BEFORE: I know that I said I would start my superhero/comic-book movies today, but I realized that my wife wants to watch a few of them with me, like "Iron Man" and "Incredible Hulk", and she doesn't have much time right now, what with "Glee", "Lost", "American Idol" and "Survivor" still airing new episodes. But, I figure that by this time next month, all of those shows will have aired their season finales, and she'll have a bit more time for some movies. So, I'm delaying those films until June - I still need to watch them before July, or else I can't show my face at San Diego Comic-Con.
What to watch in the meantime? Surely I can pick another 30 movies from my remaining list of nearly 400 films. See, that's the easy part - I really can't make a "wrong" pick! Sure, I like organizing them according to themes, but I don't have to! I'm completely free! For now, I think I'll keep the sci-fi theme going, then in a bit I can transition into something else.
When I think of May 1, I think of May Day, and revolutions, and taking up arms and rising up against our alien, or robot, overlords...
THE PLOT: After Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, a group of survivors led by John Connor struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job.
AFTER: I stopped watching this franchise after "T2", so I never watched "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" - but from what I've read, I don't think that's a prerequisite. The third film took the plot in a different direction, and this film chose yet another path.
This film is set in 2018, and centers on the adult John Connor, who is fighting in the resistance against the machines. Thanks to the audio tapes that were left to him by his mother (he still plays them on an old tape-recorder, I guess he never converted them to CDs or MP3 files...) he knows that someday he will have to find a man named Kyle Reese, and send him back to the past, where Kyle will battle the Schwarzenegger Terminator, and father a child named John Connor (the events depicted in the first film).
But the tapes are not fully complete - Sarah Connor only learned bits and pieces about the future robot wars from Kyle. And the future was constantly in motion - remember how the Terminator robot was evil in the first film, but then heroic in the second film? Plus, she never warned him about Terminators that were part machine, and part organic human...
The resistance gets hold of a code that will supposedly send a signal that will switch off the evil machines - and an offensive is mounted to take down Skynet. Connor refuses to go along with the plan, because he wants to rescue the human hostages that Skynet is holding. I don't understand, though, why the choice is between disabling the machines OR rescuing the hostages - wouldn't doing the first thing make the second thing a whole lot easier?
I wouldn't dare give away all the twists and turns of this plot, so let me instead give high marks for the special effects. They really kept this one hopping, with all kinds of giant robots and explosions and noisy stuff. There were quite a few action sequences that made me sit up and take notice - and they had battle scenes taking place at night and in the rain, and you could STILL see what was going on (See, makers of "Alien vs. Predator", it is possible...)
One quibble, though - what happened to those really cool "liquid-metal" Terminators, as seen in "Terminator 2" - what were those, the T-1000's? I guess maybe they haven't been invented yet in 2018? Maybe the "self-healing" Terminator seen in this film is a step in that direction...but if that's the case, and we know that Terminators can be sent back in time, why aren't the toughest Terminators sent back to critical moments in history, like the ones depicted in this film? Can there be a sequel that shows the invention of the T-1000?
It feels good to watch a film that's only about a year old. I should try and do more of that, it makes me feel like I'm catching up, even though my list of films is still huge. And hey, here's a franchise where the fourth film didn't totally suck! Ask and ye shall receive, I guess...
Starring Christian Bale (as Connor), Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood (from that TV show "Journeyman" that I liked a couple years ago), Helena Bonham Carter, Anton Yelchin (the new Chekhov), Bryce Dallas Howard, and Common.
RATING: 8 out of 10 land-mines
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