Film

Movie Madness: Terminator Franchise

Posted on by jeffreyfiene

I have been watching films to prepare for October and the first franchise I looked at was the Terminator franchise. Here are the reviews I posted in my Mom’s Facebook group.

James Cameron‘s 1984 Tech Noir masterpiece, THE TERMINATOR, is always a delight to return to. Unfortunately, this suspense filled film was plagued by a sequel surpassing it and then three more films that undermined, confused, and, arguably, destroyed the integrity of this multi-faceted time travel saga.

Linda Hamilton shines as the reluctant Sarah Connor who eventually embraces her role as the mother to humanities savior. Micheal Biehn does an extraordinary job becoming the level headed and overwhelmed Kyle Reese, many of the same attributes he would use towards Hicks in James Cameron’s next flick ALIENS. Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton round out our soon to be ALIENS alums in this film. Finally, we have the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie does an amazing job systematically wiping out every Sarah Connor he can get his hands on, well, ALMOST every Sarah Connor. My favorite Dick Miller cameo is in this film as well.

Onto the next, T2: JUDGEMENT DAY!

T2: JUDGEMENT DAY: My personal favorite Terminator movie and the first time a sequel won an Academy Award when it’s predecessor did not. Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger return as their original roles with Arnie playing the good guy now. Edward Furlong comes in as the new John Connor, production lasted so long that Furlong went through puberty and grew several inches. Michael Biehn also returns as a quick cameo Kyle Reese. Finally, we round out the cast with Robert Patrick playing my personal favorite cybernetic villain.

The lore behind this film, behind the scenes and in world, has always fascinated me. For example, the T-1000 was Skynet’s last resort because it was so advanced and powerful that it was afraid that the liquid metal alloy Terminator would develop rogue like tendencies and rebel against Skynet. Which we only learn in the novelization of the film. Patrick’s portrayal does eventually develop preferences and anger towards the Connors.

Arnie vowed that after this film he would never play another bad guy, rationalizing that his later role as Mr. Freeze was a tragic villain and not a bad guy. Robert Patrick would later reprise his role in a cameo in LAST ACTION HERO. He studied the movements of Bald Eagles and Sharks to create a chilling foil for the T-800. Next up, the let down, TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES.

 

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES: Hoo boy. This was my first Terminator movie. I saw it the day TERMINATOR SALVATION was released in theaters. My Dad rented it from Netflix because he wanted my brother and I to have some semblance of an idea of what we were in store for. Unfortunately, watching this film could not prepare us for the crapfest that was the next installment. Yet, sitting in the living room with my Dad and brother watching our first Terminator movie with no idea of the lore behind it or the mastery of the previous two films is one memory I have and will recall often. I do not like this movie, but it gave me an unforgettable afternoon with two people I love, and for that I will give it some slack. SOME.

Arnold Schwarzenengger is the only returning cast member (unless you want to count Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman, but I have yet to mention him so I will continue to neglect that character) and he does an extraordinary job with this script. There are several humorous moments with him that fall flat and every regurgitated catchphrase is mind-numbingly annoying, but he still comes to call when he fills in the action. Nick Stahl plays an adult John Connor and he does an okay job, he’s, I think, the fifth actor to play John Connor so far, and we see him living off the grid in a world where his Mom was taken by leukemia. The lack of Sarah Connor brings us two new female characters. The first of which being Katherine Brewster played by Claire Danes who is John Connor’s to-be bride and she does excellently even though her character is pulled out of nowhere and, if memory serves, goes nowhere after this film. Finally, our villain, the T-X is played by Kristanna Loken. BOY I HATE HER. She’s apparently a Terminator that hunts Terminators and can surpass the supremity of the T-1000. Overly sexualized and dull. Bad. Bad robot.

