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Intro:
I'm a huge fan of Terminator II: Judgement Day. It was an epic, visionary and devastating tale. It was full of mind-blowing temporal-paradoxes and terrifying robots. Representing the human-side of the tale, the movie's main character was Sarah Connor, who's violent frustration and noble maternal instinct create an amazing spectacle to behold. It pulls on your heart-strings in un-cheesy ways, while scaring the fuck out of you. Complaints: T3 was a travesty because it was built merely to be an action-blockbuster sequel to T2... I dimsiss it with mild contempt and I won't pick it apart here... Long after T3, I heard there was a Terminator TV show. I refused to watch it because I assumed it would be like every other movie-spinoff TV show: Poorly acted, poorly written, poorly-directed and lacking a budget. More importantly, I simply knew that nobody except James Cameron himself could really bring any part of that story to life in the way he did with T2. But I relented... I started watching season one. And I liked it. Praise: Primarily I liked it because the script is very good. The interplay between the characters in complex and believable, and I felt that I could relate to all the human characters. The second season is much better than the first. The first season was acceptable, but in the second season the story and the characters really start working. Great tension and lots of suspense, with some pretty good action too. The actors also all do an above average job. Thomas Dekker, who plays John Connor, does an amazing job. Lena Headey plays Sarah connor... obviously she doesn't even come close to Linda Hamilton's performance in T2, but she does a very good job. For a TV show, she's as good as you're gonna get. I thoroughly enjoy her performances. Complaints: I still have some complaints... there is too much time-travel in the show, and the characters are just killing Terminators left and right as if they were little bunnies. I'll admit that they are probably better at killing robots now that they've got some experience under their belts, but in the show the robots actually stop working after taking comparably little damage. Also, at times it really seems like some of the robots have feelings in the TV show... to me that's silly. That's one of the things that ruined T3, and it's a constant threat in the show. Mainly, it's just obvious that a TV show can never match up to the vision, terror and passion of James Cameron's masterpiece, T2... and so the show just isn't as good, generally. Reconciliation: Comic book stories like Batman and Spiderman are told and retold over and over again by different artists for different generations. There are many different takes on the same stories. That is how I view Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The makers of the show are taking teh Terminator story and presenting their own take on it. This is their version of a certain part of the longer story. Their style and methods don't compare with James Cameron's, and the cast is not as good (with the possible exception of Dekker)... but this is like Terminator in another universe... not James Cameron's universe, but a good one. The writers have good insight into the scary aspects of AI-killing-machines, as well as the feel and aesthetic of a post-apocalyptic robot-controlled world. I adore the Terminator story, and this show fills my need for more exploration into that world. I want to see John Connor become the rebel-general who he is allegedly destined to become. I hope that the show continues until SkyNet sets the nukes loose... thus formally invalidating the T3 movie and setting it up for the fourth movie... The Future: Christian Bale is going to play John Connor in the fourth Terminator movie, which gives me some hope that it won't suck. They also got rid of the director who helped ruin T3 (Jonathan Mostow). Just as important: Jonothan Nolan is helping to write the script. Jonothan Nolan worked on the scripts for the Dark Knight, The Prestige, and Memento... each of which were incredible films, and two of which starred Christian Bale. So I'm once again excited for the future of the Terminator franchise. There are more episodes in Season Two coming up, and maybe there'll even be a Season Three... and the movie in a few looong months... |
--FUCK_YEAH! THE_FUCKING_TERMINATOR!--------- |