I'm going to see this, but I've never had any real expectations. A Terminator movie, without Arnold, directed by a guy who willingly calls himself "McG" and who's only other credits include the Charlies Angels movies and a handful of shitty music videos. The writing was on the wall a long time ago.
"Bale's signature intensity is starting to collapse on itself; his definitive performance may turn out to be the tantrum he pitched at this film's director of photography, Shane Hurlbut, during shooting. Bale's paranoia that Hurlbut was getting in his way was well-founded. The monochromatic dystopia the cinematographer created is, ultimately, far more interesting than anyone in it."
To be honest, even the bad reviews are making me want to see it as it sounds like awesome eye-candy...
I've been on a movie hiatus recently, I don't know why but the last one I've seen was Watchmen. I know I'm a terrible person for not seeing Star Trek already.
I totally was going to see it tonight but the three theatres around me all had showings at 7 & 7:30 and then 9:00 and 9:30. The first is too early for my schedule, and the last is too late - I hate getting out of movies past 11PM. So my perfect movie going time is 8 to 8:30PM - but there were no fucking showings at time.
The same exact thing happened when I was going to go to Star Trek two weekends ago. Its pissing me off. Isn't 8PM when "primetime" starts on tv?
Does anybody else just not go to the movies because the scheduling is all dill-hole?
I've never disagreed with Todd more. Critics hate this but most people I've talked to have a "pleasantly surprised" reaction. And while I agree to disagree with his review because A) to each their own and B) he hates most every movie anyway , I will take issue on one point that a lot of detractors seem to bring up.
Bad Dialogue. Dopey Plot. Blatant nonsense.
Even if you had never seen the first three flicks where all of the above run rampant, you should still expect them when you go to a movie about ROBOT WARZ.
I feel like Butters saying "Well I thought that movie was pretty good" (referring to the "Rape of Indiana Jones" episode).
I loved it, in fact I loved it more than the Star Trek movie. Yeah maybe there were a couple cheap sets, but I loved the casting and the editing. It thoroughly kept my interest from start to finish, and I didn't question it. I loved the artistry of many of the cinematography shots. It felt original. Totally different than the other T movies, that's true, but I didn't mind. CB was a little dorky, but I loved the kid who played Kyle - super authentic. Overall I had a great time watching it.
What the fuck. You just walk into the theater watch my movie and be all critical. Good for you, you fucking amateur. You better change your crappy attitude about my movie or ill go into a tirade again. Believe me I fucking will. Fucking A Man.
Ebert is the worlds worst reviewer. He loves every movie and seemingly randomly doesn't like some. He gave Star Trek a negative review, but if you read the text it seems pretty positive. He also gave that blacksploitation Honeymooners remake and Knowing 4 stars.
Todd, what was the last 5 cookay movay you've seen? The ones I recall you mentioning were The Godfather and Boogie Nights, has there been anything post Boogie that got the coveted rating?
Yes. That's literally what I meant. I have an elaborate spreadsheet where I catalogue the star value of every film Roger Ebert has ever reviewed and the result is a 90% positive.
He is one of the most notoriously lax critics out there, especially over the last few years. If you claim otherwise, I would claim you don't read his reviews with any kind of regularity.
In the list of movies you've reviewed, after watching them multiple times, I'd say these could have gotten 5 stars:
Finding Nemo (Ratatouille being pretty darn close)
No Country For Old Men
Why? Both movies left me surprised, inspired, and entertained, and after watching Nemo about 20 times with my kids and No Country 3 times, they're as close to perfection as a movie can realistically be.
I'm not saying you HAD to have a 5-cookay movay in there Todd, just curious. But looking through your list of flicks, I would give it to No Country and There Will Be Blood for sure. Superbad is a definite close call, as is Dark Night and Catch Me If You Can. I consider all of them Permanately Unturnoffable. Love. after watching them innumerable times.
(also scrolling through the list made me angry again! T3, 3.5?! Bale up there is right!)
I don't have the time or inclination to read every single one of Ebert's reviews much less keep flow charts categorizing them. Generally though I do agree with what he writes about movies. Not always, but certainly often. He has written at least one book that I know of that was entirely devoted to bad reviews he gave to movies. A cursory look at his website tonight revealed that he'd given thumbs down to about half the movies he'd reviewed. There were several one and a half star reviews too. So I don't see him as a soft touch. He's only given X-Men Wolverine 2 stars. X-men is the type of movie that a lot of people rave about being so amazing . . . I find it refreshing to see someone taking exception to that.
I noticed that Ebert gave L.A. Confidential 4 stars. I would give it 1. It's another one of those movies that a lot of people rave about being so amazing, but I didn't like.
If we're talking highly indulgent reviewer . . . I've always thought Leonard Maltin is too easy going . . . to the extent that if I didn't know better I'd think he was a schill for the studios. It's sort of a feeling though. Nothing I'd stand by and say for a fact.
Wolverine got terrible reviews across the board, I think it was down to something like 30% last time I was on RT. His Star Trek review would be a better example I think.
