Now that the Governator has been relinguished of his duties, it’s time for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get back to what he’s good at: trying badly to act. Does he even change his facial expression throughout the entirety of Commando? While no one cared in 1985, Arnie seems a little obsolete these days. Which is why he is making two huge missteps.

The first is that Arnie is set to return as the iconic Terminator. He appeared in the first three movies, his likeness turned up in Terminator: Salvation, and now according to 24 Frames his agents are shopping around a package for a fifth film that would include the king of meatheads. Extending a franchise beyond its welcome is nothing new in Hollywood, but what’s even more depressing is that it’s not being handed to some new talent to revitalise the spent story. No, instead Justin Lin is attached as director. Yes, the man between the moronic The Fast and the Furious sequels 3-5, the fifth (written by a 5-year old, it seems) due out this week. It will without doubt make a lot of money, and sadly that qualifies a hack director to take on what was once a great duo of films. Let’s just say there’s not much hope for the Terminated and the Untardy.

His other project is to appear as a comic-book superhero known as the Governator, developed as a comic and animated series by Marvel maestro Stan Lee. When the subject of a jokes gets in on it, you know it’s not going to be funny. Nor is it clever to develop a nickname into an entire series. Maybe Arnie does belong in politics after all.

From the “Don’t hold your breath” files comes this exciting little tidbit that combines outrageous hubris and ignorance all in one shiny little bundle and drops it on my front doorstep with a big ribbon wrapped around it.

McG was apparently disappointed with Terminator Salvation, and he wasn’t alone. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a bad movie, but it wasn’t a match for one or two, either.  But apparently, McG either didn’t get the memo or simply doesn’t CARE about the memo that the Terminator franchise is currently in mid-sale, or at the very least being attempted to be sold.

This of course means that McG would have to deal with a whole new set of owners and producers to get his fifth and sixth Terminators, and frankly, considering we don’t even know who’s interested, really, it’s not exactly a foregone conclusion.

So why is he planning these movies?  Killing time?  Sheer hubris and ignorance? Or does he know something we don’t?

There really, REALLY, were a lot of plot holes in Terminator: Salvation–my personal favorite is how Skynet couldn’t manage to make a better Terminator than the Sam Worthington model despite the fact that the Sam Worthington model existed BEFORE Skynet did.  And Sam Worthington, meanwhile, can see all those plot holes himself.  And he hates himself for them.  Check THIS out–oh, I cleaned it up a bit for general consumption, but I think you’ll still follow what’s being said:

“If there was a big 10 ton robot coming outside that gas station, surely we would f**kin’ hear it! And I missed that! So now I’m going to be a bit f**kin’ better when I’m going through my scripts because now I feel like an idiot for not turning to McG [and saying something].”

Of course, some would say that he was possibly encouraged to miss it, by a large paycheck or a role in a big movie, and now he’s coming back to work around the backlash.

But it’s entirely possible that he really DID miss all the plot holes, is actually now contrite and does plan to read his scripts better.  Either way, it’s a pretty entertaining picture that makes great news.

Let’s all take a moment to remember that McG is not some kind of visionary movie directing hero.  He’s a music video director that’s handled a couple action flicks, probably because they’re essentially the same thing, only one’s longer and doesn’t involve music near as much.

Viewed in that light, McG’s comments about the upcoming Terminator 5 movie have to be viewed with some skepticism and a few chuckles.

Sometimes people like to take time off, but I’m excited about the next installation of the story in the Terminator idea. So for me, it’s terribly exciting to get back out there and show a different face of that idea, and perhaps get out of the apocalyptic world into a contemporary world. And I think the audience is going to be very excited about our way in. And I haven’t talked to anybody yet about that–you’re the first one.

See what I mean?  Guy thinks he’s some kind of genius.  The worst part is, he’s wrong–”get out of the apocalyptic world”?  Dude, it’s TERMINATOR.  It’s all ABOUT an apocalyptic world.  What are you going to do, ignore that whole aspect of things?  Maybe show John Connor sitting down to tea with Skynet?  Perhaps a little rom-com action with the Terminatrix?

But it seems that his overall plan requires Terminator 5 to be…a prequel.

