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OK, time to try an experiment. I have been of the opinion that I can't do this whole Consciousness Stream bit with something I've already seen, since I'll know what's coming and not be sufficiently incredulous. I've never really put that to the test though. So tonight, we're going to see if anything amusing oozes out of my head as I sit down and watch a movie darn near everyone has seen already. Terminator. Will there be boobs by paragraph 3? Well, there will be naked Arnold Schwarzenegger, so, partial credit?
OK, here's the opening sequence. This actually still holds up as pretty darn awesome. Blue foggy skull-covered ruins with big cool clunky robots shooting lasers all over. I really do, seriously, enjoy the visual of this, and it's the sort of look nothing else ever really goes for. Usually horrible future wastelands are big empty brown plains. Or these days, just dumb ol' deserts. Apparently Terminator 4 totally retconned the future into pretty much being Iraq. Also, I can't help but notice that the time travel effect there is a lot like the Quickening from Highlander. I also can't help but notice that Arnold Schwarzenegger actually looks quite young in this movie. As opposed to the sequels. Yeah, apparently they started off with this nice physically perfect android, and then later improved on the design with some old flabby out of shape androids... which can be easily reprogrammed by the human resistance. And I also can't help but notice that that was full frontal male nudity right there. I totally did not recall actually seeing evil robot wang the first time I saw this. Thought it was all waist-up or from behind shots.
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But anyway, here's future resistance man here, who, honestly, I'd say pretty much brings the whole movie down honestly... and the police are chasing him pretty aggressively for... no real reason that I can see. I mean, yeah, he just appeared in the middle of an alley with a bunch of lightning, but nobody really saw that, and then he stole some bum's pants, but the cops were already showing up as he was doing that. Seriously, is there some law against time traveling or something? Anyway, he's all take pants, wear pants, east, south, take coat, wear coat, south, down, open door, take shotgun, west.
Now here's our main character, riding her astoundingly ugly motorcycle to her shift at burger place, while nudebot, having stolen the pretty snazzy duds off some random punks, is going off to buy guns from the old guy from Gremlins. I like that guy, he's not in enough stuff. Also, man, I miss punks. In the 80s we had punks all over the place. With their cool futuristic spiky chainy leather jackets, and their blue spiky hair. Then they all got phased out and replaced with "gangstas" with their dew rags and their lack of any other real interesting visual distinctiveness. Seriously, I miss them. I think England might still have a few. The other thing about 80s action movies is that really serious guns were just so darn ubiquitous. It's like, you could have a regular, perfectly ordinary business meeting going on, and as soon as an argument broke out, everyone suddenly pulls an uzi out of their briefcases and vaporize a wall. I'm not even exaggerating here. This was how it was. It was really a downright baffling phenomenon. I mean, where did they get all these? Why was it so commonplace that you didn't question it? How did this trend just kinda go away? I mean, the 90s just didn't really have any guns at all around up until The Matrix. Maybe the occasional pistol, but that's not the same thing.
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So future guy here sees some heavy machinery and has a flashback to the future where, again, things look really awesome. This holds up pretty well too. I mean, it's kinda low budget looking, with awkwardly shaky helicopters and such, but it's such a great visual style! Also, I really feel the need to point out how little dialog there is for like, the whole first half of this movie. I mean, up until the big expository bit that caused way too many people to transpose the definitions of android and cyborg, there's no meaningful dialog anywhere, and even the throwaway background chatter is surprisingly sparse. Also, hey look! It's Bishop! Hi Bishop! We all like you despite the fact that most things you're in are just absolutely terrible, and it might even be partially your fault in some instances. But you're still Bishop and thus you get a free pass through the land of nerds for life.
