I don't think I can come up with very much to say about Terminator Salvation. It just wasn't very good. There are plenty of other reviews on the internet, and I don't think I have anything unique to add. I know some fans really enjoyed this one, and good for them. It's probably not quite as bad as Terminator 3, or at least it's bad in different ways. Honestly, I just had no idea what was going on most of the time.
Who was the main character? Why should I care? Where was the story going? These are all questions I cannot answer for much of the movie. This movie bears the mark of having gone through multiple writers. There are several competing plotlines, and only one of them is really compelling: The attempt of John Connor to rescue Kyle Reese from Skynet.
Rather than go over what went wrong, I'll just talk about what I liked. Christian Bale was actually good as John Connor, and with a more coherent script might have brought a lot to the part. He had the kind of beaten down, survivalist feel about him that is perfect for someone who's gone through Judgment Day. He got into Batman growling a little too much, and I never saw any of that spark that made him supposedly a hero/messiah figure for humanity, but that's the fault of the script, not Bale.
Anton Yelchin is the star of 2009. He was hilarious as Chekov in Star Trek and is great here as Kyle Reese. He had Michael Biehn's mannerisms down perfectly, and his character stole every scene he was in. There's something innately sympathetic about his appearance, and any emotion at all in the film came from him. I would have loved for him to be the main character, but again, the script just wasn't good enough.
Arnold's cameo in the film's admittedly exciting third act was a gigantic crowd pleaser, and the effects work was phenomenal. (In fact, the effects in the whole movie were some of the best I'd seen in a long, long time. Nothing looked fake or manufactured in a studio or a computer. On the other hand, it also looked less burned out and bleak then I would except post apocalyptic LA to look, but that's the least of the movie's problems.) Anyway, I got a big grin on my face when Arnold showed up, and it almost made the film's faults worth it. A fantastic little moment.
Except it didn't. The "main character," Marcus Wright is boring, and while I won't give away the twist about his character--you'll have to watch the trailer for that--let's just say it fails to be the brilliant high minded sci-fi conundrum it was clearly supposed to be. Way too much time is spent on this character, and it simply doesn't work. There's no strong villian, Skynet's motives are bizarre and illogical, and plenty of characters do nothing.
But again, those things I liked, I really did like. Good visual effects are taken for granted these days, but what Stan Winston did here for his final movie is nothing short of amazing. The terminators never looked so good.
So that's a positive look at was a very dissapointing and jumbled movie. I could just as easily tear into all the problems, but it's not worth it. There were good elements in this movie, and with a little more finesse and care they might have really worked. McG is just not the guy to handle this material. It's not his fault, he's just not qualified.
I'm in the camp that thinks James Cameron's Terminator movies are pretty close to brilliant. Terminator 2 is easily one of my top ten movies, in part, I'm sure, because I remember the pop culture phenomenon it was in the summer of 1991. As an adult I love the movie far more than I ever did as a kid. Every scene is like a trip to film school. I could watch that movie over and over and over again and learn something new about film making every time. In the Terminator Salvation hype I've actually been watching my T2 DVD quite a bit, and am always finding new ways to appreciate that movie.
The Terminator story really ended there. Everything that has come after is really just fan fiction. It has flashes of quality, but really it's just somebody else trying to put their own spin on something that will always belong to someone else.
It's a shame Salvation wasn't great, but really, what did we expect?
This article, by the former Moriarty of aintitcool.com fame, is a nice companion to what I wrote yesterday on Episode I. Much less emotional, but with a lot of the same basic points. It's a good look at what prequels and reboots have done to Hollywood. Check it out.
Ten years ago today Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released after sixteen years of pent up expectations. That’s right. For ten years now we’ve known about Jar-Jar Binks, Jake Lloyd’s acting, and midichlorians. It boggles the mind.
Believe it or not, nerds were once generally happy, optimistic people who enjoyed nothing more than getting together with friends and talking about video games or Star Wars. Ten years after TPM, geekdom is still reeling from the shock. Nowadays, nerds are bitter, resentful individuals, angry at the world and its broken promises.
