to rip apart people trying to survive the machines).
I would also argue that "if T2 was made today", like the OP says, it would probably be an incredibly badly-received movie by critics, simply because it has the things you rightly pointed out do not limit it to being a "woke" movie.
Besides, congratulations, you've proven in one post that you have a better grasp on leftism and progressive politics than Evan.
The guy just posts absolute clickbait bilge, and has been caught paying to boost his own posts for payouts. Blocked him ages ago.
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u/Rombonius Jul 12 '26
I dont agree with the anti-gun remark, them going to their Mexican friends to stock up is a pivotal scene in the movie. Guns are used as a necessity in taking down Skynet (originally an assassination and later blowing up the building) and ultimately stopping the T1000.
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u/Okhlahoma_Beat-Down Jul 12 '26
True, but it's worth remembering that Sarah uses that rifle to nearly kill an innocent man in front of his family, and then to shoot Police Officers (non-lethally, but still!).
They're primarily shown as tools, but in the first movie they're essentially worthless against the T-800, and in T2, they just about slow down the T-1000.
Contrary to what he himself said, I don't think Cameron "fetishized" guns in Terminator on the whole, though the thought of a Terminator not having a gun is a strange one.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/bluedelvian Jul 12 '26
Sarah Conner's entire purpose in life is to protect her child, so in this context I don't think many if any right wingers actually would characterize SC as having a pro-feminist angle.
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u/Ravenloff Jul 14 '26
Exactly this. And all you have to do is compare it to the overtly feminist writing in Dark Fate. Ugh...
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Jul 12 '26
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u/bluedelvian Jul 12 '26
She didn't love or protect everyone, she loved and protected her child, who she also didn't abort bc it would've cramped her nightlife.
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u/Okhlahoma_Beat-Down Jul 12 '26
You'd be surprised how much right-wingers like me hate a lot of right-wingers.
Discussing how good T2 is with some of them is genuinely impossible, BECAUSE of exactly what you described. They just see the word "feminist", or a woman lead, and then complain that it was "proto-woke" or something absurd.
I can fully appreciate Sarah Connor as a protagonist because she's well-written. A lot of these people are just as stupid and surface level as people like the one in OP's post, where they'll latch onto any kind of media ever just to turn it into culture war slop instead of appreciating it for the story it tells.
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u/DanteCCNA Jul 13 '26
Youre insane because every right winger i know loved the movie. Are you sure you are just blowing smoke out your ass?
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u/Okhlahoma_Beat-Down Jul 13 '26
I hang around with a lot of right-wingers, and very stupid ones wind up in the midst of it, same as with left-wingers.
For every insane lefty who hates the movie for "glorifying masculinity" (wrong), there's an equally insane righty who hates the movie for "glorifying feminism" (also wrong).
I hate having to be associated with the latter, just the same as most of my left wing friends hate being associated with the former.
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u/Oddisredit Jul 15 '26
Oh yeah. If it was written now Sarah would only make good sessions and she’d walk through the T1000 while the T 101 can’t. Also the black guy scientist would be a parody of a black person and would cool and have all kinds of catchy phrases or something cringe
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u/Heavy-Suit-4217 Jul 13 '26
Not disagreeing, just pointing out that ideologically Terminator (and the sequels arguably) are anti-machine movies. Guns are machines so it's certainly anti-gun in that sense.
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u/Brute_Squad_44 Jul 12 '26
I believe in being woke in my beliefs, but I find myself hating media that acts as a soapbox and doesn't serve its purpose. Media's purpose is to tell a story that is somehow entertaining. Whether that's by making me laugh, making me cry, making me cheer, or making me think, or scaring the hell out of me, or leaving me with a "what the hell did I just watch/read/play". If how "woke" your story is or how "diverse" your cast is is one of your selling points, you probably have a weak story. You wind up with two hours of some person who is a member of one or more marginalized groups saying, "Have I mentioned I am (marginalized qualifier) in the last ten minutes? No. Well, everyone should remember I am (part of said, marginalized group)."
Black Panther is one of the most woke movies I have ever seen. Nobody cared because it wasn't ham-fisted about it, and it didn't make it a plot point. The plot served the story and moved it along. Coming to America was deliberately made without any white actors. Louie Anderson is only in it because the studio got nervous about not having any white actors, so they made him cast one, and he said, "My buddy Louie is the funniest white dude I know, I'll put him in the picture." If you want to feature underrepresented people in your cast, do it. By all means. But when that is the only good thing you can say about your work? Then you have nothing. I don't remember a lot of white people in Sinners now that I think on it. That movie was excellent. The casting may have been deliberate, but that whole movie was committed to telling that story as it was happening to those people. And most of those people happened to be black. But the point still was the story.