Looking at the main character here by the way, it really has to be said that she's actually a pretty convincing/nifty character, particularly when you get into Terminator 2 where she's just kinda become this totally hardened kinda creepy para-military psycho. She's really the only example I can think of besides Ripley and Aeryn from Farscape of a convincing female badass type. Everything else goes that whole waif-fu angle which is honestly much less "strong female character" and much more "it's totally hot when girls can kick people in the face!" Also, this bit here is pretty amusing. The Terminator busts into her apartment and kills her room mate assuming that was her. Then it only finds out that wasn't the person who needed killing because she calls to warn her bad stuff is going down. So... I guess if she hadn't called, he'd have just finished going through the surprisingly long list of Sarah Connors in the phone book and then... sat in the corner until it was 2029 again? Also, man, that is a really ridiculous looking laser sight on that pistol there.
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Anyway though, back to what I was saying about the whole strong female character bit. I was only counting live-action action movies there, but it doesn't change much if you expand into other media. Black Lagoon has a few good examples I suppose. Revy in particular is just a freaking psycho and kinda comes off like she doesn't bathe. It's kinda hard for me not to think of Black Lagoon while watching Terminator by the way, especially this car chase scene here because, well, that one episode is just such a loving tribute to this. Seriously, people need to watch that show. Also, here's the whole cyborg explanation scene. Again, it's interesting in that technically speaking, yeah, they're calling this a cyborg accurately here. Usually when you have a cyborg, you've got some plain ol' human type person who has some cool robo-bits grafted on. Here, we've got a robot with faux-human skin and hair grafted on. I still say it's more accurate to say android though. Speaking of hair, our robot friend has, by this point, had his eyebrows burn off. Arnold Schwarzenegger without eyebrows honestly looks way creepier than the average person without eyebrows. Kinda has this whole forehead ridge thing going on.
While we're slowing down for some exposition here, I feel I need to ask something. Why the heck is Terminator 2 so well regarded? The first movie here I'd say is somewhat overrated, but it has some merit. It's a decent little sci-fi premise, particularly with the stable time loop ending, and you know, it's a really great example of a mindlessly violent 80s action movie. They don't make'em like this anymore, so there's something to be said for keeping the memory alive. Terminator 2 though? Really just kinda lame. I mean, first off, the fact that the first movie has the stable time loop ending makes any sequels just totally pointless. Since both the evil robot army AND the mighty resistance leader came to exist only from things being sent back in time, any attempt to eliminate either one using time travel is doomed to fail. If you could change the past, this future you're going back from wouldn't have come to exist in the first place. Then there's the whole "liquid metal" bit. That's just kinda stupid. I never really did get where they were trying to go with that either. Are they trying to dumb down the concept of nanites? Are we going for some kind of crazy magnetically suspended fluid thing? Plus, what happened to the whole needing living human skin on the outside to be able to go back in time bit? Plus, you know, it's got a lot of cheesy stuff, like the whole "hasta la vista, baby!" line. Which is a stupid quotable one-liner which, in the context of the movie even, is a stupid quotable one-liner. Plus, OK, I just don't see this rag-tag band of rebels in the blue skull-land managing to secure, and then reprogram, one of these Arnold-bots, and then manage to get it back through the time machine which, I'm sure, would have had its security stepped up by then. It was just kind of a lame pointless sequel really.
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Getting back to the movie at hand though, lookie here. We have our main character, at the first possible time, heading to the police station and convincing everyone present to help protect her. Woo. There was also a bit earlier where, bluescreen technology not being yet available, when our robot-from-the-future has his eye damaged and has to dig it out with a box-cutter to reveal his cool glowing red robo-eye, they had to just go ahead and build a realistic looking robotic Arnold-head. It has this real uncanny valley thing going on which works real well in context and kinda makes me wish they'd just kept using it for the rest of the movie, instead of just having him put a pair of shades on to hide it. There's some pretty realistic looking slashed open robo-arm fun too in there. Seriously, could someone explain to me how CGI ever caught on in the movie industry when the practical effects that already existed looked SO much better and were an order of magnitude cheaper? I mean, it's still true even!