For the record, I was never one of those radicals who detested the prequels. I still think Episode III is quite good (parts of it, anyway), and when each of the new movies came out, I was one of those strange people who sat there defending the obvious problems and missteps. It’s probably taken about ten years to get a little perspective. When I look back now, and see the effect the prequels have had on my perception of Star Wars as a whole, it’s hard not to be a little upset.
There’s a whole generation growing up now that doesn’t understand how cool Star Wars was before the prequels, and that’s a shame. Words will never do justice to the feeling of painting a painstakingly glued model of the Millennium Falcon or playing the Imperial March on a badly recorded cassette tape. Everyone has their own memories of Star Wars, and it’s impossible to say how much of the prequel bashing is built on nostalgia. But overexposure is never a good thing, and what used to be three fantastic movies is now a bloated franchise. How can a lightsaber duel be exciting when you can flip on Cartoon Network and watch fifty Jedi fighting ten times a week?
To borrow an old phrase, “The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out in the universe.” (By the way, in, say, 1996 to quote Star Wars was kinda cool even among non-nerds. Try quoting it today and you’re bound to get some eye rolls.)
If nothing else, though, Phantom Menace gave us those wonderful first few months of 1999, when everything Star Wars was cool again. I don’t plan on being alive for the Second Coming (though, Odin willing, I might yet live to see Ragnarok) so the weeks and months leading up May 19, 1999 might just be the biggest moment of nationwide excitement I’ll ever encounter. Star Wars was everywhere. On the news, on the radio, and especially at my late 90s hang out of choice, Taco Bell.
I was a junior in high school then, and practically every day after school my friends and I would drive off to Taco Bell to sample the delicacies on their menu. Nothing was off limits. The radio blared Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Britney Spears without distinction, and during commercials the announcers would even mention how excited they were for Episode I. I always made sure to purchase some of the fine Star Wars collectibles available at Taco Bell. Even outside the sacred walls of the Bell, you couldn't take a step without running into something Star Wars related. If the marketing blitz was any indication of quality, then we were in for a treat indeed.
We bought our tickets for the midnight show a week in advance, and then bought tickets for a few shows after that, just to make sure we got to see it as many times as possible. I don’t think I could sleep for at least two days leading up to the big event—every free moment was spent watching the original movies, talking about the original movies, or watching the trailers for the new movie. After waiting my whole life, the long awaited prequels were finally here, and I was almost choking on my own excitement by the time we got to go to the theater.
Even in my small town, the line was already wrapped around the building two hours before midnight, with people dressed in a number of Star Wars costumes. The quality ran the gamut from movie replica to barely recognizable. My friends and I didn’t go that far, but we brought piles of snack food to enjoy while in line.
At one point a panicked girl came up to me asking if I’d seen her boyfriend. “He’s dressed like Boba Fett!” she said. It took some searching, but I managed to comb the crowd and find a man in a high quality Boba Fett costume. When I brought him back to the fretting woman, she looked at him, then back at me. Then she frowned. “That’s not my boyfriend!” she yelled. I’m not sure if she ever found her boyfriend. Perhaps she just went home with the other Boba Fett guy. I’ve got to believe that one crazy Star Wars fan dressed as Boba Fett would have a lot in common with any other.
Finally, at around 11:30, they let us into the theater. The lights went down and the trailers began (I think they were for Disney’s Tarzan and Titan A.E.). At long last, at around 12:15, the familiar Star Wars logo appeared onscreen, the fanfare began, and the audience burst into applause.
Then we watched the movie. We all know what that was like. After that much hype, anything would have been disappointing, but the movie we ended up getting, looking back on it ten years later, was more disappointing than most.
