Maybe it's because John Connor’s life and times more-or-less synch up with mine (born in the mid 80s, a kid in the mid 90s, and so on) but this saga of cyborgs has always been close to my bio-mechanical heart. Last week, I got all serious about the Alien quadrilogy. This week, to match my unofficial time travel theme, I'll be taking aim at the Terminator saga. Like Stephen King’s Dark Tower book series, these films have taken alternately appropriate and inexplicable twists over the years by virtue of how sporadically they come out and how often the creator's mind's change.
What say we put it under the flickering red monochrome of our Term-o-vision...
Maybe more than anything, this is an example of a director knowing exactly what to do with an actor. Schwarzenegger’s had plenty of mismatched roles ( whole mash-ups of them) and he’s certainly poked as much fun at himself as anybody else has, but this was the part that perfectly met the man’s imposing physical presence with his dark-as-pitch, deadpan sense of humor. A robot hitman who's so bluntly thorough about his bloody business that he'll kill everybody named "Sarah Connor" in the phone book just to cover all bases? That's a notion both terrifying and morbidly amusing.
Of course, what really brings this "tech-noir" horror home is the genuinely-moving romance between Reese and Sarah--two “candles in the wind” who never should've even met. It's that love story that truly elevates the material over any of setbacks the low budget and dated scenery might cause. I'd even say that this actually being benefits from the unmistakably 80s hair and electro-pop soundtrack--you'd want a time travel flick to be planted in a specific place and time, wouldn't you?
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Dir. James Cameron
Hands down, without any qualification, T2 is my all-time favorite movie in the history of mankind. I’ve watched it at least a hundred times since I was a kid and, honestly, it’s the standard by which I judge basically every other movie. Pacing, scoring, editing, stakes... everything. I could go on for pages and pages about it but, for the purposes of this feature, I’ll keep the praise focused on its merits as sequel.
Like Aliens, you’ve got a brilliant, genre-switching inversion of the first premise (teaming up with a good Terminator for action instead of horror?!?!,) a genuinely-novel new idea (liquid metal T-1000's make better infiltrators, don’t they?) and the on-point seizing of opportunities to do much more than the original ever allowed (the budget increased $94 million from the first, and every single penny shows.) Like the original, a big part of its success is a mordant self-awareness and the idea of a famous killing machine not being allowed to kill any one anymore plays like a nice, nasty extended joke.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) Dir. Jonathan Mostow
Some describe this as good fan-fiction, and I can’t think of a much more apt description. From the warm and soft cinematography to the barely-perceptible score, this feels like a de-fanged Terminator - - the very definition of the “soft R.” Yet, the writers did their homework and worthwhile ideas are actually added to the mythos as Connor and humanity get from Point A to Point Nuclear Apocalypse. Things like Skynet engineering a Terminator to specifically destroy reprogrammed units, the T-X "seeding" the first generation of T-1's and Connor turning into an aimless drifter after successfully preventing his own heroic destiny... those all fit the sweep of these chronicles quite appropriately.
While it’s thinner than T2 in every creative and technical regard, this is still one solidly entertaining romp, with some meaty action set-pieces and a bevy of quotable lines from Arnold's Terminator (who becomes something of a fortune teller cum psychotic coach.) The abandonment of Brad Fiedel's musical themes is unforgivable, though.
Terminator Salvation (2009) Dir. McG
Given how invested I am in this mythos, you'll understand why this one was such a frustrating experience. I place much of the blame on a deft marketing campaign that promised more ambition.
Remember this line in the trailer?
“This is not the future my mother warned me about. And in this future, I don’t know if we can win this war.”
John Connor’s been trained his entire to know exactly how this machine-driven Armagedoon is going to play out, right? His power comes from knowing what’ll happen ahead of time. Imagine, then, if his adventures altered that timeline enough that the future he met was different than the one he’d been prepared for? Would that make him a regular grunt instead of a messiah? What would he be then? There were so many possibilities, and we instead got a maddeningly, small-scoped story that climaxes with a heart transplant.
What's maybe more frustrating is that this actually gets a lot of things right. The looks is perfectly grim, the dilapidation of the T-600's and "flesh culling" for the T-800's creation fit perfectly into the timeline and the switch of Connor having to save his own, teenaged father is brilliant. Bale's also the first actor you can convincingly buy as the charismatic ultimate leader of humanity. I'll confess to my expectations probably being unreasonably high after waiting years and years for a movie entirely about the Future War, but it's just a shame that external factors seemed to prevent all of those great ingredients from coming together satisfactorily.
same here
God I just... I hate that movie so much for killing the franchise.
Also, it is probably worth mentioning the TV show. I know hardcore Terminator fans probably don't consider it canon, but the show actually expanded the mythos of the universe with some interesting ideas and characters. That show was canceled too early.
T2 is one of the best movie that ever came out.
Citizen Kane and Casablanca just got demoted! Maybe CK2 will be the best movie ever! I mean, it won't be nearly as original, and is sure to ride on the original movie's coat-tails, but it will be TWO times the action and SPLOSIONS!
Lena Headey sure wasn't Linda Hamilton but I still thought she was a good Sarah. And Summer Glau as a Terminator that genuinely appreciates art (ballet specifically) is an interesting twist.
I really wanted to see where they were going when it ends with John Connor warped to the future and nobody knows who he is. By jumping ahead he never lived through Judgement Day to become the leader of the resistance and is now a total nobody. Or, is this how he becomes their leader? He jumped beyond Judgement Day and is now going to become the man he never wanted to be because his fate has caught up to him leaving him little choice?
@SSully said:
I thought that was cheesy as hell.