Today's Review: Terminator Genisys

Told you I'd be back with another review?

Terminator Genisys - recensie

And Arnold's back, too. Again. Wish he wouldn't be, considering the disappointing result. Once again a franchise is mucked up by messing with its time line. The producers obviously tok a hint from the financial success (brief as it was) from the recent Star Trek reboot. I hated it, because it created a new time line that hardly acknowledges the old which was running for nigh 45 years, basically saying 'anything goes' from here on out. I would have preferred it if they had shown more loyalty to the existing time line and its fanbase. Surprisingly, that is the route taken for Terminator Genisys, with equally lackluster results. In this movie's case, the new time line does nothing but acknowledge the old, resulting in a total nostalgia fest that rehashes characters, events and particularly oneliners from the previous installments. It offers nothing new, and only shows you the limits of the Terminator franchise if there is a mandate in place to incorporate the ingredients of its past successes, which was put in place because the previous installment, Terminator Salvation, offered too much novelty for many. I appreciated that movie for it. There's no innovation or novelty in Genisys, whereas in Trek's case by comparison, there was a little too much for my taste, so much so that it just didn't feel like Trek anymore. This movie undeniably feels like a Terminator movie, but still leaves a lot to be desired.

Maybe it's a sign that starting new time lines to retcon existing franchises just is a bad idea in general. How about creating new franchises instead, rather than desperately clinging to nostalgia? That's probably too revolutionary an idea for Hollywood's taste...

Today's Triple News: zombies, terminators and mockingjays

A short summary of recent news by my hand follows. As usual.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156816/pride_and_prejudice_and_zombies_leeft_weer

Glad to see this offbeat project in the land of the living (dead) once more. We could use more weird movies like these. The premise is overly simple: take a classic piece of literature and spice things up with a rather unusual element few people would commonly associate with it, and you got yourself a movie with an intriguing title that begs a visit in theaters to see what exactly must be made of this. Worked well enough with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by the same author, which proved a rollercoaster thrill ride of an action flick that actually connected the history with the horror in a fashion that made sense from a narrative viewpoint - i.e., vampires controlling the Southern slave trade to guarantee an unlimited amount of human blood while keeping the human economy rolling - but didn't pretend to be anything but utter fiction. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies seems determined to repeat that notion in very much the same way, perhaps carrying the risk of feeling repetitive. Nor does the title alliterate as delightfully as its own follow-up Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. However, I say go for it, and so does the creative team behind it, including producer Natalie Portman, who wouldn't give up on it. So far the casting seems to be doing well, especially if they do manage to acquire Jack Huston for a part. With his particular character from Boardwalk Empire on his repertoire, a deteriorated undead look is right up his alley.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156838/schwarzenegger_onthult_titel_nieuwe_terminator

Strange title. I assume the deliberate misspelling refers to a plot point which has yet to be revealed, so I won't bitch and moan about that until I can either confirm or disprove that assumption for myself, even though I am a bit of a grammar nazi. It's not a title funky enough to get me geared up for this film though. The cast does a better job at that. I can't get over the irony that Sarah and John Connor are being played by Emilia and Jason Clarke respectively, while there is no direct relationship between them. I also appreciate the trick of fate that Emilia is now playing Sarah Connor, while her Game of Thrones co-star Lena Headey assumed that mantle before on the unfortunately short lived TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I'm quite pleased with this assembled cast overall, except for Schwarzenegger. Personally I felt Terminator Salvation was a breath of fresh air because it shied away from using him, making it feel different and less predictable than its predecessors, which started to feel repetitive. Same goes for the aforementioned TV show, which also established convincing Terminators can be played by a diverse range of actors of various shapes, sizes, races, ages and creeds. Schwarzenegger in my mind is the cliché the franchise would do well to avoid. However, considering the series' cancellation and Salvation's lackluster worldwide box office takes, public opinion might be against me in this matter. I guess most people just want to see the Austrian Oak kick ass in their Terminator films, despite the much wider story possibilities available.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/156834/nieuwe_posters_the_hunger_games_mockingjay