But it’s the build up I’ll remember. We all really believed a movie could be that good. That Episode I would be every bit as good as the original movies, that it would make all of us feel the way those did, that it would be just as big a part of our lives. With the other prequels, we already knew that the prospects were grim. For those few great months in 1999, on the other hand, Star Wars was really on its way back. Lightsabers were going to crackle onscreen again! We were going to see Obi-Wan Kenobi and space battles and maybe even the Clone Wars!
It’s hard to say what the future will hold, but I’d place a safe bet that never again will so many people be so genuinely excited for something. It was the last time that many people loved Star Wars that much, and God did we love it.
So the movie didn’t live up to the hype. In a weird way, the hype lived up to the hype. Whenever I happen to catch Phantom Menace on Spike TV these days (or, in incredibly rare instances, put on the DVD) I don’t always see the bad acting, empty characters, overblown use of CGI and overall un-Star Wars like tone.
Sometimes I see the 2am trips to Taco Bell to get tacos and a stack of Star Wars pogs, Star Wars Pepsi cans, and the line of excited fans wrapped around the theater. I hear the long ago arguments with great friends over whether Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back is the better movie and remember how we all crowded around the N64 to play Shadows of the Empire or Rouge Squadron. I see the faces of friends I haven’t seen in ten years, lit up with the excitement of the moment, ready to kick off our last summer of high school and loving every second of it.
Sometimes, that’s good enough.
Doesn’t make up for Jake Lloyd’s acting though. Or Jar-Jar.
Lost is one of those shows that intimidates me as an aspiring writer. I don't think I'm a bad writer by any means, but when I see something that is so well plotted, so intricate, and so entertaining week after week, I can't help but get a little nervous. I'm just not sure I'd ever be able to do something like that.
But who knows. Part of the appeal of Lost is the myth that it's all perfectly constructed and planned out (much the way George Lucas insists on claiming Star Wars was all perfectly constructed and planned out). It's part of what makes the show fun. What we don't see, though, is the team of writers banging their head against the wall every week, tossing idea after idea into the trash, and generally despairing of ever coming up with a satisfying moment. The pressure these guys are under must be enormous.
Writing, thank God, is not like landing a plane. You get a lot of chances to get it right, and in the case of TV writing, a lot of colleagues to bounce ideas off of. What seems brilliant now came from a lot of false starts, dead ends, and bad ideas. One of the real tricks in writing is knowing when you're done, when you've finally got something as good as you can make it. This is where the Lost writers excel. Writing is a process--just because we're lucky enough to see the end result doesn't mean the road to get us there wasn't bumpy, chaotic, and filled with mediocre ideas.
I was actually going to post my thoughts on this season's finale, but the internet is already awash with plenty of opinions and theories. This article goes into more depth than I would ever have time to. Suffice to say, the series will once again keep me interested all through the summer.
I tried to get into Star Trek before, I really did. Episodes of The Next Generation were reasonably entertaining, but all the subsequent series bored me to tears. Even the much heralded Wrath of Khan, while not a bad movie, never really made its way onto my list of favorite films. The only Star Trek that I universally enjoyed was the original series, with its Twilight Zone-like philosophizing and cheesy production values. Now I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, but every one I have seen is both intelligent and fun. Seems like since the 60s Star Trek has been heavy on intelligent and light on fun.
No more. Even if you don’t know a thing about the Star Trek franchise, J.J. Abrams’ new version of Trek is phenomenal. Going back to the original crew was a masterstroke. Everyone and their mother know who Kirk and Spock are, and I would wager just about everyone who has heard of them has a fondness for the characters, even if they’ve never seen a single episode of Trek. These characters, and their relationships, are what made Star Trek such a phenomenon in the first place. But thanks to Abrams, these interesting characters are actually doing interesting things for the first time in 40 years, and that makes all the difference.
This is one of those edge of your seat summer blockbusters to be sure. There are show-stopping action sequences starting from the very first scene. I especially enjoyed the opening and closing space battles and the entire sequence with the drill on Vulcan. This Star Trek actually uses the setting to give the movie some excitement. Back in the days of the original series it always felt a little like a show about pirates in space. The Enterprise was the boat, and each week there was an exotic port of call. Until the day space travel becomes commonplace (and we’re all hoping it will) the idea of being on one should be a fun adventure, not a bunch of boring procedural nonsense.
