Cult-Movie Review: Terminator Genisys (2015)

(Watch out for spoilers!)

First things first: Genisys (2015) is not the worst film to carry the franchise name Terminator.

That (dis)honor still goes to 2009’s Salvation, and by some distance too. 

But one shouldn’t celebrate much about this sequel, either, for Genisys abundantly lacks the visceral impact of the first two Terminator films (helmed by James Cameron) and the ambition/courage of Rise of the Machines (2003) which -- love it or hate it -- at least attempted to move the franchise in a new direction, beyond Judgement Day and into the Future War. That movie did more than inch John Connor toward his destiny, and showed audiences that his fate had not been changed, just delayed.

Terminator Genisys, by contrast, is yet another “we’ve got to stop Judgment Day before it happens” movie, much like the 1991 sequel.  But it undertakes that familiar quest without Cameron’s skill or acuity in terms of humanity, action, and even humor.

It’s intriguing to note those places where Genisys falls down on the job. 

It isn’t necessarily in the twisty-turning narrative, which features a grab-bag of great ideas, even if half-realized.

Rather, it is in the unexceptional execution. 

The entire film moves by at the same clip or pace -- a steady heart-beat -- and there is no real quickening or slowing of its pulse. Without any hills or valleys to accentuate the action, Genisys indeed feels relentless, but never exciting, nor particularly thrilling. There isn’t a single action scene here that feels distinctive, memorable, or like a meaningful addition to the franchise. 

Instead, this movie is an entertainment machine on autopilot.

In concept, Genisys is actually a “side-quel” to the original films, meaning that it takes place in an alternate but connected reality (think: J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek [2009]). 

But where that side-quel by-and-large got the characters and joie de vivre right, Terminator Genisys misses most of its marks, and falls flat. The re-cast actors -- Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor and Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese -- aren’t bad in those familiar roles, but there is no force or momentum behind their performances, thanks to Alan Taylor’s listless, generic direction.

Arnold Schwarzenegger does his able best to carry the movie, but the supposedly humorous call-backs to T2, with his cyborg character practicing a smile, are generally dreadful, and largely unfunny.  

Even the emotional connection between his aging cyborg character, named Pops, and young Sarah Connor doesn’t feel as powerful as it should.

So this Terminator is, like its namesake, an infiltration unit of sorts.  It arrives in our theaters looking and sounding like the other films in the franchise, but underneath the exterior, it’s a stealth machine, all grinding gears and motors and calculated surfaces, but no soul.

In other words, Genisys is a crushing disappointment. Not because it’s authentically terrible (like Salvation), but because it can’t hold a candle to the other Terminator flicks.

“We’re here to stop the end of the world.”

In 2029, at the end of the war with the machines, resistance leader John Connor (Jason Clarke) must send soldier Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect his mother, young Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) from a Terminator, a relentless cyborg built for infiltration.

But as he steps into the time field, Reese sees John attacked by a stranger (Matt Smith), and as he travels through time, accesses a different time-line’s worth of memories. 

In this time-line, Judgment Day did not occur in 1997, but in 2017.  And Skynet is a Trojan Horse in a new app from Cyberdyne, called Genisys.

In 1984 Reese is rescued from a T-1000 by Sarah Connor, who has been raised since age nine by a Terminator she calls Pops (Arnold Schwarzenegger). 

Now, Reese, Connor and Pops must get to 2017, prevent the rise of Genisys, and battle its protector: John Connor, who has been reborn as a “phase-matter” Terminator.

“You’re nothing but a relic.”

Although many critics have complained about it, I believe the Terminator Genisys story actually possess a great deal of potential.  

A new time incursion, basically, has scrambled the official (and familiar) time-line, shuffling all the old familiar cards, and giving the audience a new hand, so-to-speak, to play. 

Characters who were once heroes are now villains.  Characters who were once protectors are now in need of protection, and so on.  It’s an explosion, basically of the 1984 and 1991 films, with a high unpredictability factor involved.

Some of the early scenes in the film -- particularly those that recreate Kyle’s landing in 1984 -- are a lot of fun for the fashion that they play on our familiarity with Cameron’s original film.  Some of the shots used in these sequences are identical to Cameron’s, but the precise characters details have changed in ways that are surprising.  

Now Kyle arrives in an alleyway only to be pursued by a T-1000, not a Los Angeles cop. Now Sarah says to him, Kyle's own immortal line: "Come with me if you want to live."  Now Kyle is the one who must play catch-up about the past, not Sarah.

But Terminator Genisys is so keen on playing up its (admittedly smart...) twists and turns that, at times, it doesn’t settle down enough and pursue a single good idea.

For example, here are two good -- even great -- ideas in the film, and neither is touched on for more than two minutes.

First, in the course of the action, the aging Pops (who possesses aging human tissue around his robotic shell…) injures his hand, and can’t get it to function exactly right.  

We see his hand shake as he loads bullets into a clip, and he attempts to right the error. And for  a moment, the film is actually about something: the ravages of age.  

An old injury has given Pops the equivalent of arthritis in that hand, and he must “adapt” so that it isn’t a weakness in combat.

The movie desperately wants the audience to love Pops, and feel his bond with Sarah. Indeed, much of the film's climax depends on us being moved by that father-daughter relationship.

One way to enhance that aspect of the characters' relationship would have been to feature three or four occasions when Pops' programming/body starts to fail, and he must use ingenuity, rather than brute strength, to stop his machine opponents.  

Had those moments occurred, we would have felt invested in Pops in a deeper way.  He would have had some flaw he was fighting against, namely rapid obsolescence.  Since many of us have been watching The Terminator films since 1984, that flaw would have reflected our own lives.  We too are aging.

