The Terminator Films thus far...

THE TERMINATOR
So the first terminator film really isn’t all that and a bag of chips. It’s good, no doubt about that. But it also comes of as VERY dated and harmless. Everyone now knows the story. A woman is suddenly attacked by a huge bulking man (aaaanuuuld!) only to discover it’s a robot sent from the future to kill her, so that way her unborn child won’t be able to grow up and lead the resistance against said robots. All fine by me, I saw the back to the future movies; I get the whole paradox time travel thing. However, one huge pet peeve I have with this plot is how she gets pregnant. Her “future” son john Conner sends back his right hand man to not only protect her from Arnold, I mean the killing robot, but ALSO to impregnate her with….himself. Wait, so THAT means that events in the past are inherently reality only because someone from the future changes it. So if john Connor never sends his bff back in time, he’d never be born. Um, kinda sketchy, but I’ll take it.
Something else you’ll notice this time around is the special effects, or lack thereof. There really isn’t all that much action. And you only see the “endoskeleton” once, and it looks REALLY stop-motion 80’s cheesy. Not bad per say, in the same way when atrayu is running away from the nothing in the never-ending story, it doesn’t look BAD, just that nostalgic 80’s style cheesy. To be frank, I’m surprised the film spawned a sequel at all. Once again it’s not bad, just mediocre, and doesn’t really scream out for there to be a sequel at all.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY
Holy crap on a stick, this movie rocks. It’s actually pretty amazing how this film is just under two decades old (which actually dates me, cause I remember this thing coming out while I was in elementary school, and my parents not letting me go cause it was rated R) Turns out James Cameron had made the first Terminator film as his own person film school, a crash course in what to do and what not to do in filmmaking. Now, with all that first hand knowledge under his belt, he created an EPIC action entertainment the likes of which had never been seen before.

Throwing out a lot of the sci-fi time warp mumbo jumbo, here he wisely focus’ in on the action and special effects. CGI was used for the first time convincingly, and not sparingly, to create images and action that couldn’t even be planned a mere two years before. Things like a man driving a motorcycle off a building and jumping from it onto a helicopter flying by, then taking over the helicopter and chasing a truck down a highway, sending things blowing up left and right. It’s spectacle on the grandest scale. It’s the Ben hur battleship sequence of it’s time. However that wasn’t even the finally. Also, what he mastered is his ability to create interesting characters. Sarah Conner was a whinny scream queen the first time around. Here he gives her a LOT of angst and motivation, and her pre teen son John actually has a lot to deal with as well. It’s this seriously dysfunctional family dynamic that propels the film from one action set piece to another. Also, within the action sequences themselves, more story is revealed. A scene later on has the mother son duo accompanied by the Terminator sent back to protect the boy breaking into sky net with the actual creator of the artificial intelligence that will later on down the road decimate the world. As doors are blown away and people go flying, the sky net guy is revealing important plot points as he discovers them.
A rip Roaring action film that stands the test of time thanks to well drawn characters and state of the art specials effects and stunts, James Cameron has yet to live this one down, even Titanic, a bigger film in every way to this one, couldn’t match the action this one has.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES
Wow, ok. This one is a VERY mixed bag. It’s almost as if there are two very separate films in here fighting for power. On one hand you have a very good continuation of the story from part 2. True, it does get a little bogged down with the hows and why’s of time travel and what it can do, but is smart enough to avoid any huge plot holes. You also have all the characters you want to see back in action. The other film, and one the one I didn’t like at all, was the childish goofy humor comedy shtick that kept creeping up throughout. John Conner at one point finds himself locked in a kennel at the dog pound, only for his high school sweet heart to randomly show up and let him out. Wait, hu? They try and play up the whole “destiny” angle with the girls dad being the general in charge and her fiancé also playing into the action, but it’s all portrayed as a lame Dawson’s creek style melodrama. Also, much like how Freddy Krueger started off as scary, but over the course of several films became a one line spewing joke, the terminator here does nothing but wise crack. For an android with no emotions, he sure has a sense of humor. No longer is Arnold intimidating or scary, he’s just funny. Sure some of the jokes are a bit funny, but why on earth would you have such immature banter in an R rated adult action film? I can see why that humor has a place in other pg-13 rated summer popcorn films, but this movie is a hard R, what adult will laugh at this stuff? Also the “terminatrix” was just a gawd awful idea from top to bottom. Once again jokes are the main course as she takes over the body of a Victoria secrets model and steals a car form a cougar (demi moore, not the actual animal). Really? If you want the sex appeal factor, give john Conner and his new girlfriend a sex scene. That at least would be conceivable, even if still inappropriate. The villain here is just lame and embarrassing.
The film comes back to life at the very end however, with an amazingly bleak ending. Seriously, the last shot of the film is the earth, from space, and nuclear bombs going off all over the surface. It also firmly sets up john Conners role in the resistance quite well. It’s as if the people making it suddenly god a brain. Unfortunately they got it just long enough to save the last 15 minutes. So other than those precious few moments and a handful of other well staged but empty action scenes, and you have a very forgettable action flick that wouldn’t even be remembered today had it not be sandwiched into a very successful and famous franchise.