...
Really.
Really?
C-, I'd give the movie, and I think I'm being generous there. The entire goddamned movie was just one big tip of the hat to the old films, JUST like T3 was. Its like whoever is behind it is trying to take every memorable quote from the first two and somehow fit it into the 3rd and 4th just so they can really just hammer it into your head that 'Yes, you are in fact watching a terminator film.' Its not only the one liners, but the recycled shots and action sequences - shooting one terminator over and over again with a gun that takes a second or two to reload, hitting a terminator in a face, and having the face slowly revolve back towards the camera, the half a terminator grabbing at the helpless human, the younger character being put onto an elevator to move him out of harms way while a battle is set to go on, 'come with me if you want to live'... god damn THINK OF SOME NEW THINGS TO DO WITH TERMINATORS. A good drinking game if you really wanted to hurt your liver would be to drink every time they 'paid homage' to the first two movies. I think I'd be hugging the toilet before the movie was done in that case!
Now before I get completely on a rampage I'd like to point out that there were some parts of the film that were in fact decent - I didn't give the movie a D or an F like I would for T3. Most Definitely it was better than the new star wars films, and most definitely it was better than T3, but only because it was
bearable.I did like that the movie went back to the original theme of the first two terminators, summarized in the sentence 'The future is not set, there's no fate but what we make for ourselves.' which T3 just kind of did-away with, probably my biggest problem with the movie.
I also liked how they handed 'older models' -- as in the one with the mini gun when we first see Marcus and Reese meet. And while the sound effects made little sense (as robots would communicate by silent electronic signal and not creepy klaxon sonar) they were definitely pretty bitching - reminded me of the floating big drone robots in Resistance 2.
I liked that concrete office building's didn't blow up in fiery explosions during ridiculous car chases
I liked the exploration into the destroyed land, and the people who wanted nothing to do with resistance, I think to some degree I would have been a little disappointed if I hadn't seen some people who didn't want to fight the machines.
I did NOT like the motorcycle-bots. I missed the large HK's -- the ones on huge Treads, I think i saw one that looked somewhat similar when marcus goes back to skynet ... but i saw no treads. The big walker, also while cool, was a little bit ridiculous in comparison to the large treaded hunterkillers - they were so advanced with huge machines, but they didn't have Plasma Rifles.
I hated that they
didn't have plasma guns One of the coolest parts for me in the first two movies when they flashed back, was the
motherfuckin lasers! The modified M4 carbines just didn't make much sense to me - especially when they had no effect on terminators, after he shoots one in the head in the beginning of the movie - where's the continuity?? I also didn't like that they seemed to do a lot of fighting in the daytime - while I understand one has to suspend what was said in the first two, it was odd to me that such a strong visual theme throughout both of the first two movies' flashback scenes was basically ignored. At some point in the first I'm sure Kyle mentioned that they mostly operated at night, because it was harder for the machines to see. (which, to be fair, was later contradicted by arnold driving the car at night "I see everything")
overall it seemed like a big amalgam of pre-used themes, action sequences, settings, and even storylines. How many times in movies have you seen the situation where "we've gotta save these people that our commanding officers are willing to sacrifice, just in time!" I saw Road Warrior, Alien, Aliens, Predator, War of the Worlds, Transformers and even Waterworld themes and elements in the movie. And while true, most sci-fi is just reusing old ideas, it was blatant here, and in some cases purposeful. They had such an opportunity to create a world and story that would be relatively unique, and they kind of threw it away with homages. It lacked, in general, the heart and soul of the first two movies, because it was all just nonstop action without character development - where were the soft moments where the characters reflected - like when Sarah was watching John trying to teach Arnold to high-five and such? Explaining how the world ended to Miles Dyson? I felt detached from all of the characters, there was no connection. Christian Bale was as christian-bale-y as he could be - clearly the directors and whoever loved him in the Batman series and wanted to push that side of him, and clearly he was held back by the writing.
Edit: Also Rotten Tomatoes praised Revenge of the Sith as the movie that redeemed the franchise. Just sayin.
Well show me a movie that rocks that RT shat upon ... otherwise the point is a little bit irrelevant.
Yay for Linda Hamilton!
Gotta disagree with you here and say BOO for Linda Hamilton. She's the reason t3, t4 and 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles' exist - basically she married Jim Cameron, and they were later divorced after terminator two, sometime in the 90's i believe. The divorce was messy, and eventually Linda Hamilton walked away with the rights to the Franchise, which she promptly turned around and sold to the highest bidder, which made her lack of participation in the third movie all the more galling. Its thanks to her that they keep churning out movies like this
What a great cameo! I'm so glad he did not say a god damn word. He evoked the terminator from T1 so well. I was even ok with the CG because it kind of emulated the rubbery fakeness of the puppet (you know where hes repairing his eye & shit).
