Man, if you're in the critics' club that's running around bad mouthing the new Terminator film, you better watch your back, bud. I didn't spend the last 10 years of my life training in the deadly martial arts and also gun fighting to improve my ballet or crocheting techniques, I promise you that.
Okay, okay, so it wasn't like over-the-top incredible and awesome. Not every movie can be Star Trek. And hell yeah, McG has a funny name. I'm going to side-step all the stuff that's super lame about it and focus on the good stuff for a minute. The brass tax is that this isn't a perfect movie, and there's no real reason it should exist... however, I thought it was entertaining as hell and really cool, despite it's hilarious flaws.
1. Those action sequences are incredible. No weird shaky cam. No horrifying sense of "what the hell is going on here?" No dizzying punches or quick camera cuts to make stuff seem faster. No way josé, this action was taken straight from the good 'ole 80's and 90's. It all happens on frame, with only a few different angles. It's practical, it's crystal clear and it's fun as hell. The 2nd unit team who put together those explosion scenes are out of control talented.
(Editor's note: How in the hell did they shoot that in-sane helicopter flight/crash sequence which seemingly only uses ONE solid-running shot? Did nobody else notice this?? He hops in the helicopter, takes off, gets whipped around, tumbles upside down or something, flies through smoke, crashes into the ground and climbs out of the thing in one single long-running shot. That, readers, is cool.)
2. This film looks amazing to me. The silver-toned, washed-out look of the movie adds a really different and interesting vibe to the whole "post-apocalyptic" routine. When John Connor yells stuff... he yells it with a silver-ish looking face, which makes his yelling 10 times more intense. Also, it's amazing how the color tone pops off the metal of the robots and makes the landscape look even more desolate and creepy. It just looked so damn cool.
3. Sam Worthington. I'm a fan. Sure, he lost his accent 200 times and was given some of the most cheesy dialogue ever (thanks, writers of Catwoman!), but it's so cool to see some totally fresh face in a leading role kicking ass on screen. This was really just a warm-up for me to see him in James Cameron's upcoming "Avatar," which promises to break apart every film convention known to man so far and take filmmaking to the next level. I'm down.
4. The Special Effects. Holy Lord, this movie looked flawless. Every single Terminator shot looks so unbelievably real & awesome. When the ultimate cameo of the year happens, the audience in my theatre seriously gasped. I was crazy impressed with that one.
5. Anton Yelchin. I love this kid. He must have watched Michael Biehn's Kyle Reese a whole ton, because every time he talks through his teeth I was laughing my ass off at how close that performance is. (Plus, the "come with me if you want to live" thing made me happy.)
6. The awesome variety of Terminators.
Quick side note: In James Cameron's unbelievably awesome film, Aliens, I was always troubled by one thing... In the first Alien, that damn thing was nearly impossible to kill. Sure, Ripley didn't have the best weapons in the world, but that thing evaded and took out every single character on that ship like I take out run-on sentences and cheesy tuna helper. When Cameron's Aliens pops up, there's like 10,000 of these things. However, the space marine guys just shoot 'em up like squirrels. This is totally lucid since they have this awesome artillery and even more hard-core one-liners and quips. ("Game over, man.") But at the end of the day... shouldn't those damn aliens been a LITTLE harder to kill?
Kyle Reese tells Sarah Connor in the first Terminator that he has no idea if he can stop the Terminator, especially with the 1984 weapons and bad hair cuts & fashion sense. He has to mix up his own household-item bombs (in between nailing John Connor's mom), and even those things don't stop that cyborg bastard. That thing just keeps on GOING!
In this new film, it's right on par. Connor's run-in with the severed Terminator torso following the helicopter crash is brilliant. That thing just won't go down. While I was watching it come after him, I seriously went back to the original Terminator, thinking of how Schwarzenegger's severed torso was crawling after Sarah in that big car factory plant place. It kept the same sense of indestructibility. Even after Connor hits the thing in the face with a 50 Calibre helicopter-mounted cannon, it still puts up a hell of a fight... and we actually still see it moving as that scene ends. I love that durability!!!!
Also... the fight at the end with the big T-800 was incredibly cool. He freezes that thing, melts that thing and shoots that thing with a rocket launcher repeated times. It just keeps on truckin' at him. I really appreciated that consistency.
Anyway, that's all I'll touch on, because there's no sense in wasting another 1,500 words on the stuff that's pretty ridiculous and hilarious about the movie. I can't believe some people would watch "The Transformers" and think that lame crap is a seriously awesome film by comparison.
The Transformers learn the English language by visiting ebay and use transmission fluid to pee on their enemies. These terminators will rip your skull off and cause Christian Bale to look intense and yell in every scene. You do the math. In the mean time, enjoy this awesome summer blockbuster movie trailer.
Have fun out there in the post-Memorial Day / Apocalyptic future, readers!
-McClane
1 Comments:
McClane my man. I have to agree with you 100% (a month or so later). People gave this movie so much shit, but the only reason they did so was because it was McG & Bale blew up at that dude last year.
I'm even going to go beyond you and say that this film was a solid summer sci-fi-extravaganza. A great update on the Terminator continuum, and barring some obvious flaws used solely as plot devices a great flick all around.
The cameo to end all cameos, and that helicopter shot, and let's not forget the GnR song, were brilliant homages to the Terminator mythos.
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