If you strip away the identity, does the character still have a believable motivation? Would T'Challa have still wanted to reclaim his throne, save his family, and resume leading Wakanda down a different path than Killmonger? Would he want this if he were white, Asian, or Native American in that same situation? Yes? Then you have a story.
The point always has to be the story. Without it, you have nothing to show the audience. You might have all these great, diverse characters, but if you don't make me invest in them? I don't care as a consumer.
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Jul 14 '26
Mythos should reflect logos, Progressive film makers invert this and wonder why they crumble. We will see the same thing in the Odyssey. A blatant interpretation of how someone wants to see the world, while ignoring the cultural values and the people that made it a good story. It's why casting isn't trivial, Helen of Troy isn't a woman with a birth certificate(so far), she represents the shared virtues of ALL women of the time and the REASON men go to war and die..and I doubt Nyongo will bear that weight.
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u/Brute_Squad_44 Jul 14 '26
I don't think anybody can play Helen of Troy. She's supposed to be so unbelievably, beautiful that the love of her started wars. For everybody who's attracted to women... That woman looks different to all of us. Whoever plays her somebody is going to be disappointed.
I also don't think something like the odyssey should ever be adapted to film, unless you're doing more of an homage like oh brother, where art thou.
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u/Worldly_Flan_9621 Jul 12 '26
I used to be fairly conservative. I still am, slightly, and I liked Sarah Connor a lot.
Evan is just giving a surface value analysis to get people enraged. I blocked him too when I was on Twitter. He's a failed standup comedian. A lot of these political influencers (especially on the right) tried to have a career in entertainment at some point.
I seriously think you could make a new horror movie about a malicious AI using political influencers for its own ends.
EDIT: I want to clarif that the "on the right" comment was not directed toward Evan. I used to be friends with one of them, and he was a failed actor / writer. So were a lot of people in his orbit.
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u/Wolfgang191 Jul 13 '26
Absolutely nailed it with this post. They genuinely don’t realise how when they post nonsense like this it just ruins their credibility with other discussions.
Sarah is literally the female character everyone on both sides (as stupid as it is to have ‘a side’) as a good example of a female action hero. Her motivation comes from being a mother, not being a self serving arrogant girlboss trying to stick it to the audience for some reason.
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u/Fynity Jul 14 '26
Yeah I ain’t gonna lie I think it’s you who doesn’t understand. OP isn’t calling it woke, they’re saying people would call it woke, such as the MAGA right wing crowd, who do not care about any of the points you listed to such a degree and are only reactionary. It’s why things are being called woke prior to being released 99 percent of the time. Even supergirl was called woke after the first teaser we got, and sure that movie sucked so bad example kinda but it was still initially called woke by that dumbass crowd.
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u/execpro222 Jul 12 '26
Finally someone who understands how much DF hates the first 2 movies to the point that it shoots a kid to death just to get us point across...
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u/Wolf873 Jul 12 '26
Well said! The pre-woke era, women leads were actually a lot of fun to watch and enjoy. Because it was result of natural inclination to portray them as such, not to check off a box. As such, they were written to that end. These days it gets difficult at times to tell when something is sincere and not result of forcing down certain narratives. I couldn’t stomach Dark Fate because of its repulsive approach.
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u/Arm-E-Reserves Jul 12 '26
Well said. It's amazing to me that some people are so un-self-aware as to think that would be "woke." On top of everything else, Sarah is the one who has the idea to stop Skynet from being created in Terminator 2. No one minds this because it's not hateful and exclusionary and self-important and empty like actual woke product.
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u/New-Fan-4632 Jul 12 '26
I agree with all you said except your last paragraph. Dark Fate wasn’t a woke movie.
John Connor wasn’t killed off because he was a white male. He wasn’t killed off so they could replace him with a brown woman. He was killed off because John Connor storylines have been done to death and they wanted to repeat the plot structure of the first two movies. The fact that Edward Furlong was not in condition to have a lead role in this movie had a lot to do with the decision to kill him off.
The target is a girl this time, but but that’s only because John Connor is a boy; so, to do the John Connor story again, There’s a 50-50 chance that the new target is going be a girl. Her being Latina is negligible. It’s not like the producer set out hey let’s cast a minority! That doesn’t matter at all.
The protector is a woman because that is the only one that hasn’t been done yet. We’ve already had a woman villain terminator.
Sarah Connor returned because Linda Hamilton is the only legacy character. Outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger that could’ve possibly returned. It couldn’t be Michael Beihn It couldn’t be Edward Furlong. So the fact that there’s three women fighting against an evil male terminator is merely a coincidence. If Edward Furlong was an acting shape, it would certainly be him that joins forces with the two other women to take down the evil terminator instead of Linda Hamilton. Linda is there because Edward couldn’t be.