But exciting as the movie is, it doesn’t forget that people love Star Trek because of the characters. Even if you’ve never seen an episode of the show, I don’t know how you won’t get a tiny bit emotional when an aged Spock tells a young and inexperienced Kirk, “I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” The relationship between Kirk and Spock is just so powerful, so much a part of our culture, that it means something to everyone, even if they don’t realize it. The new Star Trek chooses to make that relationship its central focus, and that is where I felt it was most successful. I’m not a “Trekker” so I feel it would be outside my authority to talk about the friendship between Kirk and Spock, but for me its always been a moving and brilliantly understated part of the Star Trek mythos.
I can’t say enough good things about the movie. The performances were all great, especially the new Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (although I don’t know why Winona Ryder was here) and having Leonard Nimoy there to play the older Spock really helped ground the movie in the established Star Trek universe. Eric Bana is good as the villain, Nero, but I wish we would have gotten a little more time with him. The music was appropriate, if not incredibly memorable, though the return of the original theme over the credits is a wonderful touch. There were lots of great little callbacks to the original series (and, I’m told, many of the other series) and moments of real emotion. This is Star Trek the way it was always supposed to be: Character driven space adventure.
You know it’s a good movie when you just can’t think of anything else but seeing it again. Unless something comes along to really surprise me, there’s no doubt this will be the movie of the summer. This movie felt a little like Batman Begins: Great in its own right, but laying the groundwork for something even better. I’m going to have high expectations for the sequel, but it really has the potential to expand on what this movie set up and be something even greater. I can’t wait.
I always considered myself a Star Wars fan instead of a Star Trek fan, but this movie might have changed my mind, at least for the present. It’s baffling that a Star Wars prequel, depicting the seemingly awesome story of Anakin Skywalker’s transformation to Darth Vader, can be so lifeless, while a Star Trek “prequel”, depicting the seemingly mundane story of Kirk and Spock pre-original Star Trek, can be so phenomenal. Just one of the mysteries of the universe, I suppose.
(NOTE: I’ve been having a blast lately watching original series Star Trek on youtube. If anyone is interested in seeing where it all began, that’s a great place to start!)
It’s taken a few days to sink in, but I’m really going to miss Scrubs. If the ratings are any indication, the show hasn’t been popular at all for a very long time, and I’ll admit it probably lasted a season or two longer than it should have. Even at its worst, though, it was a great example of a show that perfectly blends real drama with the most off the wall sort of comedy.
These days every show and movie tries to shoe-horn drama into their comedy, and personally I’ve been Apatow-ed out for a while now. I don’t always want a happy moral at the end of my story. I’m not big on characters that spent the previous ninety minutes making fart jokes suddenly trying to tell me that all I need is love.
So why did Scrubs work for me? The drama never felt forced, and the characters always felt real. People think of drama and comedy as two separate genres, but the best entertainment understands that life is as silly as it is sad as it is sweet. Sometimes Scrubs got very silly, but the silliness was almost always confined to fantasies and flashbacks. Sure, the Janitor was insane (and who would have it any other way?) but even that crazy character had a shade of humanity that made it work.
The best shows, the best movies, the best art in general comes from a real place. If it’s ridiculous, if it’s depressing, if it’s horrifying, if it comes from reality it makes sense. Even my other favorite Bill Lawrence show (and possibly my favorite show ever behind The Simpsons) Clone High, understood that zaniness is better when you’ve got solid characters. Compare any random episode of Clone High to any random episode of Family Guy, and I challenge anyone to argue that the greater attention to character and plot on Clone High don’t help it come out ahead.
When a great show leaves, you miss the characters like you miss your friends. Scrubs was a great show, no question about it. Any doubters need only take a look at the last five minutes of the finale. Not since the last episode of The Wonder Years have I gotten quite as emotional at the end of a TV show.