But instead, the movie gives the idea of an aging, slowing-down Terminator precisely one scene, and then has Pops jumping into propeller blades, smashing into windshields and committing other dangerous (and circuit damaging…) behavior without harm or commentary.

The opportunity here would have been to depict how a Terminator -- an infiltration machine -- grapples with completion of its mission while being, essentially “old."

Instead, it’s just a great idea, tossed up momentarily, and then largely dispensed with.

Secondly, Skynet is played to great effect in the film by none other than Matt Smith…here billed as Matthew Smith.  

At one point, prior to his upload to the Cloud, Skynet notes that humans only give lip service to peace, and are committed, actually, to violence.  Now consider, Skynet is essentially an infant here, and so his meeting with Sarah and Kyle represents the A.I.'s first encounter with our species.

Now, imagine if -- all along -- it was this very experience – meeting Connor and Reese on their crusade of destruction -- that made Skynet murderous in the first place.  What if Skynet had no intention of launching a nuclear war, come upload, except for the fact that humans tried, on his birthday, to kill him in the crib?

Such a scenario would represent a surprising twist on the entire franchise.  Sarah and Kyle would be responsible for Judgment Day, not Skynet, who is simply defending himself. 

Again, this movie (barely) gives this idea lip-service, and Skynet’s comments about humanity is meant only as general, villainous disdain for our breed. But it could have been so much more.  The whole story -- the whole franchise story -- could have been about how, in a way, mankind’s downfall occurs because of aggressive efforts to avert that downfall. 

Terminator Genisys possesses a lot of great ideas, barely enunciated (like John Connor’s destiny, post-war…) but shunts them all asides for action scenes that have approximately zero impact.  

We get an extended battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, but it feels like a pale imitation of a confrontation in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). And a night-time helicopter chase around San Francisco seems so gravity free that it could be happening inside a cartoon.

Basically, the action scenes in the film lack not only any kind of punch, but any significant grounding in reality. As a result, it feels like every character in the film must be a terminator.  Kyle and Sarah keep surviving incident after incident with just mere scratches. At one point, they are hit -- naked, mind you -- by a speeding car on the freeway, and just need some stitches.  Similarly, the T-1000 (Lee Byun-hun) is dispatched with surprising ease, especially given how difficult Robert Patrick’s model was to kill in T2.

Overall the action is underwhelming, and the lack of real-world results for those involved in the chaos only worsens that problem. 

For a movie about the way our choices impact our future, Terminator Genisys boasts surprisingly little impact.

Long story short: Alan Taylor had hundreds of millions of dollars and 2015 era special effects technology at his disposal to make a good Terminator movie, and yet his new model possesses only a fraction of the thrills -- let alone emotional engagement -- of James Cameron’s low-budget 1984 film. 

That film accomplished so much more, and with so much less.

At one point in Terminator: Genisys, Sarah Connor hugs Pops, and he resists the emotional overture.  “It is a meaningless gesture. Why do you hold onto something you must let go?”

He may be right, at least in terms of this aging franchise. 

If the next two films (already assigned release dates in 2017 and 2018...) aren’t a marked improvement over Genisys, they may be but a meaningless gesture.

And thus it may be time for all its fans to let The Terminator go.

Movie Trailer: Terminator: Genisys (2015)

Terminator Genisys Trailer Lands

Terminator Week: Collectible of the Week: Terminator 2 Bio-Flesh Regenerator (Kenner; 1991)

The year 1991 brought a whole line of new Kenner toys -- including vehicles and action figures -- based on James Cameron’s blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day.   One of the neatest of these toys was the Bio-Flesh Regenerator Playset which offered kids the opportunity to “Mold and Destroy your own Terminator!”

As the box describes the set, “The Bio-Flesh Regenerator was created in the year 2030. This awesome unit is used to completely cover the metal skeleton of the TERMINATOR with real skin to make him totally undetectable to humans.”

The Bio-Flesh Regenerator “Molds Ten Figures,” “Comes with six battle weapons,” and “Skin actually comes off in Battles.”  The box also notes that the set includes: one playset, two Endoskeleton Action Figures, two Cans of Non-Toxic Bio-Flesh Refills, one Trim Knife, and six Weapons.”

“Create your own Terminator…then tear him apart in battle!”

Television and Cinema Verities: Terminator 2 (1991)

“I wasn’t prepared for the buzz about my body – how hard I’d pumped up and worked out.  All that seems to have overshadowed my acting to some degree. Sure it was tough to do, but not once did I think, Oh this is going to get me noticed. I did it because it was so much a part of Sarah’s evolved character and my work process. There’s a lot more to her than the “Woman with a Gun” subtext going on that’s been overlooked. Journalists seem eager to talk about the scene in which I condemn men. Sarah does that because she’s bitterly screwed up and meant to be unsympathetic. It’s not my personal polemic.”

- Linda Hamilton discusses her physical and emotional transformation in Terminator 2:Judgment Day, in Starburst Magazine, from 1992.  

Collectible of the Week: Terminator 2 Playset: Bio-Flesh Regenerator (Kenner; 1991)

The year 1991 brought a whole line of new Kenner toys -- including vehicles and action figures -- based on James Cameron’s blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day.   One of the neatest of these toys was the Bio-Flesh Regenerator Playset which offered kids the opportunity to “Mold and Destroy your own Terminator!”

As the box describes the set, “The Bio-Flesh Regenerator was created in the year 2030. This awesome unit is used to completely cover the metal skeleton of the TERMINATOR with real skin to make him totally undetectable to humans.”