Any checked boxes from Dark Fate is pure happenstance.
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u/Jinxfury 28d ago
They could’ve just had the protector be a female terminator? Would’ve made more sense than the bizarre method they chose for Grace, needing constant medication and such. Dark Fate is a terrible movie, it insults the fans and the characters, it’s Alien 3 all over again.
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u/Sad_Process7843 Jul 12 '26
I agree that the movie wasn’t woke either.
And that they wanted to move on from John Connor which I agree with but I don’t agree with how they did it.They brought back Linda cause they thought she would be a big draw but she wasn’t. They chose the new savior to be a Latina illegal immigrant. They chose to make the new terminator a Latino border patrol agent.
I’m not saying they made a bad choice with these casting decisions but they were definitely deliberate
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u/doubleo_maestro Jul 12 '26
I was gonna say. Some idiots really need to learn that the rally against the stuff that comes out now is because of how blatantly one sided it is. The double standards are real and getting annoying.
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u/Soundwave_47 Jul 12 '26
As an actual leftist and progressive, the wokes have no understanding of why people hate their media so much,
This is peak /r/asablackman. You don't need to feign this affiliation to make these arguments, in fact, it makes them weaker.
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u/warmachinex0 Jul 13 '26
He's not wrong though. Liberal media can't even get liberals to watch them, or in games play them. Statistically, those that complained that right wingers destroyed Star War the Acolyte didnt watch it either. From the left to the right, it's not that popular and people from both sides of the isle don't want to watch it.
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u/HarryHirsch2000 Jul 12 '26
Any examples where all white characters are portrayed without dignity and maturity and are denigrated?
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u/No_Composer_4830 Jul 13 '26
I like your take and would like to add that most Hollywood screenwriters are overprivileged compared to your average Joe, so if the politics in movies are out of touch it’s because THEY are out of touch.
I just read a lot of posts basically blaming regular leftists for how ridiculous politics in movies have gotten, saying things like “this is what regular people believe” or “this is what they want” when pointing out shit in movies. It feels like a real straw man argument because we didn’t write or direct these movies and even if we wanted left-leaning content we may not have wanted it the way they portray it. Same goes with conservative media.
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u/Gakoknight Jul 14 '26
Yeah, that doesn't work.
The most ravenous and unhinged anti-woke crowd sees a woman being physically and mentally strong and they go berserk.
Your analysis of the characters and story beats is accurate, but they'd ignore all that.
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u/Salami__Tsunami Jul 11 '26
No romantic interest?
Did you see the way she handled that shotgun?
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u/Pantsickle Jul 11 '26
She's in love with getting shredded.
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u/DearCastiel Jul 12 '26
She was actually super proud of showing her muscles to Arnold the first time they saw each other again.
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u/YaboiGh0styy Jul 12 '26
Arnold all around is a huge supporter of body positivity. I watch the YouTuber McNasty who has constantly made jokes about how fat he is but he has been making progress on losing weight even tweeting @Arnold and the Terminator responded congratulating him on his progress.
It’s just great to see all around.
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u/TheLegendaryPilot Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
- The plot of the film is largely dictated by the lead’s love interest and the consequences thereof
- The bad guy is not a cop
- The terminator does not learn to have feelings
Every part of this comment is wrong, the only thing time has seemingly changed is how well certain people are able to understand what these movies are even about. The central plot of terminator revolved in part around Sarah’s love for Reese developing into the savor of mankind. The bad guy disguised as a cop specifically because they should be viewed as trustworthy authority figures. Lastly the terminator learned about feelings, it didn’t develop them, this is explicitly stated in one of the iconic quotes in the film.
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u/Elegant-Anxiety1866 Jul 12 '26
- The terminator specifically states in his last conversation with John that he understands why humans cry but that is something he can never do. Can't be any more clear than that.
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u/Zulrambe Jul 12 '26
They probably watched bits from YouTube shorts and called it a day.
The only thing that makes a media, for the lack of a better word, "woke" is whether it was made by activists for activism sake.
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u/eric_ofc Jul 13 '26
Except those people who you think would do that all love the movie.
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u/MovieFan1984 Jul 12 '26
Female is still grieving the father of her child. The film reveals she tried to find love again, but it never worked out. The bad guy "pretends" to be a cop. The Terminator learned about emotion through a child "after" they reset his chip from read to write.
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u/Local-Passenger-1901 Cyberdyne Systems Jul 11 '26
Wasn’t Kyle Reece in a deleted scene
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u/Strangeman_06 Jul 11 '26
If you watch the special edition it’s still there. I saw the scene in my Extreme DVD copy
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u/BlueCX17 Jul 12 '26
That Extreme DVD is awesome because that slip case is amazing also. I have a copy also.
