Thought for the Day

I wish I was caught up in a robot war with Megan Fox.

TERMINATOR SALVATION (proper review)

"This was not the future my mother told me about..."

The groundwork had already been carefully prepared by Messrs Cameron and Schwarzenegger, the plot devices and story development penned masterfully. Even the blip of the not-so-great-but-still-enjoyable third installment didn't subtract from this rock steady franchise. We knew what the future held. It was going to be bleak but it was going to be an exciting, thrilling ride. Nothing could possible go wrong.

Except it did. It went very wrong. The first mistake was hiring a hack like the idiotically named 'McG' as director. Then running with a script that was a mess of ideas stolen from almost every other blockbuster in the last 10 years.

There really is very little of this film that could be praised. Set in 2018, the nuclear apocalypse and subsequent war with the robots which the first two Terminator installments whet our appetite for, is rudely crammed into a few very brief paragraphs at the beginning. John Connor, the hero of the film (portrayed by Christian Bale, still with the frog in his throat left over from playing Batman) is two dimensional and thoroughly unlikable and manages to come across from the outset as quite a inept soldier instead of the saviour the character is meant to be. Sam Worthington is Marcus, an executed prisoner who pops up in the ravaged future as a cyborg prototype (which strangely doesn't strike him as weird- I know if I were to suddenly wake up naked and covered in mud in a desolate war-torn environment, I might ask a question or two) but fails to inspire any feeling whatsoever. The story is based chiefly around saving young Kyle Reese from Skynet (the evil company-turned-humankind-destroyer), as Kyle needs to live in order to get sent back in time by Connor in order to be Connors father. All perfectly clear.

One main stumbling block about this whole scenario is the lack of a decent villain. There is no one to grip the viewer, to heighten the tension, which is precisely why the previous installments were so effective. The struggle is awfully one sided emotionally, and we can't really care about an angry, shouty John Connor. For a story that is about trying to save humanity, this film shows a notable lack of it.

There are many things wrong here, from the poor pacing of the story to the laughably inadequate defences Skynet has to offer, the lack of thought given to scenes (why would killer bike robots need a USB port on them anyway?) to bad dialogue- they also reuse key lines from the previous movies.
On the plus side, though, there were some pretty good explosions.

Terminator Salvation cheapens the franchise, and seems to assume that film goers are braindead morons by tacking in a shameful script around big set-piece action scenes. This film should be forgotten, and fast.

TERMINATOR SALVATION (false start review)

Killing My Childhood, 1 Franchise at a Time.

That's what they're doing. And they aren't stopping, in fact the pace is picking up.
Where have all the ideas gone? It doesn't have to be an original idea, just as long as some movie hero or icon from my youth isn't defiled, rolled in dirt and shoved in my face.
I suspect, though, that the reasons for making these sorry excuses for movies are not just to piss me off. The bad news is that they make money, lots of money, and people will always come from far and wide to sit through the tripe. Hell, even Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Shit Script (or crystal skull, something like that) made a shed load of dough.

I have to moan about these things before getting to the actual review. This disease is bigger than just one film. Bad scripting and hopeless direction frequently plague what should be a triumphant return to the big screen for old favourites. When one of these ideas is being penned, would it not be a sensible thing to sit down first of all, think about the history of the film, think about those that have grown up with it, those who made it a success in the first place by going to the cinema and buying the VHS and perhaps the soundtrack and other merchandising. Is it too much to ask for the writers to think, "Why don't we write a good movie to continue the franchise?".
There is also the case of studio involvement, when the money men get their teeth sunk in. Personally, I think the best example of this is in Terminator (I seem to have abandoned the review for now, but will endeavor to churn it out soon) where a small, curly haired, mute black kid keeps popping up, only to get shouted at every now and again and hands a few items to other characters. I reckon that this kid was originally in the script as a dog. Stick with me now, it makes sense- a dog doesn't speak and can fetch things just as well as any kid, and would fit a whole lot better into a post-apocalyptic environment. So here we have a case of some suit demanding a black kid instead so he can tick his minority boxes. Possibly to keep at bay the crazy Americans who would have seen this as a glaring affront to their civil liberties and tried to sue. Or something equally silly.

Sometimes the flip-side is true too, however, and a stale franchise is reworked to positive effect, bringing a fresh, more up-to-date approach. Films such as the recent Batman movies, Star Trek and even The Hills Have Eyes, but these exceptions are more re-envisioning of the originals, and its plain to see time and effort have gone into the story and a director who knows what the hell he's doing, and knows the previous movies is taken on board.

With so many more remakes and reigniting of franchises in the pipeline, I fear that my childhood and adolescent movie experiences will be further dented as time marches on. Sometime in the future, even the remakes of those great films will be remade. This is the way of the Hollywood machine I suppose, and anyway, the greatest hurt has already happened, the greatest betrayal that could have befallen a boy who grew up though the 1980's. The magic of Star Wars has been killed off well and truly and still they flog the corpse.
We can now put a name to this infliction.
We can call it George Lucas Disease.

Fun and Games

Quick, think of a number between 1 and 20. Got it? Okay, multiply that number by by 13. Then take away the original number and add 24. With me so far? The original number that you had, if you halve that and add on to the new number (if it was odd, then round UP to get your figure to add). Now, keep in mind this number that you now have, we will be going back to it.
Now it gets a little tricky. Add up the ages of both your parents and divide that number by the amount of letters in your pets name (if more than one pet, use the oldest). With this total, subtract 5 and multiply by 29. Then add the other number to this total and subtract a quarter of the total of words in this post. All done? Now write that down, slip it into an envelope and mail it to someone who actually cares. I don't.