The Bio-Flesh Regenerator “Molds Ten Figures,” “Comes with six battle weapons,” and “Skin actually comes off in Battles.”  The box also notes that the set includes: one playset, two Endoskeleton Action Figures, two Cans of Non-Toxic Bio-Flesh Refills, one Trim Knife, and six Weapons.”

“Create your own Terminator…then tear him apart in battle!”

I recently bought a Bio-Flesh Regenerator for Joel, still in its original box.  Amazingly, the flesh “powder” is still intact.  We tried using the regenerator, but the play set kept leaking, which disappointed Joel tremendously, as he wanted tear apart his fleshy terminator in battle.  Instead, the Terminator just kind of cameo out goopy.  Also, it should be noted that the endoskeletons are not pose-able and feature no articulated parts whatsoever, which is also a bit of a bummer.

I understand that the idea of the Bio-Flesh Regenerator was updated for Terminator: Salvation (2009), with a “Cyber Skin” playset.  I wonder if it worked any better…

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

"The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."

- Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Today brings us to the final installment of the summer-long Cameron Curriculum, this blog’s examination of all James Cameron’s movies from 1984 through 2009. The subject of today’s review is Terminator 2: Judgment Day, an immensely popular 1991 genre film that even twenty years later boasts a very positive reputation.

While never the lean, ruthless thrill machine that its blockbuster 1984 predecessor was, Terminator 2: Judgment Day boasts other delights.   For one thing, it continues  the story of the frequently imperiled Connors with stirring intensity and amazing pyrotechnics and stunts.  And -- perhaps more significantly -- it provides the genre one of its most amazing and influential villains: Robert Patrick as the T-1000, a shape-shifting, CGI-morphing leviathan.

I still vividly recall seeing this film theatrically in 1991 and being blown away not just by Patrick’s steady, focused performance, but also by the elaborate and confident special effects presentation of the character. 

Patrick carries his strength not merely in his narrow, athletic form (a far cry from the bulging, overly-muscular Schwarzenegger) but in his predatory, all-seeing eyes, which showcase enormous power and drive.

If Robert Patrick were not completely convincing in his role, this movie wouldn’t work, plain and simple. But he’s up to the task, and thus creates a classic villain. A true testament to his powerful presence is the fact that throughout the film, Arnold truly seems imperiled and outclassed by his enemy.  Given Arnold's size and weight advantage over Patrick, that's an astounding accomplishment.

In terms of mechanics, the T-1000 was created through the twin techniques of morphing and warping.  Morphing is described as the "seamless transition" between two images or shapes, and generally uses points in common (like the shape of a nose, or a mouth...) as the basis for the transition. 

The technique of warping occurs "when you take an image or series of images and alter them in some way for a desired effect. Digitally one can take a frown and turn it into a smile over time by stretching, squeezing, or moving the pixels or dots of an image or series of images. In T2 warps were used to distort the T-1000's body in scenes such as the one in which the T-1000 appears as part of the floor and slowly rises up as if being distorted into a new form via stretching."

In the early 1990s, these visual fx techniques became the de rigueur effects in genre films, appearing in such efforts as Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Sleepwalkers (1992). Although morphing can apparently be traced all the way back to the 1980s and ILM work in The Golden Child (1986) and Willow (1987), Terminator 2: Judgment Day represents, perhaps, the finest and most meticulous utilization of the pioneering technique, again placing Cameron at the vanguard of technical achievement.

Comparing The Terminator to Terminator 2, one can see that the sequel -- while still a serious film obsessed with fate and man's self-destructive tendencies -- is remarkably less bleak in tone.  As the quotation at the top of this review indicates, a sense of " hope" permeates the sequel. 

Notably, Cameron also mines the Terminator character (Arnold's, I mean) for laughs.  The T-800 (ed's note: thanks Grifter!) is the proverbial fish-out-of-water, unable to understand key aspects of the human equation, including how to smile, or why human beings cry.   This set-up fits in very well with Cameron's career-long obsession with the outsider; the person unfamiliar with a world/class system who steps in and attempts to navigate it, all while simultaneously pointing out its deficits.  The outsider can be social gadfly or observer, and reveal a new perspective about the film's dominant coalition (Ripley as the non-marine/non-Company exec in Aliens; Jack a Dawson lower-class passenger on the Titanic, etc.).

Although much of the  material involving Arnold's new Terminator character is indeed very amusing, particularly the actor's gloriously deadpan delivery of modern colloquialisms ("No Problemo," "Hasta la vista..."), some of this fish-out-of-water material feels very much like left-overs from Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

It's not so evident today, but at the time of Terminator 2's release, I was shocked at just how much the Terminator's journey towards humanity appears to mirror and reflect Lt. Data's (Brent Spiner) odyssey on that TV series, which ran from 1987 - 1994.  It's a very intriguing dynamic: Gene Roddenberry acknowledged that Data's spiritual parents were Questor (from The Questor Tapes) and Bishop in Cameron's Aliens (1986).  Here, turnabout is fair play and Data is certainly a spiritual predecessor to the T-101, only one assuredly less prone to bloody violence. 

Yet, interestingly, Star Trek: The Next Generation never rigorously established a thematic motivation behind Data's obsession with the human race, and becoming "human."  Audiences were left to infer that the character felt this ongoing fascination because his creator was human, or because he served with humans in Starfleet. Data wanted to more like those he was "with,"  in other words, a fact which raises the question: would he feel the same way for Klingons if they had built and/or found him? 

By contrast, in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-800's "learning" mechanism (his method of becoming more human) is utilized by Cameron with laser-like precision to transmit a very specific thematic point:  If a Terminator can "learn" the value of human life, than there's hope for us conflicted, self-destructive humans in that regard too. 