You know, it's kind of weird now that I think of it during yet another expository scene that no real explanation is ever given for WHY we have all these death-bots in the future. Apparently it's like, someone created the internet, and it became sentient, and then it decided yeah, humans gotta go. The Matrix rationalized things pretty well, but Terminator doesn't even make an attempt. Maybe it has something to do with all the Sonic the Hedgehog porn. The emergent mind of the internet just looked at how much of that there was, and deemed the creators to filthy to live. Oh, and that bit there was just great. The robot's eye view with a selection of 6 suggested come-backs to a grouchy landlord asking him to keep down the noise of all his home surgery. Oh, and no Resisto is giving Sarah a gun while he goes out to buy some groceries. By "a gun" I mean a pistol. That will surely keep her safe. It's not like earlier we had 30 cops firing shotguns and AK-47s at him with no noticeable effect at all.
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Here's another point I actually like. Every time there's a nice quite moment for some dialog? Resisto here is such a terrible conversation partner having come from the bleak robo-future. So, what did you do when you were a little kid? I built weapons to kill robots. What kind of girls are you into? The kind that kill robots. What did you want to do when you grew up? Kill robots. So, what about my son? The one who's all chosen oneish? He's good at encouraging people to kill robots. What do you want for breakfast? To kill robots. Oh hey, and there's some visible nipples. We're way way past paragraph 3 though. Of course, we did have a free-swinging wang pretty much right off the bat, so I think we've been covered on the random nudity front.
The music in this movie deserves some mention too. It's all just ultra-cheesy-synth stuff, and kinda on the weird side too. Squigga-wigga-WIGGA-wigga squigga-wigga-WIGGA-wigga squigga-wigga-WIGGA-wigga BUM! BUM! Oh and by the way, I seem to recall hearing at some point that Terminator 4 has this whole plot point where John Connor is trying to keep Resisto safe because he knows he's his time loop daddy and he won't be born unless he sends him back to score with his mom and die. Which REALLY makes things pointless, because now we not only have this clearly established stable time loop angle, but we have characters acknowledging it in-story. All you can really do at that point is Bill and Ted type stuff, where you plan to have future dudes come back to when you're making your plans and help out. Also, we have now officially hit the awesome stop-motion robo-skeleton portion of our movie. You know, this is how you could make an actually watchable Terminator sequel. You just drop all this stupid time travel nonsense, and make a movie set in 2029 there, with big ol' armies of laser tanks and stop motion skelebots fighting a ragtag resistance for 2 hours. You clearly know how to do nearly plot-free action, and all the various flashbacks to the future are by far the best bits of the first movie. Just run with it guys! But noooo. All we get are some stupid pointless sequels, and then one season of a TV series with River Tam and Rusty Venture replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger and uh... Bishop maybe? Never actually saw the episodes he was in.
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Seriously though, I'm loving the believable design here. Pistons and frame reinforcements all over. Yay. Kinda graceless though for something that's supposed to pass for human long enough to get into the room where everyone's sleeping and go kill-happy though. But oh no! The movie isn't over! We've got a crawly-torso of an evil robot still! Really uh... doesn't come off as a believable threat now though. You just get to the nearest place of authority, possibly the ruins of the police station, there's probably some FBI dudes hanging around by now, and you just kinda point at the crawly robot attempting to chase you down, and they, you know, kick it away every few minutes. Or you crush it in an industrial press. That works too I GUESS. By the way, what's so special about this robo-arm that makes it so great for reverse-engineering evil robots? I mean, engineering wise, there's nothing really special here. The good stuff is the AI and the gyroscope, and those are clearly beyond repair. And another thing, why is Terminator 2 not set in Mexico? There might be an in-movie explanation, but I sure don't recall one.
You kinda have to dig the dark ending here too. It's like, oh yeah, so, evil robots are DEFINITELY going to nuke the world into oblivion and then start hunting for survivors with giant laser death tanks, and there's nothing you can do about it, and you're apparently going to die pretty early on in this, because nobody ever mentions future-you. So, you know, have a nice day. Bye. The end. Oh, and that's an awesome credit right there. "Laser guns provided by LASER PRODUCTS CORPORATION." What a wonderful thought. There is a, well, corporation called Laser Products Corporation. They produce laser guns. I guess for movies. You'd figure laser guns would be provided by the local toystore, some grey spray paint, and drawing bright blue lines on the film.
Also, only now, at this late hour, do I realize that this DVD includes a French dub.
