Talk:John Connor

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I'm sorry, but what is this garbage in the "Reception" section?

Uhm...

"The decision to kill John off in the opening scene of Dark Fate was met with an overwhelmingly negative reaction, and many suggested that his death and replacement with Daniella Ramos and Grace was merely a response to feminism, the Me Too movement and social justice warrior politics as opposed to actual character and plot development."

...What?

Firstly, I don't understand what this has to do with the reception of John Connor as a character. It feels like this should be on the Dark Fate page, if anywhere. And in fact, it is. In the "Fate of John Connor" subsection, in the "Reception" section of that page. Why the need to paste the exact same content to an article that doesn't feel particularly relevant?

Interestingly enough, certain parts of this assessment (which I'll get to in a minute) are left out of that Dark Fate page.

Secondly, the "overwhelmingly negative reaction" assessment is unsupported by both references that source the statement. The Digital Spy article begins with "some Terminator fans have reacted angrily to one character's fate" (emphasis mine). And while I don't have a Washington Post subscription, the fact that that article is headlined "‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ is as good as the first two films — because it ignores what happened in the last three" doesn't suggest, to me, a "negative reaction" to the death. Perhaps what is meant is "audience" reaction, but even then, it doesn't look particularly promising in light of the references; and in terms of professional reviews, only three are cited to have commented negatively on this.

Thirdly, the proselytizing second part of that opening quote is abjectly, and obviously, far-right culture war anti-feminist talking points (I'd go so far as to call it "propaganda"), that is both unsupported by reliable sources, and feels like inserted POV commentary. Only two sources are cited to support this whole spiel about "wah wah feminism"; but the Irish Times, which is one of the two, doesn't even do so. It gives a positive 7/10 review of the movie, does not at any point talk of "feminism" or "social justice warrior politics" (???), and briefly makes mention of the MeToo movement... in a positive manner:

"[T]he bombastic sixth chapter in the ageing franchise enjoys a welcome software upgrade in the shadow of the MeToo movement."

The National Review, which I'll remind is a conservative publication generally considered partisan, and has no consensus of reliability (as noted in the perennial sources list), is thus the only source supporting this take; this I do not consider particularly appropriate, given that this is a personal POV opinion which does not seem generally supported by the majority of actual reliable sources, and especially because, while some here might be tolerant of the Review, I do consider it unabashedly partisan, and generally unreliable.

I'll also add that there's an extended paragraph about "fans decrying Cameron's hypocrisy", which doesn't seem particularly well-supported either (given that one source is a Youtube video, and another one is DVD commentary, and most concern themselves with Fincher's original decision to kill off characters in Alien 3 and Cameron's reaction to it, as opposed to "fans decrying hypocrisy" or whatever nonsense), and is similarly not present in the Dark Fate page.

In light of all this, I have to assume some right-wing commentator decided to stop by and vandalize this page. It seems a single user, Jienum (who is currently blocked), is solely responsible for this. Now, there is an argument that the relatively controversial killing of John Connor does belong in the reception section of Dark Fate, but I do not see a world where it belongs on this particular page - it gives no critical reception of the character John Connor himself, instead focusing on one single plot element from one single movie, and thus rendering the section generally fairly useless, does not add any new information compared to that movie's page (apart from some obviously terrible personal takes and near-original research), and generally pollutes this page for no reason.

Hence, as it seems entirely unsalvageable in its current state and contains no information that can be of use, I am removing the "Reception" section entirely via WP:BOLD. Not sure if that's the appropriate thing to do, but hopefully it's okay. LaughingManiac (talk) 14:04, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]