Man, now I’m REALLY worried.  At least Terminator 4 had a legion of explosions and whatnot going for it, but if McG’s looking to pull its teeth before it even gets started, then what’s the point?

Back when I was first getting started in movie review, the first company I managed to partner with–that is, convince that I was a sufficiently big deal to send movies to in order to review–was The Asylum.  And back in those long ago days, you could count on The Asylum to take chances and show an unusual amount of spine for an industry that so often imitates itself.

But that hasn’t been the case lately…The Asylum went the way of the so-called “mockbuster”, or as I was calling them for the longest time, Asylumized movies.  They’d take whatever was big in the theatres–or would likely be big–retool it a bit and release it.  For instance, ahead of the first Transformers movie, The Asylum released Transmorphers.  When A Stranger Calls became When A Killer Calls, and so on right down the line.  Some of them have been better than others, and some have just plain old been complete wastes of DVD plastic.

Now, we have The Terminators, released just around the same time as Terminator: Salvation.  How will it fare?  Let’s find out.

This time, The Terminators assumes a future in which the race of cyborgs (they really seem more like androids or possibly outright robots–admittedly it’s a fine distinction but a relevant one nonetheless) rises up against their human masters for little or no stated reason (what, did they just get sick of working for the man?) and ran amok in an orgy of bloody excess and violence.  All that’s left to take on the so-called TRs is a handful of humans that form the human resistance against the TR hordes.

On the one hand, this movie doesn’t have a bad storyline–it’s kind of interesting to watch relatively low-tech humans tackle these bulked-up androids with not that much better hardware than humans.  It has a certain sort of compelling action / sci-fi feel to it that keeps it interesting.  Plus, you’re hoping as you go through the movie that you’ll get a little more explanation as to just what the deuce is actually going on around here.

On the other hand, meanwhile, this is clearly a low-budget spectacular, and science fiction is NOT the job to do on a low budget.  The result will be that a lot of things that probably should have happened will not–for instance, a handful of human survivors fires a whole mess of ammo into a TR unit, the TR is clearly hit.  Clinking and pinging sounds, along with flashes of white denoting impact, are both clearly seen and heard.  Yet, somehow, the very next shot shows that the TR is clearly unscathed.  And I mean “unscathed”–when a Terminator took a round, there would be a hole in the synthetic skin, probably a little blood.  The TR, meanwhile, takes not even a scratch or a smudge of ash from the impact.

The worst of it is, it didn’t even NEED to be a Terminator hanger-on.  It does all right by itself.  Yeah, sure, it’s a low-budget sci-fi epic, which is one of the worst kinds, but it’s still a fairly compelling action piece.  If someone had called this “Rage of the Autodroids” or some such potboiler nightmare, it’d be no less valid.    No one needed to tie this in to the Terminator franchise.

The Terminators walks away with a six out of ten:  it does do surprisingly well for a low-budget sci-fi epic, but it definitely didn’t factor in its limitations beforehand.

Terminator Salvationis getting more promotion on the television air waves with the California Governor’s face on Roland Kickinger’s body. It’s a spoiler if you haven’t see the movie. Heck — Go see the movie, it’s good.

I am writing about this weeks box office standings; but I am thinking about the movie Up.  It’s a classic in my heart, already. I saw it today with five of my daughter’s friends, not one of her friends didn’t like it.  Clearly, Up is one of the best stories I have seen in the movie theaters in a long time.  Pixar sets a fine example of how to tell a visual story while placing the appropriate wit and humor here and there.

Back to the Weekly Box Office, Night at the Museum: Battle at the Smithsonian is the top movie because it’s a family movie and hits a broader audience.  I was surprised to see Terminator Salvation above Star Trek with Angels & Demons following close behind.

This weekend it’s Up all the way.  If you have seen the trailers for Up, they don’t do the film justice.

No one really sees a movie like Terminator: Salvation coming.

I know, that’s a baffler—who didn’t see this one coming? Hollywood’s frantic and desperate for cash in the worst economy since the seventies, quite possibly since the Great Depression itself. Of COURSE they’re going to exploit every single property they have in their arsenal in the insane search for More Money.

But where the unexpected part is when one of these insane cash grabs actually turns out to be good. That’s just unaccountable. Downright unfathomable, even.

