Synopsis: John Connor, prophesized leader of the human resistance, must rise to his role in the war against the machines.
Two years ago, I got wind of a continuation of the Terminator franchise. After the dismal third outing, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the last Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, the studios wanted to edge in some buffer time before launching another ‘Terminator’ effort. Then I got news that they had hired McG to direct the next Terminator installment. This was the guy who not only brought to the world the fluffy “Charlie’s Angels” but its much lauded sequel, “Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle” as well. The ‘best man’ they could find to helm one of Hollywood’s most revered movie franchise is the guy whose resumes’ two biggest highlights were critically panned TV-film adaptations? I honestly hoped that he would be able to break out from that mould and do some justice to the Terminator storyline as James Cameron (“Terminator” and “Terminator 2”) had lay out but I had an inkling that this would not be the case.
And I hate it when I’m right.
There is a term that people use when they foresee something bad happening. It is called a “recipe for disaster”. And I wonder what went through the studio executive’s head when he/she decided that it would be a marvelous idea to couple director McG and screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris in the same movie. These were the two authors responsible for both “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” and “Catwoman”. Needless to say, “Terminator Salvation” is devoid of any decent dialogue and any semblance of a plot for that matter. The scriptwriting is shoddy and the resulting film is peppered with gaping loopholes.
“Terminator Salvation” is a classic example of handing the next movie of a well-conceived franchise to a lesser director. James Cameron (“Terminator” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”) laid the foundation of a world at war with machines in the first two movies but he also gave us characters for us to invest our emotions in. McG populated his movie with flimsy paper caricatures that we could care less for. There is negligible characterization and even less direction on his part. The film meanders between the two main leads (Bale and Worthington) but never decides whose story to tell.
Christian Bale has solidified his acting talent over the course of his movies (“The Dark Knight” and “Prestige”) but here in “Salvation”, all he seems to be given to do is frown, spout juvenile dialogue, run and shoot. This goes for Bryce Dallas Howard (“The Village” and “The Lady in the Water”) too as she never gets any screen time to truly shine. The only actor here given any room to act is Sam Worthington (“The Great Raid” and “Hart’s War”) but his role is lost to the audience because no one bothered to develop his character’s story deeper.
And the action sequences are disjointed at best. You will encounter explosions and scenes with no lead-ins and a plethora of redundant shots. It is as if the director took a grand look at all the shots he made and cobbled together all the ones he thought was ‘cool’, and THEN tried to weave a story between them. Fans from the franchise will wonder why McG decided to recreate the ironworks fight scene from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” in this movie. Even the initial battle scenes felt like it was just “Black Hawk Down” in the year 2018. Which is fine but with McG’s cursory characterization, his film ends up looking like Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbour”. A lot of flash and bang, but hardly any substance.
The moral of the story is a simple one. If you want to reboot/re-launch/re-envision an already lucrative franchise, do not choose a director whose name belongs on a MacDonalds’ menu. New inductees to the Terminator world would probably enjoy this movie but true fans would much rather watch reruns of “Terminator 2” for the umpteenth time.
A tagline from the trailer of “Terminator Salvation” has John Connor lamenting, “This is not the future my mother warned me about…”
Hell, this movie is definitely not the future that James Cameron told me about.
I’m constantly amazed at some of the work that can be done nowadays with a personal computer and a little ingenuity. “Green Lantern” is one of the comic book properties that has eluded a film treatment. Our everyman, Jaron Pitts has cobbled together clips from no less than 25 movies to produce this little gem of a fan trailer. Enjoy!
Oh, and any studio execs at Warner Bros watching this, better hire Nathan Fillion…
Mark your Calendars for July 28th 2009 as Watchmen Blu-Ray Discs and DVD will be released!
Here are the specifications for both the DVD and the Blu-Ray. Just the fact that there is 25 minutes worth of extra footage should be worth the price alone. The only drawback is that they did not include the “Tales of the Black Freighter” animated movie with this set which would have to be bought separately. Who knows, they might release an “Supremely Penultimate Edition” in a couple of months what includes everything but this is good enough for me!
-Director’s Cut (additional 25 min.) — Newly included footage contains more Rorschach and a scene of Hollis Mason’s death.
-Warner Bros. Maximum Movie Mode [With Watchmen Director Zack Snyder as our host, we’ll dive deep into the intricacies of the Watchmen.]
-Director walk-ons with scene analysis
-Picture-in-picture video from the cast and crew
-Side-by-side comparisons of the graphic novel and the film
-Timeline comparisons of our world events to those from Watchmen
-Photo galleries of production stills and storyboards
-The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics [Learn how the
subversive, thematically complex, award winning comic that changed
literature, inspired analytical debate, and won countless fans, was created]
-Real Superheroes, Real Vigilantes [Explores the fascination and psychology behind real-world vigilantes and where that behavior crosses over into actually donning the hood and behaving as superheroes.]
-Mechanics: Technologies of a Fantastic World [The creators of Watchmen had a great understanding of engineering and science, allowing for plausible mechanics in their characters tools and the world itself. This featurette will guide the viewer through the filmmakers process of turning these technologies into cinematic reality]
This is for all the fans of J.J. Abrams recent Star Trek reboot! Wonder why we love the story so much? Maybe because we’ve seen it all before, in a galaxy far far away… *SPOILER ALERT!* Do not proceed if you haven’t watched “Star Trek” yet!