This is why people get into the entertainment industry—in the off chance that maybe someday, something they create will mean something, will make other people smile, even if it’s just for a little while. So thanks Bill Lawrence and Scrubs for making me smile, and, more importantly, for always reminding me why I’m here in LA, where things can seem pointless all too easily. But if it’s possible to create something that can mean to someone else what Scrubs has meant to me, well, then it's worth every bit of the trouble.
UPDATE (5/15/09): So it looks like Scrubs will probably be back again next year. Quite a shame to end the show so well and then just drag its corpse around for who knows how much longer, but that's the way the industry works. "Always leave them wanting more" has been replaced with "Make them beg you to stop."
Against my better judgment, I went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine last night, and I have to admit I didn't think it was nearly as bad as some have claimed. Is it good? No, of course not. Is it better than X-Men 3 and Spider Man 3? By a long shot.
What surprised me about this movie, in fact, was just how close it came to being good. You could tell that there was a pretty serious, Wolverine and Sabertooth story buried under too many characters and a terribly executed plot. I was expecting a movie with no redeeming values at all--literally, I said when I sat down to watch it that "I fully expect this to end up in my bottom ten of all time." And yet there was ALMOST a movie here. Liev Schreiber was a perfect choice for Sabertooth, and I've always thought Jackman was perfect for Wolverine. In a better story, these two could have been absolutely stunning together.
I even liked the inclusion of Gambit here, though it remains a crime against nature that Josh Holloway never played the character. (He was supposed to play Gambit in X3, but supposedly turned it down because it was too close to Sawyer. Which makes sense.) Taylor Kitsch does an okay job with the part, and other than the missing New Orleans accent I liked the take on the character, but I really wish he would have been in either the whole movie as Wolvie's sidekick or else just in a small cameo. As it is it feels like the filmmakers never really knew what to do with him, and his presense seems unjustified. Gambit makes a great sidekick to Wolverine, but they needed to set him up a lot better than they did.
The worst part is unfortunately the story. The original script was probably a simple revenge plot, which could have worked just fine. Instead we get unecessary plot twists, an overabundance of cameos, and general incoherence. A particular "shocking revelation" at the start of the 3rd act had most people in my theater rolling their eyes, and pretty much killed any motivation Wolverine may have had to begin with. There are great moments, particuarly the opening credits and almost any scene with Wolverine and Sabertooth, but on the whole there's nothing driving the movie forward, only a series of action sequences held together by a common theme: Wolverine fighting.
The X-Men have been my favorite superheroes (behind Batman, obviously) since I was in 5th grade, and so here's what the 11 year old kid in me got from the movie: Wolverine vs. Gambit, Wolverine vs. The Blob, Wolverine vs. Sabertooth, Wolverine vs. Deadpool, and Wolverine vs. a helicopter. All the rest is just window dressing. I'm not saying Wolverine doesn't deserve a good movie (as far as I'm concerned, there hasn't been a really good X-Men movie yet) but I had some fun with this movie despite its flaws. Nothing has ever come close to capturing the spirit of the X-Men the way the 90s cartoon series did, and most likely nothing ever will. It's just too big a universe for a 120 minute movie.
So let's be clear. Wolverine isn't very good. The story is a mess, the effects are rushed, and the characters have no motivation. It's just not nearly so bad as people have said. There are plenty of worse movies out there (right now I'm watching Van Helsing on TV). I think it's far better than something like the 2 hour nap that was Transformers, for example, and yet that garbage seems to have gotten a free pass, while this garbage is torn apart. Ah well, there's no justice in the world.
Wolverine would probably make a great video game. There's some great fights and a skeleton of a plot. They should just recut the movie as a series of cut scenes in some kind of excellent video game (actually, I hear the game based on the movie is suprisingly good). Otherwise we're just left with a very forgettable, but not terrible, movie.