In this installment, we’ve gone ahead to the not-too-distant future (nine years away, folks!) of 2018. A military installation called Skynet, an artificial intelligence designed to run the military has become self-aware and decided that humanity may be the greatest threat to its existence. So, with its control of the vast American nuclear arsenal, Skynet took care of the problem the only way it knew how—it enacted the Bush Doctrine and freed the hell out of us.

Now, a ragtag human resistance wages a continuous war against the machines, Skynet’s android soldiers, each a part of Skynet’s vast network. A series of time travel efforts and such have put us to the ultimate position where Skynet’s out to kill a thirteen year old boy before he can be sent back in time to have sex with a waitress in the 1980s so that she can give birth to the greatest military figure the world has ever known. Yeah, I know—it’s a bit confusing, but factor out the time travel and things work out a LOT better, trust me. To that end, Skynet’s out to kill both John Connor, the greatest military figure guy, and Kyle Reese, the thirteen year old time traveler and Connor’s daddy by using an android so sophisticated that it seems to leapfrog all of Skynet’s current advances (the prototype is the superior model? Huh?) that it manages to even keep its android nature a secret from itself.

I’m personally glad to see a Terminator that’s actually set in the future. Usually all we get to see of the future war is brief, and dark (like at night dark) before they jump back to present-day Los Angeles. Though looking at the movie leaves me with a whole lot of questions—why the massive technological disparity between Skynet’s forces and human forces, for one? Humans are basically using twentieth century tech whilst Skynet’s running around with superhuman vertol aircraft with hover capabilities, giant robotic soldiers easily four times the height of a Seven-Eleven, and plasma cannons. Meanwhile, humans have…um…machine guns? Unusually small grenade launchers? Nothing that wouldn’t have already been found in the Gulf War?

Wow…we SUCK. Seriously, didn’t anyone even think to grab one of those Terminators they shut down and try and at least figure out how they’re so clearly bulletproof?

And don’t even get me started on how Marcus Wright is the first significant Terminator infiltrator, but he’s clearly superior to even Skynet’s latest version despite the fact he was made BEFORE SKYNET ITSELF.

But when I ignore the massive array of downright impossibilities that this movie represents, and all the weird plot holes, what I get is a fun little action movie / popcorn romp that’s fairly watchable when taken by itself. This is downright tailor-made for summer movie season, and even though it represents a canon-wrecker on par with anything we’ve ever seen, it does at least prove entertaining.

I remember back in high-school, when my friends and I “discovered” cinema after watching Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. We were so besotted by Tarantino’s pop-culture sensibilities that we grasped onto his world by attempting to write sequels to Reservoir Dogs. Surprisingly, none were optioned by Hollywood studios. And since the internet reigned supreme since then, the concept of fanfiction has found and a home and even some acceptance. Every major film and book has spurred writing from people who want to keep that world alive, but of course generate status-quo-maintaining slop. Yet you can’t criticise it for its lack of innovation, as it doesn’t aspire to be anything beyond someone’s fantasy. You can however, criticise it when it’s given 150 million dollars and continues one of cinema’s most potent franchises, which is exactly what Terminator Salvation is.

The most defining aspect of fan-fiction is that it usually tries to generate new stories but without having to alter the characters or environment so much as to disrupt the feel of the source material. And this is done by having a new scenario but recreating the defining moments of the original. So on to McG’s vision of Terminator Salvation, the first Terminator film to be set in the future, during the war between men and machines. The film attempts to scare with a batch of new and unseen machines, from the skeletal robots we all know, to giant harvester robots and tiny water-based snake-like bots, and even motorbike robots (more on that later). But what strikes you about the film is how deeply unambitious it is, especially the third act. As our hero John Connor finds himself deep in Skynet territory, escaping a terminator factory, he finds himself being chased around. The scene almost completely recreates the climax of The Terminator, with Kyle Reese being chased around a robotics factory. The metal foot ascending the grated steps, the metal bar as a weapon, it all feels like we’ve seen it before. And there’s also a molten lava scene as well, just like in T2’s climax. There’s even a few references to Aliens in the set design and characters (spot the new Newt). READ ON »

James Cameron here talking about Avatar and working with Sam Worthington who stars in Terminator Salvation.  Cameron speaks well of Worthington and offers some insight in to his latest venture in filmmaking.