Mockingjay's marketing strategy seems to follow Catching Fire's closely. The routine of a logo poster first, character posters second, is strictly sustained for this second sequel to The Hunger Games. No doubt a 'Katniss on fire in logo' poster will follow soon. This time, there's more than a trio of character posters though. So far, six different one-sheets have been unearthed in the viral marketing campaign, and more are likely to follow. I guess there's just much more characters, and much more fine actors portraying them, to go around this time. I reckon the studio wants to capitalize on the loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman by attributing a poster of his own to his character: dead actors mean public interest in their final movies after all, like it or not. Simultaneously, if you hooked a great and well respected actress for a part you want to convey that in your promotional campaign too, and so Julianne Moore also gets her own poster, which makes for the debut of her character in the public mind. Interestingly enough, so far all of these character posters seem to revolve around supporting characters, while the movie's main trio - the subject of Catching Fire's comparable character one-sheets - is nowhere in sight as of yet. Considering how much the teenage demographic loves - or how much the studio execs think it loves - the love triangle that is going on between Katniss, Peeta and Gale, I bet their place in the spotlight is simply reserved for later. So these character posters showcasing much of the fine supporting cast are basically a treat to people who love movies and good acting, while the franchise's fanbase with its various Team Gales and Team Peetas will no doubt soon get to drool over posters depicting their young heroes. By which I don't mean to imply Jennifer Lawrence can't act. I meant to imply Josh Hutcherson's and especially Liam Hemsworth's acting capabilities leave a lot to be desired. So now I might need to prepare myself from vicious attacks by Hunger Games fangirls. Thankfully I happen to know few of those read this blog of mine.

Today's News: He'll be back, both on the movies and on TV

Posted this late last night on MS:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/152233/terminator_komt_terug_op_tv

He'll be back. He keeps saying it far and beyond the point that it has become a oneliner cliché, but he keeps making good on his promise. Even more than we might like. I wish The Sarah Connor Chronicles would come back too, since it ended on quite a cliffhanger (which should be considered a crime against humanity!) and any series that stars both Summer Glau and Lena Headey (and killer cyborgs) is well worth watching. Unfortunately that's not gonna happen and we'll be treated to another Terminator TV-series as well as a new movie, which share the same narrative universe (unlike The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator Salvation which both followed their own timelines). Ever since Marvel created such a successful multimedia empire where everything is connected to everything, even though you might forget it until the studio reminds you of that fact, all the other studios join in on the bandwagon to try their luck with a similar set-up. It comes as no surprise that the Terminator franchise follows this dominant pattern. Whether it will pay off remains to be seen. In fact, the same can be said for Marvel, since they have only debuted a single TV-show so far despite plans for many more, and it hasn't even run a full season yet so there hasn't been that much intertextuality other than the occasional cameo appearance and throwaway line referring to other characters and places from every conceivable corner of the Marvel Universe. The concept of forging interrelated TV and movies is largely new in the way it is done presently (i.e., letting a film franchise and a TV-series exist alongside one another simultaneously instead of one following the other) so even though Marvel seems to reap the benefits, it's really still too early to tell whether it actually works. But neither the Hollywood film industry nor the television networks are known for their patience.

And what could this seminal moment in the original 1984 Terminator movie from which this TV-series is intended to spring be? No specific hints have been dropped so it's all open to speculation. Personally I haven't got a clue. The sex scene maybe? Unlikely, as the new series isn't likely to be picked up by HBO. Maybe it's the scene where Kyle Reese gets killed, in which case he isn't this time around. You never know. Or maybe the Terminator succeeds in his mission and does manage to kill Sarah Connor, resulting in another alternate timeline. Doesn't sound so farfetched. Another thing: will Arnold Schwarzenegger be involved? He's said to join the cast of the new movie, but you'd think the TV medium is sort of "beneath" him (despite the changed social perceptions regarding quality television series). Either way, I hope he's not joining the fun. For some reason people can't separate the Austrian Oak from this franchise, even though The Sarah Connor Chronicles - and to a lesser extent, Terminator Salvation - revealed you can have compelling story telling in the Terminator universe (no matter which timeline) without the signature character that started it all. It's about time we were reminded of that fact again, since the Terminator franchise has so much more to offer than that guy going around chasing and killing people again. I'm okay with the Terminator being back, but let's stop dragging poor Arnold into this all the time.

Today's News: Schwarzenegger will be back... again. And again.