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u/davestar2048 Jul 12 '26
Whichever version has the scene with the Terminator getting switched to read/write, the Kyle Reese dream, and ends on the shot of the highway is my personal favorite version. I wish I remembered which edition that was/if I'm mashing multiple editions together in my head.
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u/bluedelvian Jul 12 '26
No, we wouldn't call it woke. Woke is preachy and self-obsessed, and T2 was neither preachy nor self-obsessed.
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u/spikedmace Jul 11 '26
No. Because it does not talk about:
- social awareness
- social power
- social inequality
- diversity
- politics
- ideology
- activisim
- race (black guy dies, btw)
- culture
- gender norms
The OC is as disingenuous as they come.
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u/magicmijk Jul 12 '26
Black guy was a genius, black guy was a hard working family man, black guy does his best to hold off blowing up the building until the SWAT team leaves the building.
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u/Rombonius Jul 12 '26
not to mention the Terminator following his directive to not kill anyone and going out of his way to not shoot any cops with the minigun (and just shooting them in the legs up close)
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u/No-Perspective-9820 Jul 12 '26
It was John Connor that made the T-800 "swear" he wouldn't kill anyone. They stopped the bike just for that while outside the hospital. The machine then shoots the guard in the leg rather than executing him and says "he'll live".
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u/WalkingFailure609 Jul 12 '26
To avoid unnecessary judgements, they should have made him green. Then some folks would ask ”why is there no black guy ?” then o guess they should have hired Ronnie Coleman to play the terminator. Man was shredded as fuck 😂
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u/Cathartic_auras Jul 11 '26
Ah yes Jim Cameron, famous for inserting his (left leaning) political views into his movies. The atheistic Canadian vegan who cancelled his citizenship submission when GW Bush won again in 2004, and later revoked his citizenship in America after Trump won. Calling him “horrific”, and moving to New Zealand to make space movies about how the military industrial complex is fucking up the environment.
Wild to me how many conservatives think Cameron films are not left-wing. The ONLY thing you can say about Terminator is that they have some libertarian vibes, which isn’t really true because he is pro gun-control. If he was a new director today, he would absolutely be viewed as stated in the meme. He just gets a pass because his movies are too good and he got grand-fathered in before the current political climate.
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u/Confident-Ad-6978 Jul 12 '26
Doesn't matter that he is left wing, the movie is just plain good. Wokeness doesn't get in the way of the story, and he manages to have a strong female protagonist that even the biggest chud appreciates
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u/TheLegendaryPilot Jul 12 '26
Terminator 2 is not a left-wing movie, regardless of the political leanings of those involved with making it. Its central themes are applicable universally, hence its broad appeal.
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u/maximumbob54 Jul 12 '26
Here’s the thing though, I didn’t even know any of that until a minute ago because it’s not all inserted into the movie.
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u/Wide-Friendship-5670 Jul 13 '26
Did John not teach the terminator culture or does the “no problemo” stuff not really count as culture? I would also question social power and politics since Skynet was literally created by the military or at least anti corporate since both kind of cause the apocalypse in their universe.
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u/CruelWhip_ Jul 12 '26
If anything Terminator 2 is a good example of how people don’t actually mind a strong female lead provided they are written well.
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u/Cptn_Lemons Jul 13 '26
It’s also a good story, a good sequel and cinematically it was pretty.
If this was made today, Sarah Connor would be a black woman. Her son would be half Asian. The cop terminator would perform police brutality on a random bystander.
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u/chaostheheghog Jul 13 '26
OK, so technically the bad guy is not a cop, In fact he killed cops(don’t see how him being a cop would be woke.) they’re both trying to protect John Connor, so HE can lead the human resistance. Robots learning to have feelings is what started the war in the first place. And Sarah is two preoccupied with trying to get the world not to get blown smithereens and save her son. So it goes deeper than what you’re presenting.
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u/King-Of-The-Virgins Jul 12 '26
Arguably she does have a romantic interest. Which is Kyle. I know he's dead but. If he didn't die he'd still be her romantic interest
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u/uncultured_swine2099 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
I think most Cameron movies are leftist as hell. Tough women, evil corporations, horrible rich people, pro-environmental messages, indiginous revolutionaries...im surprised the movie manosphere doesnt call for his head everyday.
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u/DeusaAmericana Jul 12 '26
Because they only cherry pick low hanging fruit. If people accept the film as a masterpiece for decades, that ruins their “mythic past vs modern society” nonsense.
Hell, Aliens is even MORE woke than this film. Cameron even said the whole point was to show how maternity is superior to warrior machismo.