I've always been a fan of Ebert. You may not agree with him, but he usually can give a good laundry list of reasons for why he feels the way he feels about a particular film. His writing also tends to be entertaining, interesting and sometimes both which makes him highly readable. Although, as of late, since the cancer and maybe just getting older, he's not quite as fun to read as he was in the 90's.
I went to Terminator last night. Not a bad movie but definitely sorta meh. Terminator 3 was definitely a better movie in a lot of ways with a lot better action set pieces. With Cameron evidently leaving the series forever at this point, I don't see much of a future for it.
The best thing going for this movie was the giant robot/abandoned 7/11 sequence which didn't even come close to the chase sequence early in T3, and actually, looked like a bland, colorless, weak version of what I had just seen in the Transformers 2 trailer 45 minutes previous - and that was just a trailer.
Furthermore, did I miss it, or in the brief flash-forwards in the previous three movies it was always night, with roving machines crushing skulls, whole armies of Terminators marching through the dark-blue nighttime... The cloudy desert vision in this movie didn't jibe with the visual glimpses we'd gotten of the future in the previous three movies and that bugged the shit out of me.
I enjoyed T1, T2 and T3. For action sequences the best scene of these three movies in my opinion was the car chase through the Los Angeles River? . . . dried riverbed?? T1000 driving a rig, T101/Aahnold on a motorcycle and young punk John Connor on his moped. Robert Patrick was amazing in that movie. He really nailed it with the lifeless eyes and the hawk-eyed look of determination to complete his mission.
In T3 the Terminatrix simply reprised Patrick's role. It was in many respects the same movie as T2 (minus Sarah). I'd have rathered that T3 not have relied so much on C.G. The chase sequences looked too much like a video game. Still, I enjoyed T3.
I haven't seen this latest movie. (By the sounds of things I'm going to wait for it to come on video, T.V. or Youtube). I'm curious though if you could tell me Smirk . . . do the machines tattoo bar codes onto their human slaves? Remember how Reese was tattooed with a bar code in T1? If you figure that's a spoiler then don't bother telling me. I can wait.
I do not recall any tattooing - but I may be wrong. Sometimes I miss the finepoints on the first watching.
Also, anybody else who's seen it (spoiler alert just in case) - was there some reason I missed that you can just willy-nilly do organ transplants and not have to worry about rejection, etc. and I just missed it?
"Also, anybody else who's seen it (spoiler alert just in case) - was there some reason I missed that you can just willy-nilly do organ transplants and not have to worry about rejection, etc. and I just missed it?"
The problems with this movie can be dumped on Bale.
He was asked to play the role of Marcus, but he said no. He wanted to be John Connor even though the original script only had Connor in the last few minutes of the movie.
So they gave him the role of Connor which then had to be expanded and completely written into the movie.
CHUD has a great article on all of the changes in the script.
I agree 100% that someone needs to explain to Bale that gravel voice screaming is not acting. I hated it when Keaton did it in Batman, I hated it when Bale did it in Batman.
Hate it even more in this movie.
Bale refused to take the part offered, then made them change the script. I sure hope he loses that ability in the future.
I was at a bbq this weekend with defenders of this movay! Cmon! If you take 'Terminator' out of it and watch it as a standalone movie y'all know it woulda been weak sauce!!
I disagree! I liked it as a standalone movay! I'm no die hard fan of this franchise and as I pointed out up in that mess up there, it really shares almost nothing with the feel of any previous flick in the franchise. You are right, beyond some character names and some plot point references, it isn't similar at all.
I think removing "Terminator" would have done it a lot of good. New franchise. Call it Salvation for all I care. Most of the negativity I read seems to be mainly about how it treats the mythology(vomit) of the series. Under a different title I think it could stand a chance of becoming a sleeper hit.
I really wanted to like this flick. I wanted be contrarian and say that the critics were wrong. Unfortunately they weren't wrong. There are so many logic holes and leaps of stupidity, that it's just too difficult to list them all.
This flick is the ultimate in resting on laurels. How many times did they need to have Bale say "This is John Conner", all dramatic and crap? I get it, you're John Conner, savior of humanity. You're the "one man who taught us how to fight the machines." But guess what, you haven't actually done anything yet, so shut the fuck up and earn your stripes, asshole!
At one point they literally have Conner say "I'll be back." It wasn't that funny back in 84 and it's jaw droppingly stupid now.
There are some good things though. The sound is awesome. All the machines make this heavy, gear grinding sound, that's scary cool. Some have been critical of the grimy, grey/brown look if this thing, but I don't know how else you'd color a post apocalyptic film? I thought it looked fantastic ... mostly. Anton Yelchin, who I originally didn't think was a good choice to play Kyle Reese, was great. Sam Worthington was great also. He and Yelchin made this thing watchable.
But the rest of the cast was just going though the motions. Moon Bloodgood's character looks good in leather, but was generally retarded and if anyone is a machine, it's Bryce Dallas Howard.
I'm a big fan of the machines vs. people genre, particularly this story. I watch the TV show regularly and if you're a fan of the franchise, I highly recommend it. Hopefully they'll act like this movie was never made and go with the story in the TV show. I'm sure that's not gonna happen, but it would be a good call.
, I will take issue on one point that a lot of detractors seem to bring up.