And once more, this lesson fits in with the film's real life historical context: 1991 was the year of the first Gulf War, the first televised war which saw the deployment of  precision or "surgical strikes" on enemy targets.  Underneath the impressive Defense Department briefings on the War -- replete with stunning camera imagery of bombs striking targets -- the truth was evident.  Our automated weapons had made a quantum leap forward in accuracy and destructive power since the Vietnam War Era.  The Terminator (and Sky Net too) thus did not seem so far out of reach, given the (automated) tech we saw deployed in Desert Storm.  Today, we are even further down that road with our automated Predator drones and the like.

In terms of theme and vision, Terminator 2 also appears obsessed with the idea of forging a positive future for the planet Earth.  Not necessarily for this generation, perhaps, but certainly for the children of the 1990s.  John Connor (Edward Furlong) is only ten years old in this film (which makes it set in 1994), and he very much becomes the focus of two distinctive parental figures: Sarah Connor, and the T-101.  Accordingly, Cameron frequently showcases images of children in the film, either fighting with toy guns, or seen at a playground that becomes -- terrifyingly -- the setting for a nuclear holocaust.

Ultimately more complex, if less driving and focused than The Terminator, T2 also derives significant energy from audience expectations; playing ably on our preconceived beliefs about the series.  And again, Cameron was on the vanguard of a movement in cinema here.  The 1990s represented the era of the great self-reflexive genre movie, from efforts such as John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness to Wes Craven's New Nightmare and the popular Scream saga.  Part of this Terminator sequel's appeal rests strongly in the creative fashion that it re-shuffles the cards of the Terminator deck to present new outcomes, and new twists and turns.  The film gently mocks the franchise and the cultural obsession with "political correctness," transforming the Terminator into a "kinder, gentler" model who only shoots out kneecaps.

"It's not everyday you find out that you're responsible for 3 billion deaths."

Facing defeat and destruction in the 21st century, SkyNet sends another Terminator into the past to destroy resistance leader John Connor. 

This time, however, the attacking machine is even more advanced than before: a T-1000 (Robert Patrick) made of "poly-mimetic" alloy and a machine that can assume the shape of any human being it physically "samples."

Fortunately, General John Connor manages to send a protector for his younger self through the time displacement equipment too, in this instance a re-programmed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger). 

The T-800 is programmed not only to defend Connor from the T-1000, but to obey the ten year old's (Furlong) every command.  This quality comes in handy when the T-1000 attempts to "acquire" Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), now incarcerated at the Pescadero mental hospital, and John orders the T-800 to mount a rescue operation.

After John, Sarah and the T-800 flee the sanitarium, they must make a decision about how they intend to stop "Judgment Day," the occasion in August of 1997 when a self-aware SkyNet precipitates a nuclear war.  Key to Sarah and John's decision-making process is Miles Dyson (Joe Morton), the man working at CyberDyne Systems who develops SkyNet in the first place. 

Sarah attempts to kill Dyson in cold blood to prevent the dark future from coming to fruition, but John and the Terminator stop her and propose a different course.  They will destroy all of Dyson's working, including the prototype chips (left over from the 1984 Terminator).

The mission is successful, but Dyson dies in the attempt.  Finally, the T-1000 re-acquires the Connors, and the T-800 must put his life on the line to stop an opponent of far greater strength and abilities.  At stake is the future of the human race itself.

I know now why you cry. But it's something I can never do.

Although overly-long and somewhat heavy-handed at times, Terminator 2 still works nimbly as a  self-reflexive thriller that dances a veritable ballet on the audience’s knowledge of the first film.

For instance, as in the first film, this sequel opens with two men appearing from the apocalyptic future. One is thin and lean, and very human-looking. The other is the pumped-up juggernaut Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Because of the earlier film, viewers are conditioned to expect Schwarzenegger as villain again, and look for the Michael Biehn-ish Robert Patrick to be a sympathetic hero. Of course, the opposite is true instead.  Our pre-conceived beliefs are used against us.

Secondly, Terminator 2 takes the unlikely but clever step of transforming Linda Hamilton’s character, Sarah Connor, into a Terminator herself. I’m not referring merely to her amped-up physique, either, but rather her very life philosophy.

Here, Sarah sets out to murder a man named Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) before he can complete SkyNet, the system that ultimately destroys mankind and births the terminators. In essence then, Sarah is adopting the approach of the machines she hates so much; killing a person BEFORE that person actually commits a crime. Just as SkyNet sent back a Terminator in 1984 to murder Sarah before she gave birth to John, so does Sarah endeavor to kill Dyson before he gives birth, in a very real sense, to SkyNet. 

The implication of this approach, of course, is that Sarah -- in preparing for the future -- has sacrificed the very thing worth fighting for, her humanity itself.  Terminator 2 very much concerns Sarah's loss of humanity, and her opportunity to re-discover it, in large parts due to her son, John.   As the movie begins, Sarah is lost and overcome with pain about the future that awaits mankind.  But John ultimately teaches Sarah that it is okay to hope again, that the future is "not set," and that there is "no fate but what we make."

This sequel to The Terminator is also fascinating for the manner in which it incorporates the dominant social critique that “these films” (meaning the films of Schwarzenegger and Cameron, I suppose) are “too violent.” In Terminator 2, young John makes Schwarzenneger’s emotionless machine promise not to kill any more humans, and the compromised Terminator spends the remainder of the film shooting up cops’ knee caps. This is quite funny, and it’s deliberately on point with what was happening in the culture of the nineties.  In other words, it's inventive, unconventional and politically-correct all at the same time.  It's not the eighties anymore, and Arnold has, in a sense, been domesticated. At least a little...