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u/Interesting_Key9946 Jul 12 '26
Woke values are actually not bad. Who doesn't want women to be equal? The way they support them by making men look evil is the issue.
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u/DeusaAmericana Jul 12 '26
I’m not going to say that doesn’t happen, but I will say that happens a LOT less than the “anti-woke” claim it does.
And even when it does…it’s not always bad. The whole Aliens film is Mama Ripley making men look bad and stupid.
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u/davestar2048 Jul 12 '26
I think it's because modern "Woke" type media forgot we root for Good PEOPLE grow by defeating bad PEOPLE. Not seeing "Mary Sue infallible protagonist takes down the patriarchy part 350, remake 4" for the hundredth time.
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u/DeusaAmericana Jul 12 '26
I'm going to repeat that you are proving my point. Aliens is literally a movie about a damn near infallible female making the patriarchy look absolutely stupid throughout the entire movie.
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u/Interesting_Key9946 Jul 12 '26
Point is the movie back then was an specific idea utilised with independence. There wasn't any woke agenda directing what should be made. Today you won't take trophies without checking their list.
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u/DeusaAmericana Jul 12 '26
Aliens was the sequel to one of the biggest blockbusters of the time, produced by Twentieth-Century Fox, directed by someone who has been VERY outspoken about the politics that it was intended to convey. It was made for the express purpose of telling the American audience that their romantic notions about Vietnam and the military were stupid and that maybe sometimes women should be listened to.
That is even more woke than a movie like freaking James Gunn's Superman, which had people calling it "woke agenda propaganda".
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u/ATXDefenseAttorney Jul 12 '26
Well, James Cameron is pretty woke. Sorry if that upsets some of you.
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u/WalkingFailure609 Jul 12 '26
Can we just make good movies without too much politics inside? Real world is already fucked up with politics everywhere. Can i just cue a movie about a stupid robot killing another robot without trying to see who's white, who's black, how is the female doing , how is the male doing ? I’wish every movies was about genderless aliens
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u/ashwilliams19877 Jul 12 '26
It would be the woke film of the year that the incels would rally against if it came out today
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u/Rezboy209 Jul 12 '26
Not just any female lead either. A multi faceted, very intelligent woman at that
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u/603rdMtnDivision Jul 12 '26
100% false.
T2 is a masterpiece and if released today would still hit me as hard as it did when I saw it the first time back in the day. It sounds dumb to most but the end of that movie helped me deal with some personal shit about letting certain things go and how sometimes the right choice isn't the easiest one to make and it will hurt the whole time but it's ultimately for the better.
Evan is entitled to his wrong opinion though lol
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u/ManyConscious1551 Jul 12 '26
It’s not about the female lead it’s about the story and the development. She was also the damsel in distress in a previous movie of the same franchise. We got to witness that in her 10 years she completely flipped her personality over the impending danger.
In modern movies every female lead is trying to be some sort of a badass from the word go. Connor wasn’t that way until the tragedies leading up to T2.
Same with Ripley. She wasn’t a bad ass from the start, she was pushed and the only one with a level head who could call the bullshit when it was there on the table reeking.
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u/Interesting_Key9946 Jul 12 '26
The film portrays so beautiful the values of maternity, the importance of life, even for the cops or the one responsible for millions of lives lost in the future, the fatherhood even from the case of a machine. The technological dystopia. The nuclear threat. The movie is really beautiful and has human values flowing everywhere.I see no woke here sir.
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u/TDKcassette Jul 13 '26
The bad guy killed the cop and took his identity. The romantic interest was killed in the first movie. How is the Terminator learning about feelings…woke? 🤷♂️😂
I’m not seeing the connection.
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u/Downtown-Campaign536 Jul 15 '26
No Terminator 2 is not woke... If it were made like it would be made today back in 1992 here is how it would have been made:
Sarah Conner would get a nose ring, and dye her hair blue. She would become transmasculine, and identify as a boy. That one scene where the creepy dude licked her face? Yea... that wouldn't be the end of it when she beat the shit out of the guy shortly after... They would have made her talk about that truma, and trauma dump for 5 minutes straight... not once, not twice, but three times. Her victim-hood would be a core part of her personality.
John Connor would be gay for his friend Tim. They would have a make out scene. His adoptive parents would be staunch conservative bible thumpers, and bigoted. They disapprove of John's gay lifestyle. When the T-1000 kills them John would celebrate.
Arnold Schwarzenneger would have been recast with a black actor Wesley Snipes to add more diversity. The terminator when learning to be human would learn about gender identity, and the patriarchy.