With live action renditions of classic Anime gaining more recognition, it was just a matter of time they decided to turn our beloved ‘Blood The Last Vampire” into a live action movie. The story is about a 400 year-old Vampire named Saya who works for the American government to hunt and capture other Vampires during their occupation of Japan after WWII. Basically, it has Jeon Ji Hyun (”My Sassy Girl” and “Il Mare”) dressed as a 16 year-old Japanese high school girl, running around with a pointy sword, wrecking all havoc while defying the laws of gravity in some over the top martial arts action. Need I say more?
Below are the Japanese teaser posters and the newly release American theatrical poster!
Right off the bat, I’d like to say that THIS film is the most fun I had at the movie theater all year (so far). Granted, there will probably be some “Trekkies” who will form a lynch mob at the director’s front gate but at the bottom line, J.J. Abrams produced one of the most entertaining Trek films to date, considering the dearth of recent films from the franchise, it was mammoth task.
To be terribly honest, I was never a fan of all things J.J. Abrams. I was never compelled to catch a full episode of “Alias”, I loved the first season of “LOST” but that admiration dwindled quickly at the constant meandering plotlines of the rest of the series. “Mission Impossible III” was just an over stretched 30-minute episode. “Cloverfield”, which was produced by the man, felt like a gimmicky “Blair Witch Project” with a bigger budget. But with this reboot of “Star Trek”, I believe that Abrams has finally found a franchise that benefits from his style of direction.
By no means is JJ Abrams a bad director. There are a handful of blockbuster ‘auteurs’ that harbour little respect for the franchise they have been bestowed upon and have even less story sense (you all know who I’m talking about…) For Star Trek, Abrams managed to retain a huge chunk of the essence of what was the original series (TOS) as well as forge new ground in terms of Star Trek culture, all the while appealing to a wider audience than any of the other films ever could.
The special effects will be some of the best to ever grace any Science Fiction (Sci-fi) film, let alone a ‘Trek’ one. But its real stand out quality is subtly hidden in the spot-on casting of the movie. Every single cast member embodies the look and qualities of each of their characters perfectly. It also helps a bit that Zachary Quinto (“Heroes”) is a dead ringer for the Human/Vulcan cross-breed, Spock. And Chris Pine (“Just My Luck” and “Smokin’ Aces”) has an air of cheeky arrogance that gives his portrayal of James T. Kirk that much needed edge to set him aside from the “Kirk” that immortalized William Shatner (“Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, “Boston Legal”).
What Abrams and Co. has done was to hire actors who could play the ‘everyman’. John Cho (“Harold & Kumar go to White Castle”) lends his trademark uneasy grin to the role of helmsman Hikaru Sulu and Karl Urban (“Lord of the Rings” and “Doom”) brings his rugged charm to the role of Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy. These are the kind of actors that you could actually relate to and have a beer with in a bar on a Friday night, not the larger than life counterparts of yester year.
The main disadvantage to any ensemble film is the time that is allowed to flesh out each and every character. While “Star Trek” does try its best to allot adequate screen time to each of its’ crew members, at the end of the movie, you would find yourself wanting to know more about these inhabitants of the Starship Enterprise. Which I feel is a tip of the hat to the creators’ as we just cannot get enough of these characters. Even with their limited screen time, the director was able to infuse little nuances and weave a cohesive plot that elevates each character to more than just cardboard cutouts that populate the scenery.
Roberto Orci (“Transformers”) and Alex Kurtzman (“Mission Impossible III”) churned out a script (along with Abrams) that works on multiple levels. With this re-envisioning, I believe that they will be able to not only appease the fans but impress the average movie-goer as well. Previously, watching a “Trek” movie meant having a fellow fan of Trek (ie. “Trekkie”) explain to you the inner workings of Trek mythology to even remotely understand anything from the movie’s plot. But here, the writers chiseled 40 years of Trek mythos into bite sized chunks for the 21st Century audience which could have been both a good and a bad thing but at the end of the day, it worked.
The “Star Trek” franchise has always been for me a more ‘diplomatic’ version of “Star Wars”, where most of any movie would be to feature h eavily alien races and species discussing and debating over the morals and implications of their would-be actions, constantly questioning the role of ‘humanity’ in our known Universe.
Now, the movie is definitely not your father’s “Star Trek”. This “Trek” film dispenses with all the earlier trappings that started to bog down an initially intriguing concept and to inject a bit more high adventure and mystery. This film literally chooses to boldly go where no “Star Trek” film has gone before…
Two years ago, I got wind of a continuation of the Terminator franchise. After the dismal third outing, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the last Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, the studios wanted to edge in some buffer time before launching another ‘Terminator’ effort. Then I got news that they had hired McG to direct the next Terminator installment. This was the guy who not only brought to the world the fluffy “Charlie’s Angels” but its much lauded sequel, “Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle” as well. The ‘best man’ they could find to helm one of Hollywood’s most revered movie franchise is the guy whose resumes’ two biggest highlights were critically panned TV-film adaptations? I honestly hoped that he would be able to break out from that mould and do some justice to the Terminator storyline as James Cameron (“Terminator” and “Terminator 2”) had lay out but I had an inkling that this would not be the case. 