Like so many horror films of the 1990s, Terminator 2 also concern the American family and the modern changes in the shape of the American family. Sarah Connor comes to the conclusion that instead of providing her boy, John, a flesh-and-blood, human father figure, the Terminator played by Arnold is the sanest answer in an insane world. The Terminator won’t grow old, won’t leave, and will never hurt John. He will always be there for the boy, she realizes, and in vetting this idea, the movie states something important about men and machines.

When more and more American families were drifting towards divorce in the 1990s or outsourcing child care to nannies and day-cares, it’s not that odd that a woman should wish for the “ultimate nanny” – an unstoppable robot – to protect her son.  This also fits with the crisis in masculinity played out in films of the era, including Brian De Palma's Raising Cain (1992).  Men of the 1990s were supposed to be sensitive and masculine, strong and sympathetic, peaceful and -- in a single instant -- relentless protectors of the family unit.  Arnie's character dispenses with such contradictory input and sticks to his programming.  He has no conflict about what he should be, even if others impose on him their own set of rules.  Still, he manages to get the job done.

Although it spends relatively little time in the post-apocalyptic future compared to The Terminator, T2 is nonetheless haunted by the specter of nuclear war, another familiar Cameron obsession. 

In this case,  no less than five views of a playground are featured in the film.  The playground is seen at peace (before the war, in Sarah's dream), in flames (during the war), and ruined (after the war), behind the prowling, murderous Terminators. 

The pervasive playground imagery reminds viewers again and again what is at stake if humans take the unfortunate and unnecessary step of rendering this planet virtually uninhabitable: the innocent will suffer.  Children do not boast ideologies or political parties, and do not care about issues like nationalism.  They are collateral damage in any such  bloody conflict, and the prominent placement of the playground -- the domain of the child -- throughout the film makes this point abundantly plain.

At one point in the film, the T-800 also gazes upon two children fighting with toy guns and notes that it is in our nature to destroy ourselves.  The idea seems to be that as children grow and develop, these tendencies towards competition and aggression emerge fully, and move off the proverbial playground into matters of politics and international confrontation.  That may be the root of our problem.

It's interesting and also telling that Cameron has the T-800 make this observation about man in relation to children, and then later has Sarah Connor voice the conceit that males only know how to destroy, rather than to create life.  This seems a little like the pot calling the kettle black given Sarah's hardcore actions in the film, and yet one can't really deny the truth of the observation, either.  Women have simply not been afforded the reins of power as frequently as have men, historically-speaking, so guilt must fall upon the male of the species more heavily for our legacy of war and destruction.  It's an unpleasant truth, but a truth nonetheless.

But yet again, that sense of hope sneaks into the movie.  John Connor -- a male child -- proves able to curb the killing instincts of Sarah Connor and the T-800 here, paving the way for what ostensibly should be a positive future.  In almost all genre films, children universally represent the opportunity for a better future or better tomorrow, and T2: Judgment Day adheres to that trend.  It is possible to change, to correct our course, but sometimes it isn't this generation, but the next that sees that potential.

I'll now state the obvious in regards to the film: The action sequences here are truly exceptional. The film’s first major set-piece, involving a truck, a motor-bike and a motorcycle in motion, is a high-point, featuring stunning stunts and seamless cutting.

The finale, in a factory and lead works also proves highly dynamic, with the T-1000’s death scene seeming like an homage to Carpenter’s The Thing. 

But of course -- as we know from Cameron's other films -- the magic of the director's films occurs not just in the staging of the action, but in Cameron's capacity to make the action stirring.  He makes the action affect us on an immersing, emotional level.  Here, we have characters we truly come to care about (Sarah, John and the T-800) and so we feel heavily invested in the narrative's outcome.  I'm not ashamed to admit it, but when the T-800 sacrifices himself in the lead works, I always get a bit misty-eyed.   For John, he is losing a father and a best friend.  And the T-800 has finally learned what it means to be human, and in doing so come to the conclusion that self-sacrifice is necessary.  It's a great, even inspirational ending, if one sadly marred by the cheesy "thumbs up" gesture that accompanies the beloved character's demise.

And yet, we've seen such sentimental, perhaps even over-the-top moments throughout the Cameron Curriculum, right?  This is a director who clearly works from both the heart and the head, and who, as a direct consequence, has given us some of the most exciting and most emotional moments in modern genre cinema.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to see what he comes up with next...

Next Friday: We begin our look at The Matrix films!

Sci-Fi Wisdom of the Week

"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The terminator would never stop. It would never leave him, and it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."

- Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 

(film to be reviewed tomorrow, right here...)

No Fate But What You Make

Good news for Terminator fans (and if you're not one yet, this is a perfect opportunity to catch up with the series). From The Live Feed:

In a somewhat surprising move, Fox has picked up "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" for a full season.

The network has ordered the back nine episodes of the show's second season from Warner Bros., sources say.

TV REVIEW: Fringe: "Power Hungry"

The genre convention of an individual who can harness electricity (either accidentally or with an agenda), has informed many a TV series over the years. From Brimstone's "Executioner" and Reaper's "Charged" to Smallville's pilot back in 2001, audiences have seen this notion portrayed frequently. Even series regulars and recurring characters have sometimes been imbued with the ability to control electricity. Think of Brennan Mulwray on Mutant X, Gwen Raiden on Angel or Johnny B. on Misfits of Science.