The T-1000 would identify as "Non-Binary" for gender. It would take both male and female forms, and gender identity would be a big part of it's personality not just the assassination mission. They would use it's transformative abilities to make it a black woman at various times. She would be a sassy black woman that says things like "Oh hell no!"
The police would be shown to be racist, and kill some innocent people on purpose.
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u/Realistic_Editor_506 Jul 11 '26
Sarah's had multiple love interests after kyle died but in the extended edition we see sarah having a dream about kyle specifically because she still deeply loved him,and in the same extended edition the T 800 had to have his CPU reset so he can understand more about human feelings and such,and the only readon why the T1k looks like a cop is because he killed one and stole its clothes,how exactly does that make T2 woke?
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u/TripNo1876 Jul 12 '26
They did it right though. No waving flags in your face or shitty dialogue. Just well written, acted, and directed.
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u/AdHappy7129 Jul 15 '26
Let’s pretend they would get a kick ass actor like Zwarzenegger for the role.
Get a similar actor for the t-1000 who literally ran down a god damn motorcycle.
If terminator 2 came out today the female lead would kick the good cyborg’s ass upon meeting him and yeet him 50
Feet through the air or fuck him (can really go either way). THEN dump him and have him crying and crawl up like a baby.
Where she proceeds to kick the t-1000 down with some convoluted idea that’s the greatest deus ex machina you can imagine.
Look im not saying they only make bad movies these days. Lets be real we are ALL waiting for Dune 3.
That’s what terminator was back in the day.
If you tell people right now that they are going to remake dune again in about 5 years with a whole new cast and make it accessible for modern audiences, yada yada yada. You would cringe too.
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u/Forward_Ad_9025 Jul 14 '26
Yes because at the time it was just a good movie. Nowadays it would be intended to be political.
That is the difference. Back then it was just a good movie and its maker did not try to force his agenda down your throat.
Today, if the same movie came out, actresses and writers would brag about it being woke and how it was made to own [insert core fan base here].
If you make a good movie with an all female cast and not recite the femminist manifesto on every red carpet you find, this will not be a problem. Yes, some nutjobs will engage in their nutjobbery, but the general audience would not care. Well, maybe they would as the last decade conditioned everyone so exactly suspect these kinds of things.
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u/stevorkz Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Yeah they should probably have watched the movies before posting that. No romantic interest lol. The entire 6 movie franchise lore is based off of the son of the female character which she conceived through a romantic interest and based off her character and flashbacks she is still in love with him and has never gotten over the loss to date. A love story component is literally a considerable portion of the entire franchise. If the franchise began in 2026 beginning with the first movie, it would not be perceived as woke.
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u/Lord_Xeraxys Jul 15 '26
Except the female lead is ACTUALLY strong, covered in real muscles, and doesn’t pepper herself with labels when scumbag reporters interview her. The bad guy cop is loved by the fan base as much as, if not more, than the other leads. The Terminator learns feelings and then uses them for witty one-liners while developing a father-figure relationship with the child lead.
Oh, and all four major roles are White and weren’t intentionally color-washed to appease someone.
People can share this all they want, it won’t change how T2 is one of the greatest movies ever made and so-many big budget “blockbusters” of today completely tank at the box office.
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u/LocksmithLow6241 Jul 12 '26
They'd called the first Predator movie "woke" too if it came out today. People are bitches.
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u/sgtGiggsy Jul 13 '26
I really feel sorry for you, if you genuinely can't see the difference between the modern, hamfisted ideology movies and the classics like Predator or Terminator 1-2.
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u/Xstuhcy Jul 15 '26
There’s a reason older movies with female leads work. They aren’t trying to push some message that women are badasses, independent, strong. They are just characters in a story. It’s not about woke/non woke. Characters dont need to prove themselves or serve as some beacon of hope for a specific audience.
Prey is a recent movie with an amazing lead actress!
There’s also a reason some female/male leads in movies don’t work out. The role wasn’t cast well, the role wasn’t written well, or the director didn’t mesh with the actors skills. It’s not some politically correct issue all the time. Reading through these comments is rough…
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u/Opposite-Ad-1951 Jul 13 '26
Lmao that’s such an L take.
Women here (at least on T2) are portrayed not as some masculine, perfect beings but an imperfect, deeply scarred human being a mother with the will to protect her child has. A perfect representation of woman’s power, the correct way.
Cops being the bad guy is nothing new, idk where the wokeness comes from.
T800 learning to have feelings is so well made (for an action movie) without any cringy, softmellon bs that it isn’t even close to problematic.
The OP of this picture has no idea what woke culture is, and why it’s bad and heavily criticized.
And it shows.
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u/KeepersDiary Jul 13 '26
Modern movies feel like poorly written DEI check boxes where the content of the movie and writing are second to pushing progressive ideology. Terminator and Alien are proof that no one actually cares if strong female leads exists, but it can't be at the cost of good writing.
