Viewed: Theater

I saw the original Terminator and Terminator 2 in the theaters, but never saw Terminator 3, at all. T1 was pretty damn good — I loved it. T2 was good, too, but the ending was too much Hollywood sappy. I suspected T3 would be bad, based on the trailer, and never bothered with it.

I can’t put my finger on what pulled me into a theater to see T4. I think it had something to do with the concept of a terminator thinking it was human. Something about that idea pinged the “that might be cool” center of my brain. Sadly, Hollywood only teases that organ — it rarely delivers on the promise.

In general, the special effects in this movie are fantastic, A+ quality. But the writing — the plotting, the dialog, the thinking through — is B-movie drivel. It’s like the writers just figured the action and effects could carry the story and they didn’t need to put any real thought into how the story worked.

In Terminator 2, there was a scene where the terminator (Arnold) uses a Gatling gun on a bunch of police cars intending to scare off but not harm the humans around them. After the sustained firing, its internal computer shows “Casualties: 0.0” on its heads-up display. Now, how are casualties counted in decimal places? Could there be 2.3 casualties?

One or two “errors” like this in a movie is forgivable if the movie is otherwise decent, and the whole plot of the movie doesn’t rely on those errors. And all that error in T2 got from me was a little “heh” chuckle, and then I let it go. It was a passing, dismissible hiccup.

But T4 is chock full of errors like that, to the point that they make the whole movie stupid. For instance let’s take just one theme — fire:

[The following has spoilers.]

Several years after the nuclear devastation, L.A., (covered in rubble and ash; vacant except for two kids), still has little fires burning in the streets.

We’re told that the Hunter-Killers (essentially flying terminators) use infrared to find humans at night. A few minutes later, some main characters build a big fire out in the open for warmth.

One character sends another out to go collect “stuff to build a fire,” yet on screen at that moment, there are already three camp-sized fires burning within 30 feet of them.

And when they build the fire, for warmth, it isn’t warm enough and they need to snuggle up for body warmth.

The characters are crawling down a tunnel that gets hit with an explosion. The flames roar down the tunnel, fully engulfing the characters, but they get out of it not even singed.

And Skynet central, basically a big city run by the machines (humans are herded through the city for some never-mentioned purpose), is full of tall fire-chimneys/stacks, and random fireballs erupt from the ground. It looks like a 19th century industrial city more than a high-tech robot hub.

If any of the above items were just one or two throughout the movie, I could get over them. But these kinds of things just come rapid fire throughout the story. More (not fire themed):

While a group of humans are chatting inside an ancient gas station in the middle of the desert, they don’t hear the approach of a 50′-tall robot until its hands burst through the roof to collect them.

During a dogfight between two human-flown planes and a machine plane, John Conner was relaying specific fighting commands over a radio — with no visual connection to the action! “Take evasive action!” “Eject, eject!” This was worse than a backseat driver; imagine your spouse shouting driving directions at you over your cell phone, from 100 miles away.

A random [classic] terminator chassis (the robot under the human skin), watching over the herd of collected humans, wears a Rambo-style headband. (And I’m still wondering why the machines want living humans. The whole basis of the entire Terminator series is that the machines are trying to exterminate — TERMINATE — all human life.)

The terminator who thinks it is human has a living heart inside its robot frame. Why? And the human medics say he has a human brain. How can they tell through the steel cranium?

That human heart inside the terminator is mentioned one way or another five or six times throughout the story. Had they just mentioned the human heart once, and then ignored it the rest of the movie, it could be passed off as a minor silliness. But that human heart inside the terminator becomes the central plot point for the movie’s “climax.”

A bad terminator takes out the good terminator by punching him in that human heart. Then John Conner uses some random wiring in a factory power box to defibrillate that human heart, bringing the good terminator back to life (and full strength).

Then John Conner is stabbed in the heart. Oh no, he’s going to die!? No, of course not. The good terminator willingly donates his heart to Conner. So the docs do a heart transplant (from a robot to a human) at an open-air field hospital, next to a helicopter landing zone.

Oh God, there are just so many really stupid, stupid things in this movie. One stupid thing after another. By halfway through it, I was just shaking my head wondering if I was loosing brain cells watching this thing. I told myself, “Just ignore the story and plot and dialog. Just watch the special effects for cool stuff.” But by the end I was thinking, “I could have spent two hours huffing paint and had a better time with less brain damage.”

But then, after all that mental agony from watching this movie, I heard two different people, at different times, as we were standing from our seats and then walking out of the theater, comment, “That was pretty good.”

Apparently Hollywood has it right. Throw enough special effects and action at an audience, and many will totally ignore or miss the crap writing. To enjoy Terminator Salvation, leave your brain at home. <Insert a dumb joke about needing only a heart.>

Bullgrit

Viewed: DVD

This movie holds a special place in my heart. I asked for and received it as a birthday gift back in 2004 (it wasn’t easy to find), and that very night I watched it for the first time in 24 years. I’ve watched it about once a year since then, and it never fails to give me a happy by letting me remember the days when sword and sorcery fantasy was new to me. Watching it now brings back memories of first playing Basic Dungeons & Dragons with my friends, all of us around 13 years old, sitting at a kitchen table.

This was the first fantasy film I saw (on Showtime) after starting to play D&D in 1980. (It’s the first fantasy film I have any memory of.) It has a weak script, uninspired acting, cheap effects, etc., but it was like Dungeons & Dragons on TV! Heck, our D&D play was “written,” “performed,” and “described” by barely teenaged boys –- the movie’s quality matched our own game play quality.