This week, the new Fox series Fringe goes blandly where those other series have tread before in the underwhelming "Power Hungry." This story involves a down-on-his luck loser, James Meegar, who accidentally causes electrical equipment (like elevators...) to malfunction; sometimes with fatal results.

"Power Hungry" opens with a classic X-Files-style scenario and introduction. James (a disdained or discredited outsider/loser: an X-Files archetype) fails at a pitch to woo a lovely receptionist. His strange powers run amok commensurate with his embarrassment, and he accidentally causes an elevator to fall several stories...and crash. James alone survives the incident, which is then investigated by the Fringe science team as a "power surge of unknown origin."

All I can say (politely...) regarding this sequence is that -- in pacing, in characterization, in set-up and in visualization -- it is so dramatically reminiscent of an X-Files prologue you half-expect to hear Mark Snow's signature theme song at the end of it. The best part of the prologue? We get a cameo from last week's Man in Black, The "Observer." Nice continuity.

Again, it is not necessary to rag on Fringe for dredging up old, time-worn stories. That's what genre series do, to a large extent. It's not the story that matters; it's the handling of it, the vetting of it. And it is here, alas, that Fringe once more selects the rote, familiar path rather than something bold. fresh or, if you pardon the pun, energizing. Remember my list of Fringe cliches (already cemented after five weeks on the air)? Well, here's a refresher, applied to "Power Hungry."

1. We get another of Dr. Bishop's patented cutesie-poo insane moments. He minces around on a carpet and tries to shock Peter with a finger of static electricity. As usual Dr. Bishop is deadly serious when the script requires him to be; amusing when it doesn't. He has the most selective and "useful" brand of insanity ever!

2. The mystery of the week once more involves - as Dr. Bishop actually states this time - "a case" where he has "seen this" [human-created power surges] "before." Yep, he worked on a study years ago involving pigeons (!) that could track individual human electrical patterns. This is more than helpful, because the Deus Ex Machina of the week involves Bishop up-fitting pigeons to seek out and find fugitive James Meegar. Again, for a series that concerns fringe science, there is precious little scientific research actually going on here. Every single case seems to involve something Dr. Bishop already figured out in the 1970s and 1980s. This means that once Dr. Bishop figures out the problem of the week, he now merely references an old case and - voila - mystery solved. I can't fully express how dull and stupid this aspect of Fringe is. It might be more interesting if Fringe was actually set in the 1970s and 1980s, and concerned Dr. Bishop learned all this very interesting stuff in the first place.

3. The case is related to the myth-arc, or as Fringe terms it, "The Pattern." We know this is so, because the Observer is present at the elevator incident. And also because John Scott -- the dead agent played by Mark Valley -- was researching the case before he died. And that's another cliche too: John Scott shows up and brings up conflicted feelings in Olivia Dunham, our hero.

Hey! You know something? I just realized, I could write this show in my sleep. Anyone could. The ingredients are by now so repetitive, so familiar, so utterly predictable that the series appears to be running on automatic pilot. All I can say is: I hope this means J.J. Abrams is working on Star Trek...

The rote, robotic aspects of Fringe (meaning the story lines...) might be forgiven if the characters were as dynamic, as human, as individual and real as, say, Mulder and Scully. But they're not. I've warmed to Peter (as played by Joshua Jackson), but the screenplays continue to make this "genius" an absolute idiot. Why is he constantly asking how things are possible if he's such a genius? Fringe seriously needs to stop using this character as the "spur" for exposition, and endow him an intelligent, imaginative and curious side. As he is now, Peter just gets to quip a little, look pissed off, and set-up his Dad's scientific explanations. It's getting old. Real. Fast.

But by far, the series' greatest deficit is Anna Torv in the lead role. She projects no real humanity as Olivia Dunham. Take for instance, her final interaction in "Power Hungry" with James Meegar, the loser with the power to harness electricity. Poor James has just had mechanical implants drilled into his brain and has essentially been tortured. And this is after accidentally killing his boss, his mother, and his would-be girlfriend! James is being loaded in an ambulance when Olivia approaches him. Desperate, James begs her to tell him what the hell is going on; what is happening to him. She doesn't. Instead, she coldly explains she has "questions" for him. So...is Olivia a human being? Or was she built by Dr. Bishop too? As viewers, we need to know the answer to this question: does Olivia have any sympathy for James? For the fact that he was made a human guinea pig in the larger "Pattern?" Or does she not care a whit? Is Olivia so single-minded and obsessed with the case that she can no longer see the human picture?

One way or the other, as viewers we need to know what Olivia feels. I want to identify with her emotions and point of view, regardless of that point of view. I want her to be more than a cipher who each week "fronts" an investigation and then brings down the perp. My newest recommendation to the makers of Fringe is this: ditch Olivia Dunham (and Torv) and re-focus the series entirely on the Bishops, father and son. They are about a million times more interesting (cutesie-poo insanity and all...) than Olivia is.

Sometimes it is useful in a review to compare the approach of one series with another. Allow me do that in closing. The Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also had a "pattern" to follow (the Terminator feature films), yet the creators of that series have gone out of their way to intelligently and inventively expand that pattern....overturning viewer expectations and making the series wildly unpredictable. Fringe, which is so derivative of The X-Files, has by contrast settled irrevocably into bad cliches, superficial characters, and lazy, derivative stories. In my opinion, Fringe should be canceled now. Terminator should be saved.

CULT TV FLASHBACK #59: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)

All right, so technically, this cult "flashback" involves a TV series still being broadcast on network television.

However, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles did begin airing in early 2008 (ten months ago...) and the entire first season (nine hour-long episodes) is now available on DVD. Given that information, this seems like as good a time as any to highlight this exceptional series on the blog.