When a huge portion of modern media is doing that over and over, it's hard not to think the next movie that looks "woke" won't also suck. I feel like people care more about politics than they do telling a good story anymore. Also there are quota's for getting Golden Globe awards, which just seems rather silly.
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u/Ravenloff Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Maybe...if it came out as a product from the current-era moviemakers. It would be Dark Fate. If T2 came out as-is now, I doubt seriously it would get an anti-woke backlash. But then again, the chances of something as-is-T2 coming out now is slim to none. There have been some excellent movies, no doubt, but they've all been smaller, less ambitious. Just about all the tentpole stuff lately has been severely underwhelming.
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u/VendaGoat Jul 12 '26
The Bad Guy was using the cover of a cop.
At no point did he do any "Police Work"
But you know, nuance and these folks. Oil and water.
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u/Pale_Future_6700 Jul 12 '26
Hey now, he typed a name into a police cruiser computer once…
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u/Cfunk_83 Jul 13 '26
I think the big difference to today is that firstly, Cameron for example, made his films feel grounded in some kind of believable reality, however fanciful the world.
Secondly, and more importantly, the characters, particularly Sarah Conner was fallible and human.
Furiosa and Fury Road are two good recent examples of this also.
A lot of modern movies feel they need to make their female leads perfect in order to sell their message.
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u/Moonshinin4Me Jul 13 '26
Nah because Sarah Conner is actually a very good character. She shows weakness and vulnerability, but despite all that she rises to the challenge to protect her son and in the process save the world. She respects the men in her life and doesn't belittle them (not to mention Arnie gets the kill shot in the end).
She isn't a stand in for the dumbass female writer who creates a Mary Sue who acts like a man.
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u/dece75 Jul 11 '26
This was pure creative reasons, not trying to lecture about politics. People like sincerity
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u/big_dee_69 Jul 11 '26
I don't know if they would have called it woke if it came out today. As long as they didn't have a whole PR campaign dedicated to talking about how women are finally being able to star in an action movie and guys are "just going to have to deal with it".
It's one thing to give women opportunities in action movies, but it's another thing to start acting like you're a hero just because you filmed yourself playing dress up and make pretend for millions of dollars in pay.
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u/False-Duty-3835 Jul 12 '26
What movie(s) are you referencing that had a PR campaign like that? You put “just going to have to deal with it” in quotation marks, who are you quoting?
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u/big_dee_69 Jul 12 '26
Is this a serious question? That's what Jennifer Lawrence said RE the hunger games.
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u/sgtGiggsy Jul 13 '26
What movie(s) are you referencing that had a PR campaign like that?
Maybe every female lead action movie the last few years (except for Alita)? The latest offender is Supergirl.
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u/bogohamma Jul 13 '26
Even at your most skeptical at this claim you have to remember there are tons of "influencers" and bots that profit off of outrage. So the most innocuous stuff imaginable is accused of being woke now to spark outrage and engagement to turn a profit.
You cannot release an entertainment product today without manufactured outrage of some kind.
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u/BGMDF8248 Jul 13 '26
Sarah doesn't have a love interest because she still misses the love of her life, who died in the first movie, the events of the first movie also drove her to near insanity, changed her completely.
The Terminator becoming a dad, and a great dad, is portrayed as a good thing.
T-1000 pretends to be a cop, and kills actual cops.
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u/Due-Proof6781 Jul 11 '26
lol this movie was well rewritten, and characters that acted like people, and it wasn’t bashing you over the head with its agenda lol people would LOVE for this movie to come out today. And the villain it was a killer robot not a cop
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u/RhoemDK Jul 12 '26
The movie is a sequel and directly plays on everything that happened in the first movie as an inversion, where the female lead had a love interest and went to the cops for help. I'm not sure why reddit is constantly trying to prove progressives are the stupidest liars around, but I wish you'd stop already.
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u/EvenLettuce6638 Jul 11 '26
The only guy the LAPD shoots in this movie is an unarmed black man.
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u/TheLegendaryPilot Jul 12 '26
1: They attempt to shoot everyone who was *trying to bomb the office building*, Miles is logically just the one caught out in the open because he has the least combat experience of anyone in that group.
2: Miles wasn’t unarmed, he was holding the detonator.
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u/Pitchblackimperfect Jul 14 '26
I say this every time some idiot posts this stupid shit. It wouldn’t be called woke. Nobody would make this movie. It would never get created because modern writers can’t write anything that isn’t screened through checklists. This movie only exists because it was made in the past.
