DISQUS

kbm · 7 months ago

1. because you're not actually a cyborg, you never were, your cortex dominates a machine's parallel inside you, it ALWAYS will (the point of the entire film, uh, did you really see the film or were you just applying your expectations and ignoring what was really going on even what was actually said/behavior by the Marcus character)?
2. because they're moving the franchise in a different direction, away from your standard genre expectations (again you're reviewing the film you were hoping was there), away from the pulpy simplicities of Cameron. this is a MUCH darker film than the first three: did you ever see 2001 a space odyssey, one of the least tense, least-emotional films ever made ABOUT humanity vs. machines (hiding vast tension, vast emotion).
3. Yes, review movies only made in Sweden

advice: see the film again and really think about it.

Jett Loe · 7 months ago

Salvation

kbm · 6 months ago

snarkiness was in reply to gareth's clearly sarcastic rhetoric. his tone began it, so i'd wonder if you want to begin your dialogs this way. these questions are answerable only with vitriol since he intends them to be unanswerable.

I know now from your reply that you have no idea what this film is and what it is referencing. why there are direct redoes of shots from apocalypse now (this responds to the idea of gun violence and our nation's paradox wars), why this is clearly a prequel (and a response) to The Matrix (a world with virtual gunplay, not physical), how the Arnold gesture is wildly coded, why a native american female is releasing a cyborg that thinks he is human (he discovers her hanging from a cable tower, they share a mirror of suspended releases), if I were you and you really understood that Shining piece, I'd probably stop underestimating McG and go in again with a clean slate and really look at it. this is a bleak, very developed idea that has copious, instructive signals, codes and shot relations that Cameron never imagined (and he didn't begin the gunplay blockbuster, he simply carried through with it). i knew nothing about this film, I hated T3 enough to consider the series dead, but this is something different.

Jett Loe · 6 months ago

More thoughts on Terminator

kbm · 6 months ago

you're both asleep at the wheel, praising a pointless Star Trek and lambasting a brilliant action film. i leave you to your habitrail(s).

Eric · 6 months ago

I think you may be missing a key element to all of this, kbm. Let's just say that you're right. Let's say that McG really did intend to infuse this picture with layers of complexity, symbolism, and social commentary. Even if that were true, those elements are nullified if the film itself can't stand up to its own message. Do you think 'Milk' would have been so embraced and subsequently attached to the gay rights movement if it was just an awful, awful film? I doubt it.

kbm · 6 months ago

the 800 people I saw this with in Times Square were raucously cheering every escape. me included. you may be seeking sentience with plot-based films that require dialogic-poetics (spoken word from text-alphabet), but the future is form-based, symbol flowing, narrative patterned. videogames predict this by employing this narrative style fluidly. seeing John Connor speak to his mirror chained to an axle-cross is one of the more radiant upgrades of our own enslavement to death-cults like Christianity, I'd say listen to 14 year-olds about what this film says to them and I'd say you then might know where the medium is headed. if political rhetoric/sentimentality is your limited expectation in filmic consciousness, then stick to films like Milk, you clearly understand them (and they represent the most conservative form of storytelling to a director like me), but if you seek the future of language (the one beyond alpha-text, the one that DW Griffiths, Murnau, Sjostrom predicted), then you clearly can't see it coming.

Jett Loe · 6 months ago

Comment action

kiley · 6 months ago

whispers loudly: Jett, I thought you said this guy was 'absurdly brilliant'?

K-Ann · 6 months ago

I guess McG executive produced "Spaced". I really enjoyed that.*

*just a silly attempt to lighted the mood

Phil · 6 months ago

I haven't seen the film. I'll start with that.

I'll give you some quotes from Christian Bale himself, which in my opinion weren't very glowing of his own take-away from the movie.

First Bale has said about McG when he was trying to convince Bale to do the movie: "I was very open with him and said that I hadn't seen anything he had done before that justified him being the guy to make this."

Ultimately, Bale gave him a chance, provided they completely re-do the script. Basically he says he thinks he was drunk when he agreed - then he says "I felt good about it, because we really did have a lot of time. And then....f----k, writer's strike. I learned a lesson then about movies like The Terminator and Batman. Most people assume that if you're risking that amount of money, you don't begin until you're completely ready. In fact, that's what they do only with the lower budget movies........I thought, of course, we'll push back filming. No. Ain't a possibility......In the end, it was a film experience unlike any I'd had before..."

Take what you will from that, but it sounds a bit like "we didn't make the movie I thought we'd make."

That said - the great thing about TFT is we all have differing views on movies. Jett really loved "Speed Racer", for crying out loud. I have admitted openly to watching "The Transformers"...and enjoying it. And I hate Michael Bay.

Like I said, I haven't even seen "Salvation" so I'm not really saying what's good or bad - but giving a viewpoint that kind of backs up what some others are saying. But as Gareth has once said (to paraphrase), it's ok to like all sorts of movies.

StanleyRumm · 6 months ago

I recommended the mstrmnd.com (or whatever it is, my brain is too lowly to remember it) for The Shining analysis, but the guy made the same kind of unwarranted spews on alt.movies.kubrick recently.

He might have had some interesting things to say about The Shining, but best leave his work stand (or not) by itself rather than engaging him in conversation.

I agree it's bizarre, but if he feels the need to insult everyone just leave him off. I don't know the guy, but from what I've seen/ heard he comes across as someone with too much powder in his nostrils.

Maybe he's McG!?

Gareth Higgins · 6 months ago

Hey friends of the film talk (and I include everyone who has posted here) - thanks for the lively discussion on this post - ironically enough it was a quick post that I rushed out last week without too much in-depth thought; and no expectation that anyone would want to comment that much about it.

I actually think that kbm has some fascinating things to say about the film, and his/her comments have given me much food for thought; his/her passion for cinema genuinely lifts my spirits. I'm happy to apologise if anything I wrote in the original post seemed tonally problematic or snarky; and I'd like to say to kbm that I'd love to see more of him/her on the site - but let's lay off on the personal insults.

In that regard, let me say to StanleyRumm, thanks also for your comment - though I'd probably want to add, with sincere respect, that the 'powder in his nostrils' statement could appear to cross the same lines of making things unnecessarily personal that got this party started in the first place. Having said that, the suggestion that McG himself might be reading this site is a lovely compliment!

With all that in mind, let me say this, as I don't think it was clear on the podcast:

I liked Terminator Salvation more than I had expected. References to Apocalypse Now, Three Kings, Blade Runner, Saving Private Ryan, Escape from New York, and even (perhaps) The Dark Crystal abound, and reveal McG not only as a film lover of my generation, but a pretty good homagist (if indeed that is the word). It's not clear if this film is critiquing or endorsing the post-9/11 belligerence culture; or speaking fearfully about climate change and techno-colonisation; or trying to be a video game. And it's not clear if the ambiguity is intentional or a result of McG falling short of what he was trying to do. I do think, however, that it represents an attempt at making a serious movie; I do think that McG is likely to succeed in the future at doing so; and I do agree with Jett that the character of John Connor was under-written and performed. It's not a disaster; and if it is full of the coding that kbm suggests, that wouldn't surprise me; but I'd need to see it again.