First, a prologue about my own critical prejudices. Honestly, I believed that a Terminator TV series was a rotten idea when I first heard about the concept. So I kept my head stuck firmly in the sand and never watched even a single episode of the first season when Fox aired it. Was. Not. Interested.

My objection to the premise was simple: I felt that translating the expansive and expensive Terminator film trilogy to weekly television would succeed only in making the concepts, characters and universe seem small....trivial...perhaps even cheesy.

How could a reasonably-budgeted TV series afford to create a believable "Judgement Day" (the occasion that Skynet -- a malevolent A.I -- nukes the human race, in Terminator lore)? How could it afford to depict the red-eyed Terminator cyborgs, sans human epidermis, in all their mechanical glory? Who could believably substitute for the iconic Arnold Schwarzenneger as the Terminator human "model"? Similarly, who could replace Linda Hamilton, the actress who had so successfully breathed life into Sarah Connor back in 1984? Furthermore, did we really need a third angsty young actor (following Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl) giving us another iteration of future hero, John Connor?

And really, wasn't a Terminator series just an opportunity to re-imagine the movies, and offer up a slew of contradictions and questions?

I understand now -- having watched the series -- that it was only my original thinking that was small; not the imagination of the series writers. Quite the opposite of what I had initially feared, the first nine episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles expand and develop the world of the Terminator franchise in an admirable, consistent (meaning faithful...) and hugely entertaining fashion. The series' techno-jargon is the jargon of the films (right down to exact quotes of dialogue and terminology), and the program's time-line actually seems to fit like a glove with at least the first two features. What a pleasant surprise...

To its credit, The Sarah Connor Chronicles extrapolates logically and imaginatively on the entire universe set down by James Cameron in the first two Terminator films (right down to mood and theme), and - to my shock and utter delight -- even confidently vets feature-film-quality action sequences.

By the time the series arrives at the final episode of the first season, "What He Beheld," the direction and cinematography is almost lyrical. It's not just a superb adaptation...it's superb television. Specifically, a climactic assault on a Terminator in his motel room (by FBI agents) is lensed in stylistic montage fashion, edited superbly and wittily to Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around."

During this motel assault, the camera inventively takes up a position at the bottom of an adjacent swimming pool. We hear numerous gunshots fired, then one wounded FBI trooper after another lands in the pool with great impact -- above us, spatially -- until the water slowly turns crimson, and is literally crowded with floating, sinking corpses. One corpse comes straight down like a stone...directly into the camera's eye. Throughout this battle, we never even see the Terminator fire a single shot; but the images of the massacre are sharp, impressionistic, and bold.

Honestly, I wanted to stand up and applaud at this formalistic climax, because -- at this moment of valediction -- the Terminator series had found its own unique voice and the confidence to shoot something in entirely unorthodox, even daring fashion (at least in terms of visualization and soundtrack).

But I'm getting so far ahead of myself here. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles occurs after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) but before Rise of the Machines (2003). It is the year 1999 and Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and her teenage son, John (Thomas Dekker) are still on the run -- wanted by the FBI -- after having destroyed Cyberdyne Systems and successfully rolled back Judgement Day.

Before long, however, additional murderous cyborgs from the future are hunting John (the future leader of the human resistance against the machine regime). Also sent back -- but to protect Connor, not kill him -- is a re-programmed female terminator, Cameron (Summer Glau). Pursued by a T-888 named Crowmartie (who humorously shows up at John's school as a substitute teacher...), Sarah, John and Cameron utilize time travel technology (constructed in the past by time traveling soldiers) and arriving in Los Angeles in 2007.

It's now just four years before the new date of Judgment Day: April 21, 2011...

The hunted are unaware that their hunter, Crowmartie -- though scattered in pieces -- has also made the journey to 2007 with them. In the first several episodes of the series, the Terminator reconstructs himself, acquires new human skin (in an utterly creepy sequence involving a bathtub filled with human blood...) and resumes his mission to terminate John. In other installments, FBI agent James Ellison -- his name is a nod to Harlan Ellison, who successfully sued for a credit on James Cameron's original Terminator -- continues his quest to bring "terrorist" Sarah Connor to justice, even as Sarah, Cameron and John join forces with Kyle Reese's brother, Derek (Brian Austin Green), a soldier from the future.

Throughout the first season, the resistance cell (John, Sarah, Cameron and Derek) struggles to avert the development of genocidal SkyNet, a device which here is depicted in its early, adolescent iterations; both as "The Turk," a primitive A.I. device programmed to win at chess; and later as ARTIE, a Los Angeles municipal traffic monitoring program.

This brief summary of the premise can't possibly do the series justice. The summary probably makes the show sound like an uninventive repeat of the Terminator films. In fact, that's far from the truth. For instance, in the series, canny developer Josh Friedman has adopted the notion of sending soldiers to the past (our present) and wildly expanded on it. Here, post-Judgement Day, John Connor sends back teams (or "cells") of soldiers, not just individuals; and he also sends them back to various time periods for specific missions. For instance, in the premiere episode, we learn that Connor deployed a team to the 1960s to begin construction of a time travel device that would be needed by Sarah in 1999. The mission of those men was not a familiar one (to protect John Connor from terminators); but rather to gather the necessary equipment and construct a machine. This is exactly what I meant by opening up the franchise premise: here the past and the co-exist live side-by-side in a more complete, thoughtful way than in the feature films; with teams of fighters (and Terminators too...) operating beneath the radar.