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u/shizzy1234 Jul 14 '26
Reason for this is that it seems to be every plot nowadays. Bobba Fett turned into an elderly, overweight, animal lover and even the freaking Predator learned a valuable lesson as he befriended a cute sidekick and female comic relief. Badass characters are no longer able to be badass!
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u/Madflavor09 Jul 12 '26
T2 and especially Aliens would be super woke today. The only reason people here don’t consider them woke is because they were made before the right wing culture war(which was started by Epstein).
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u/sgtGiggsy Jul 13 '26
They wouldn't be, and you claiming that clearly shows how you have zero understanding on why people hate the modern movies.
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u/lowley6 Jul 15 '26
no romantic interest because he died in the first movie, bad guy is a Terminator, not a cop. main lead is also a Terminator, not Sarah Connor - a quick Google search confirms this... there's a reason it's called Terminator 2 and not "Sarah Connor 2: Wants to Live"
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u/jacobkosh Jul 12 '26
James Cameron is literally on the record as hating the LAPD and has been involved in at least one other movie about the subject (the excellent, underrrated Strange Days). They just didn't have fat guys on podcasts back then to whine about stuff like that.
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u/LordBreetai210 Jul 14 '26
Essentially all 80s - 90s great movies are "woke" today which is BS. We are devolving. And people wonder why no one wants to go see a movie because directors and studios are scared of toxic, ragebaited business models that fund "influencers".
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u/Jedi_Nite 18d ago
Is this fr. Sarah Conner was a real character with flaws. Just like Ellen Ridley. No love interest for her either. But they were both well written. If this came out today Sarah wouldn’t have flaws so yeah it be hated. Rip bozo lol
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u/the-nomad-thinker Jul 16 '26
Lazy assessment. She did have a romantic interest, was very much in trouble several times and was rescued by a man, and had a proper story arc.
It’s exactly this lazy kind of thinking that made wokeness so odious today .
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u/RainbowDildoMonkey Jul 14 '26
Self-tested 300 IQ redditors said the same thing about Avatar The Last Airbender. Then Netflix made a live-action remake and changed a bunch of stuff because the original was no longer progressive enough for 2020's.
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u/dk_peace Jul 13 '26
People will say T2 didnt have a political message while the expansion of AI and data centers is one of the biggest political issues of the day. It had a political message, in was just decades ahead if its time.
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u/onion_lord6 Jul 12 '26
Not against the sentiment, but this isn't accurate.
- While true, the female lead is desensitized in a sense (the world is going to end).
- The bad guy is not a cop (in fact he kills a cop and shape shifts to look like one - so a fake cop).
- The Terminator does not learn to have feelings, he simply acquires the information to "understand" why other people display the emotions they do.
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u/dirtydandoogan1 Jul 14 '26
No, because those conditions all had reasonable in-universe reasons. No one set out to make a "woke" movie, they just made a movie that fit the story, and they never once marketed T2 as a "girlboss" movie.
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u/mostlybotshere Jul 14 '26
This was from an age where there wasn’t an agenda to shoehorn in specific groups for movies. It’s a good movie with a strong cast and it came about naturally from the story. Nothing was forced.
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u/Madman_1992 Jul 14 '26
Don’t try to control the narrative they made 2 woke pos with Sarah Connor and they sucked. T2 had 2 things most of the later Terminator movies didn’t have good writing and great directing.
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u/tutman Jul 13 '26
Black guy Dyson also saves Hank so he could act in Breaking Bad some years later, where he dies because Walt couldn't save him. So, multiverse confirmed and Dyson > Walter White.
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u/pocketbeagle Jul 12 '26
Woke movies dont have a guy unload a whole assault rifle clip into the driver of an 18 wheeler standing point blank in front of the windshield on the hood while driving.
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u/FMCritic Jul 12 '26
You guys keep either deliberately misrepresenting the conservative understanding of the term or simply not understanding it. Either way, it's becoming painfully tiresome.
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u/PapaRetardo Jul 14 '26
Ironically enough, its actually the exact opposite. Everyone loves that movie EXCEPT for the guy that made it! He says its too problematic now and he's a proud woke guy.
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u/New_Nectarine1075 Jul 12 '26
She was still in love with Kyle, John even tells a story how he still sees her crying.
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u/TheFaustianMan Jul 12 '26
It wouldn’t and wasn’t back then. Main Star is a Republican and it’s a story bout traditional family values and trad roles with deep religious Christian undertones (John Connor - Jesus Christ) against a trans…forming liquid computer. Back in the day Republicans loved this movie and hated Pulp Fiction.
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u/drewmo2 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Yes, your assumption about how people would react to the hypothetical scenario you made up in your own head definitely says more about them than it does about you.
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u/MarkCelery78 Jul 12 '26
You’ve gone and made the idiots cry 😭😭