Ok here is my review of Terminator.
From my “non fanboy” girlfriend… a good movie. It’s solid. It’s just an action flick, it’s not supposed to be deep or thought provoking ( and it isn’t by any means) If you aren’t wanting to see a masterpice… it’s pretty neat. About on the level of Tranformers for intelligence level.
For the casual fan. ( person who relly liked the first two movies, but isn’t a terminator nerd) It a GREAT movie. Lot’s of great nods to the old movies and it looks great! It kinds turns into a “last action hero” kinds predictable ending… but that’s ok… it’s just an action movie. Terminator never has been a serious franchise like Star Trek for you to get too caught up with nitpicks. If this is you… you’ll like it.
Now if you are a big fan, a sci-fi fan extrodinaire, a watcher of T:SCC, the comics, or just inteligent… there are a few plot points that creep up at the end that make you go WTF!!!
Now these plot points could all be explained by a super nerd and long drawn out conversation at the coffee shop… but that’s not what movies are supposed to do. They are supposed to explain themselves. I will post a spoiler review after more folks have posted saying they saw it and explain myself… but for now I 'll just say that they had an opprotunity to NOT George Lucas up the Terminator universe and they didn’t do it. They did like Lucas did when he made episode 3. They went back and stole certain visual and song ques from the old movie… but they didn’t pay ANY attention when Kyle was talking about the future, his origins, when the T-800’s were made… and the other problem with the movie is this. Skynet is fully aware that it WILL send back terminators to kill John roughly ten years in the future of this movie. They already know that it will fail, They know the identity of Kyle Reece, what importance he is to John, and a lot of things that Skynet shouldn’t know. Instead of just killing these characters easily… they “james Bond” villian it up and it’s just out of character for terminator.
Once again, one can try to be a good fanboy and try to find a way to make this fit. I can do that, as well. I am a big fan of Terminator and I figured out a few ways to make it fit… but they all still make this plot look stupid. The better answer would be WRITE A SCRIPT WHERE SKYNET DOESN’T ALREADY KNOW JOHN’S AND THEIR OWN FUTURE. If they know their future… then don’t invent time machines, don’t send anything back, Kyle can’t bang Sarah and he doesn’t get born, Here’s a better one. If you know the future… put double the gaurds at the time machine, work camp or where ever… cause you know the timeline ( an skynet is pretty specific so the argument of “may skynet doesn’t know” doesn’t apply)
It rings of the old holywood problem. We can cast a movie, make good action, give you the setting… but when it comes to wrapping up a plot… we just didn’t rreally get around to doing that till halfway thru filming.
All that being said… I still give it two thumbs up… just for the things that were done right!