I had this to report on Schwarzenegger's busy upcoming schedule on MovieScene:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/147930/schwarzenegger_terug_voor_expendables_3_en_terminator_5

Now I'm not afraid to say I like Schwarzenegger and his action movies. Some of them I consider to be among the finest action flicks in existence (first and foremost Terminator 2: Judgment Day). And judging from his performance in the recent Expendables 2 and The Last Stand, he can still pull off solid action scenes without making you stop and think 'this guy is too old to be doing this'. In fact, you don't have to think about it, since his scripts are doing that for you in many a moment of good-humoured, tongue-in-cheek hilarity. However, nobody can continue doing this forever without the risk of losing credibility. Especially a guy who was once one of the top-grossing action stars who now seems to do little else than recycle past glories. Schwarzenegger appears to be going that way, considering all the sequels he has in store for us. The Expendables 3 I'm least worried about, since that franchise is basically built around action movie veterans getting together to blow shit up in acknowledgment of a long career of doing just that, so Schwarzenegger fits in perfectly with the rest of them. He did it to great comedic effect in the second Expendables movie, after teasing us with a glorified cameo appearance in its predecessor. The Expendables 3 can merrily have him continue down that path of rampant death and destruction with the other warmongering musclemen that have done the same for many many years. After all, why bother spending old age sitting at home playing Scrabble when you can go out and engage in massive shootouts, maiming people and blowing up tanks and helicopters?

Terminator 5 is a more delicate matter in my mind. After all, the various powers-that-be (or in most cases, have been, considering the rights to the franchise have passed through many production companies' clutches up till this point) have carefully and increasingly moved away from Schwarzenegger's involvement in this cyborg-infested universe. Terminator Salvation briefly included a cameo of the Austrian Oak's digitalized head - the Governator himself only had to give his permission for the use of his facial features, instead of actually doing any physical stuff  - but none of the other Terminators in that film had much to do with Schwarzenegger. Furthermore, the TV-series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles ignored Schwarzenegger entirely, and revealed that in the story of this world, anyone's face and body can be applied over a metal endoskeleton for Skynet's nefarious genocidal purposes. Sure, there were quite a few muscular dudes straight out of the gym who could be viewed as obvious stand-ins for that iconic but inaffordable (and unavailable) ultimate Terminator, but there were also quite a number of people who played similar cyborgs, and one of them - Summer Glau, naturally! - pulled off a totally un-Schwarzeneggerish killing machine with more complexity and emotional subtlety than we ever witnessed in any of the actual films, without losing anything when taking up arms and brutally shooting people up. Something Glau managed to do compellingly for 31 episodes (that show should have run longer, especially considering the major cliffhanger that now ends the show and leaves us in the dark). Plus, she looked better in her undies than Schwarzenegger did in his bare butt.

So basically, we started getting used to the idea of a Schwarzenegger-less Terminator universe, a world where Ahnuld is not actually needed to make for interesting 'man vs. machine' drama and visually appealing future battles. The Terminator franchise has proven to do just fine on its own without repeatedly reintroducing the daddy of all Terminators, and thus having the original Terminator return might hurt that notion. I for one have little interest in seeing more of Arnold in T5, since T3 already felt like an uninspired rehash of T2, were it not for its surprisingly dark ending. If Terminator 5 follows Terminator Salvation, which seems likely - though we should never take this for granted, considering the constant messing with the timeline that, for one thing, allowed TSCC to follow T2 while retconning T3 and TS completely - it would be the first time we saw Schwarzenegger's T-800 in a future setting (not counting the T2 3D theme park ride). What to do with that notion? Either he's a real Skynet controlled Terminator and he's out to kill people (like in T1), or he's a reprogrammed Terminator and fights for the human resistance, as was the case in T2 and T3. He might be a bit of a 'grey zone' killing machine, like Marcus (Sam Worthington) in TS, a cyborg whose loyalty is undecided, but that too has already been done in both TS and TSCC. Plot wise I can't think of much scenarios that would help reinvigorate the franchise with Schwarzenegger's presence, but then I'm no producer or screen writer, so what do I know?

And then of course Schwarzie is slated to do the very late sequel to Twins (1988!), called Triplets: a project I'm sure few people really are actively interested in watching after having to wait no less than twenty-six years for it! And to top it all off, he's scheduled to do another Conan the Barbarian flick (which should have been done in the Eighties as was promised, but sadly that proposed third installment called Conan the Conqueror got scrapped and we got that shitty Red Sonja movie instead). This despite that fact Conan has already been rebooted only a few years ago, starring Khal Drogo Jason Momoa, but that film flopped somethin' fierce, so it comes as no surprise that the studio would be eager to make us forget all about it. Fortunately there's still a few original projects in Arnold's pipeline, but for the most part he seems adamant to return to past success. And if he continues to go the tongue-in-cheek way for all of those projects, like he has done so far, his old age could soon prove very repetitive for his audience. Like a granddaddy with memory problems who continues to tell his grandchildren the same jokes over and over again. That would be a sad final phase of Schwarzenegger's otherwise illustrious career...