One thoroughly impressive episode, "Vick's Chip," reveals (often from a first-person P.O.V. perspective) how a terminator named Vick infiltrated human society and even married a human woman (an A.I. developer) to complete his task of insuring Sky Net's birth. Again, this is a somewhat different, but not contradictory, tack than the movies adopted. There, the terminators had that single purpose: kill John Connor. Here, the machines have a larger, more devastating agenda...ensuring their own survival at the cost of the human race.

But the reason that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles succeeds more often than it fails is that the characters are treated respectfully and honestly. First off, they speak in an intelligent vocabulary (and in a lexicon) entirely consistent with the feature films.

Secondly, none of the characters are unrepentant drama queens given to bouts of dramatic diarrhea (think: Grey's Anatomy). Thomas Dekker -- playing John Connor -- does a highly credible job of playing an average teenage boy thrust into an absolutely impossible and difficult situation, but nonetheless attempting to retain some aspects of normality. So often on television, teenage boys are depicted poorly (either as geniuses or as juvenile delinquents) and consequently derided by fans for their trespasses (think Wesley Crusher or Adric), yet there is nothing annoying, brooding, trite, hackneyed or cheesy about John. He's just a smart kid trying to survive. He's emotional when the moment warrants it; tough when he can be; forever human with all the foibles that come with that descriptor.

The addition of Cameron (Glau) to the franchise also permits Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles to wade into the underlying thematic material of the films. Cameron -- and her failure to understand humanity -- makes the series worth watching as something more than an "action" series. In particular, it is through Cameron's character that viewers can ask the question first asked by Gene Roddenberry's Mr. Spock a long time ago (and later by Mr. Data): what does it mean to be a human being?

Or, oppositely: What does it mean to be a machine? Terminator 2 delved deeply into this territory, but this series absolutely excels in its dedication to comparing human beings and robots, or artificial intelligence. What I found so remarkable about this is that it forges the contrast in an entirely unsentimental, intellectual fashion. In one episode, for instance, Cameron befriends a ballet dancer in hopes of getting close to the dancer's brother, a slippery fellow who may know where "The Turk" is. Cameron does so by feigning an interest in ballet; which is described by the dancer as "the hidden language of the soul."

When Cameron gets the information she requires following this mission of infiltration, she immediately pivots and leaves her ballet instructor behind. Worse, Cameron leaves the dancer and her brother to be immediately killed by Armenian goons. Cameron does not look back, and she voices no remorse. She does not comment, even, that she has left a mentor to die. The point is that Cameron is a machine...nothing more and nothing less...and so she can't relate to humans in terms of loyalty or friendship. And yet, later in the episode -- unobserved by anyone but a spying Derek -- Cameron mysteriously indulges in a moment of ballet, in that "hidden language of the soul."

See, things aren't so simple, are they? What's this all about? Why would a machine engage in dance? How can a machine unemotionally leave a human being to be killed one minute, then indulge in an entirely human act (dance) in another? These are the questions that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles raises. Fortunately, it tends not to offer easy answers or sentimentalize the characters. Cameron is beautiful and inquisitive, but she's not "cute." She's not heading off to the holodeck to play Sherlock Holmes any time soon, if you know what I mean (unless it helps her complete a mission).

I am also impressed with the series' careful handling of the James Ellison character (Richard T. Long). Let's face it, Ellison the FBI agent is that old, durable TV cliche: the hapless pursuer. You know the type: Barry Morse on The Fugitive; Richard Lynch on The Phoenix; Jack Colvin on The Incredible Hulk; Michael Cavanaugh on Starman, Lance LeGault on Werewolf.

These are the dedicated law enforcement officials (or journalists) who relentlessly dog the heroes of these classic series...but never, ever catch them. Oh, they get close to catching the protagonists every damn week...and then -- for some reason -- don't get them. Of course, this fact makes the pursuer look incompetent or...hapless since it happens again and again; hence my name for the archetype.

But Ellison resists classification as a hapless pursuer because his investigation actually develops logically over the course of the episodes; and he doesn't remain a single-minded pursuer, never open to new information. No, what separates Ellison from other hapless pursuers (and Terminators, for that matter), is that new evidence changes him as a person. His beliefs change; his allegiances change. By the end of the series, Ellison is not the same single-minded pursuer of Sarah Connor that he was at the start of the series. That's...refreshing.

Of all the characters on the program, I actually found Sarah Connor (Headey) the most difficult to warm up to. Perhaps this is because Sarah Connor is - authentically - not really a very warm person. In some sense, Sarah is more like the enemy she fights than she might care to admit. She is ruthlessly single-minded: dedicated to changing the future and altering her son's dark destiny. These qualities don't make for a warm and fuzzy character; but I can't claim it should be any other way. Of all the performances, I found Headey's sort of the cheesiest and most two-dimensional to begin with; but the actress grows dramatically in the role over the course of the first season. I accept her now as Sarah Connor, which, I believe, is a huge accomplishment. I no longer think Linda Hamilton = Sarah Connor, and that's a high compliment.

Frankly, I wasn't expecting to like this series much. I was very pleasantly surprised. Unlike some seasons of Lost, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles isn't mysterious merely for the sake of tricking the audience or keeping it off-balance. Unlike the badly-drifting re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, the infiltrating machines here act in a consistent fashion with a consistent plan. Furthermore, this series isn't just an elaborate game of Clue, reduced to guessing game about who's a machine and who's human. And, finally, unlike Fringe, this series' formula isn't so aggressively and rigidly repetitive that you want to kill yourself by the half-hour mark.

I didn't think it could be done, but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a movie-to-tv adaptation absolutely worth watching. This is a good show, folks. If you had the same reservations that I did -- and that I noted at the outset of this review -- you may want to check them at the door and give the series a try. This is one we don't want to lose.