(The official Dungeons & Dragons movie, released in 2000 is utter crap – it’s nothing like the D&D game.)

“Hawk the Slayer” is an awesome name for a sword-wielding fantasy hero, but there was nothing hawkish (or even bird related) about this main hero. And although he did kill several bad guys in battle during the movie (as did all the other characters), calling him a “slayer” is stretching the adjective.

Hawk the Slayer has a party of adventurers: the human hero, an elf, a dwarf, a giant (all of 6’3″), and a witch. It has a magic sword, a scary forest, a chest full of gold, and Jack Palance as the big bad guy. Just like in a D&D adventure, the hero team works together to stop the evil bad guy. Just like with our early D&D games, the plot is simple, the characters are simple (and poorly played), and not every character survives the story.

And although I could rag on this film mercilessly for its low quality in most all areas, it better represents what I like about sword and sorcery fantasy than many other films of its day, and of today. Lord of the Rings may be epic and fancy, but Hawk the Slayer is more D&Dish.

This is one of those movies that unless you have fond memories of it from your youth, I really don’t recommend watching it. Only warm nostalgia can make this enjoyable. But watching it makes me happy – in the same way that playing with old Matchbox cars and a GI Joe action figure can make me happy.

Bullgrit

Viewed: Theater

How can movie makers start out with such a fantastic character and potential for story, and end up with a movie that makes me say “blah”? I didn’t leave the theater hating this movie, but I did consider it a waste of ten bucks and two hours. Sadly, though, the more time I’ve had to think about this movie, and talk about it with friends, the “meh” is turning to “grrr.” (Perhaps apropos for the subject.)

Pretty early in this movie, I turned off my logic centers and just sort of sat there watching without thinking. The story didn’t make a lot of sense, and the writer and director seemed to understand this — they kept changing the plot to go in a different direction in an attempt to make something of the story. But all they did was confuse the story.

Although I’m a comic book fan — Wolverine used to be in my top three favorite super heroes of all time — I must admit that I don’t know much about Wolverine’s Weapon-X days. So my problems with this movie story has nothing to do with whether the writers and director follow the comic book canon or not. I don’t know the early background canon for this character.

But the movie plot just didn’t make sense. There’s like cross and double-cross and triple-cross and what the hell? But the re-crossings didn’t make sense. And some of the super powers exhibited by the various characters didn’t make sense.

After thinking about this movie, I’ve come to realize why some nonsense items in a movie get a pass from me but others bother me enough to shake me out of the movie.

When a nonsense item is just something that passes without repercussions, I can ignore it. For instance, in X-Men 2, when the cop shoots Wolverine in the head and Wolverine falls down unconscious until his healing factor can kick in and he recovers — my first thought at that situation was “He’s got an adamantium skull, the bullet shouldn’t have knocked him out. And the bullet definitely shouldn’t have penetrated his head and then been pushed back out.”

But when the nonsense item is integral to the whole plot of the movie, it drives me crazy and makes me hate the movie. For instance, when the doctors say that only an adamantium bullet can kill Wolverine, and then later it’s said that the bullet won’t kill him, and then they say that it will erase his memory, I’m left sitting there thinking, “Make up your mind on which stupid plot direction you’re going to take. Don’t make me accept three contradictory stupid things.”

So much of this movie was just action for action’s sake. The plot was so poorly thought out that it changed several times during the course of the events. All in all, this was a train wreck of a movie.

This prequel to the X-Men movies is like the prequels to the Star Wars movies: seemingly unrelated except by some names — they should have just named it “Wolverine” and left out the words in the title and the cameos by some characters that was a failed attempt to give it a lead to the X-Men series.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the hate is rising. Now, not only am I disappointed at wasting ten bucks and two hours, I’m getting mad at having supported the box office numbers for this thing.

Bullgrit

Viewed: DVD

Cowgrit wanted me to watch this with her, and in a deal that she’d watch Iron Man (her idea) with me this weekend, I agreed. I’m not a fan of musicals in general –- the only ones I’ve actually liked were Grease and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas -– and I fully expected to really not like Mamma Mia.

But I have to admit, this musical is very cute. I like some ABBA songs, and, although one or two of the singers in this movie are really not good singers (to be generous, and I won’t name names), the songs seem to fit the movie story very well. Cowgrit asked how the songs and play came about (which came first) because they meshed so well that it almost seemed the songs were specifically written for the play.

There are a couple of plot items that stood out to me. First, Donna (the mother) was a bit of a slut in her youth – she slept with three different men in a very short period of time (a week or two?) whom she never saw again afterwards, and she doesn’t know which one is the father of her daughter. Second, why did Sophie (the daughter) and Sky not go ahead and get married? There’s no reason why they can’t explore the world as husband and wife, and hell, they were standing in front of the priest after all the wedding preparation.

Overall, this movie musical is cute and enjoyable. Would I see it again, as I’m willing to watch Grease again anytime I stumble across it while surfing the TV channels? Probably not, unless maybe I happen to come across it during one of the particularly cute or moving ABBA numbers. The “Dancing Queen” song and dance is as cute as “Summer Nights” in Grease, and the “The Winner Takes It All” song was as moving as “I Will Always Love You” in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

There, I’ve managed to make references to every movie musical I’ve liked enough to remember anything about.

Bullgrit