He was entirely CG, I think. The file I watched was pretty shitty but its pretty easy with a huge budget to reproduce someone's face, especially in weird half-light with the digital medium - take a 3D scan of the face, readjust the edge loops and topology, decrease the age with plenty of reference from the many pictures of him when he's younger, and its a pretty simple job to make a model that capture's Arnold's very unique essence digitally.
- As I said before, the amount of attention that was paid to T2. How John Connor got his scar, the fact that he likes Guns and Roses, etc.
Was that song that he played to attract the motorcycle the same one that young john in t2 played after burning his foster parents on that sweet dirt bike? because if so thats pretty sweet
And then the fact that its followed by you know who stepping out of the shadows to the T2 music - beautiful!
Actually I felt that that part was a little lame - I did enjoy the t800 with the skin and all, and it looking like arnold, but the music was just somehow over-exaggerated and gaudy to me.
Also, I loved Marcus character. In the trailers I thought he was going to be the weakest link, but I feel he made the movie.
Indeed, I felt he was an interesting solution to 'new terminator tech' -- they totally blew it in 3 because they just tried to take what was awesome about the t1000 (apparent weakness translating into danger) and exaggerate that by using a femme fatale, who also had flamethrower hands or whatever ... lame. Here they (quite blatantly) ripped off Blade Runner, but kind of put their own spin on things, and didn't try to make him 'the next most badass terminator type' -- in fact he does kind of get his ass kicked at points, which makes his victories that much better, as it did with Kyle Reese in t1, and Arnold in t2.
Actually the scene where Marcus talked directly to Skynet bothered me somewhat. What makes Skynet so terrifying (to me) is the fact that its always seemed to be an enigma. In all the other movies we've never it seen it talk, get some insight into how it thinks, or even been able to put a face to it. Practically the moment it becomes aware, it just labels us as a threat to its existence, and we never really know why.
I know that the scene in which shit is explained is necessary, but I wish they had done it another way. It felt too matrix-ish; 'neo in the system core'.
I Completely agree with you here. Putting a face on the mysterious thinking machine of skynet was just such a knee-jerk solution. I also agree with the 'neo in the system core' feel -- it was just a 'okay now we're going to tell you the big twist get ready' scene.
ANOTHER NERD ALERT: What the fuck were the T-850s fuel cells doing there? The T-800s came first, and the movie quite obviously displays them just initially being constructed. The 850s weren't created until later, so uh...wtf. How convenient they were just lying on a work table, begging to be detonated.
Futhermore, It was stupid for the fuel cells to be nuclear at all in the first place. Tactically speaking, having a whole army of walking nukes is foolish and wasteful. I mean, if someone hucked a 'nade at a terminator and ruptured the fuel cell ... boom there goes the battlefield, both sides included. That was a T3 thing - the power source in the first two movies was purely a battery - a backup batter which would last 100 years, apparently. The boom-fuel cells were simply placed there in t3 so they could say the lame-ass 'You are Terminated' line at the end, and here they served as a means to blow up the compound.
I think the kid who played Reese did a very good job, but the writers FORGOT SOMETHING? Reese explains in T1 how he was toiling away loading bodies to be incinerated in machine work camps.
Bale felt a bit flat, and fell into his Batman voice one too many times. Again, I wish he had more dialogue, or more scenes of him listening to his moms tapes. I also felt like Connor and Brewster were together simply because they knew it was their destiny to be together, not really cause they loved eachother. Maybe the movie could have gone into this more.
From the start of the movie where the text says that Connor is a 'False Prophet' I kind of figured that this was yet again an 'alternate timeline' of sorts, and that you've kind of got to throw away a lot of what the original movies had said, kind of like in the Star Trek movie, but not as blatant. They sought too much to try and link the T1,T2 world with the T3 bullshit dreamland, when they would have been far better off completely ignoring T3 and simply making T4 a prequel - the dystopian war against the machines.
Additionally, to further nerd-nitpick - John Connor was known by skynet because he escaped one of the camps to start the resistance - he didn't automatically start outside of things like in T3 or in this movie -- when in the beginning they noted that 'skynet just put out a high-priorty bounty (or whatever) for Kyle Reese and John Connor ... ' how the fuck would it know to go after John if he was just a lieutenant at the time of the movie? How would it know what Kyle Reese looked like, or why he was important? Again, just a cheap means to evoke aspects of the first two move - to reinstate that 'hunted' feel without really thinking it out.
I could go on but I'm pretty tired. I'll continue tomorrow.