The car chase in the first third, however, is easily the best action piece in any of the released Terminator films. I’m not exaggerating. It is excellent. This film begins the trend of Terminator films being ignored by the sequel and trying to reboot the franchise. This happens for this film, the next, the fifth film, and the film being released this November. Unfortunately, for me, this is not the low point of the Terminator franchise. Up next, TERMINATOR SALVATION.

 

TERMINATOR SALVATION: This 2009 film by McG was released to lackluster performance and literal years of critics panning it. I saw it in theaters, then again years later at my grandparents lakehouse. The story in which I got my DVD copy of this film is one of my favorite memories of my ‘Fiene Luck’, but I will save that for those who are interested. Otherwise, this is only the third time I have seen this film. The first time I liked it, the second time I hated it and now I love it.

Christian Bale stars as the umpteenth person to play John Connor. Fresh off of THE DARK KNIGHT, there are many traces of Christopher Nolan‘s Batman in his performance, but those fade behind the surreal fact that after 25 years we finally get to see the savior of humanity in action after Judgement Day. He does an excellent job. Sam Worthington plays Marcus, a killer who donated his body to Cyberdyne before his death and became the prototype infiltrator Terminator. Problem is, they left him his humanity and that goes awry for Skynet as he befriends and saves Kyle Reese played by Anton Yelchin. 2009 was a big year for Anton Yelchin as the STAR TREK reboot had just come out. This was the first performance of his that I saw and it reminded me how much the world of film will miss due to his untimely death. We also have Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor, a character I thought was doomed to abandonment in T3, but here she is, pregnant and useless. She would go from this to ECLIPSE and, I hate to say it, at least she gets to act in the Twilight movie. Here she is nothing more than John’s yes-woman. She is not the worst waste of this film however. Helena Bonham Carter plays a character whose name I have already forgotten that means nothing to the real plot of the movie. Two scenes and she’s outta here. Unfortunate.

This film has many interesting callbacks to the original two films. We learn where Kyle Reese learned to tie his gun to his shoulder, where John got his scars, and, although Arnie isn’t in this one, a digitally reconstructed face of 1984 Schwarzenegger attacks John as the first Model 101 T-800 off the assembly line. Far from Cameron’s Tech Noir film 25 years prior, this dystopian flick does well to show how humanity is barely hanging on in Skynet’s world. Oh well, the whole thing gets completely rebooted seven years later with the next film: TERMINATOR GENISYS!

 

TERMINATOR GENISYS: We’ve got Arnold back as his typical role (except he’s called ‘Guardian’ this time). Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Jason Clarke as our eighth, count ’em EIGHTH, John Connor. We also have an underutilized J. K. Simmons and Matt Smith rounding out our cast.

This movie almost did what its two predecessors also failed to do. Terminate this franchise. Confusing Time Travel lingo is thrown around. The chase scene and action set pieces are just reused from previous films. I’m talking loads of motorcycles and helicopters. A wasted T-1000 at the beginning of the film with no explanation as to why it was sent. Guardian saves Sarah Connor as a child, but no one knows who sent him. The cherry on top is the mid-credits scene showing that Skynet survives. We get our typical from Kyl3 R33s3 at the end saying answers were out there.

This film was supposed to be the beginning of a new Terminator trilogy. It wasn’t. Despite the stellar cast, rivaled only by the last film, it fell flat with lazy and contrived story points. It adds virtually nothing to the franchise except a new T-5000 Terminator. More like T-%#$ Off. I hate it.

I’m glad this wasn’t the end of the franchise, but looking at the trailers for the new films…well…I’m not hopeful. The opening of TERMINATOR: DARK FATE may certainly be Judgement Day for the series that started as a small Tech Noir seed. Unfortunately, it sprouted into a gnarled tree with recast after recast and rewrite after rewrite. Fare thee well, Terminator franchise, but…I know, I know. You’ll be back.

That’s on franchise down, I think I’m due for some TLC in the New Jersey wilderness. Tomorrow is the 13th, and I’m ready to go to camp.

On Adam West

Posted on by jeffreyfiene

Back before I moved to this side of Murfreesboro, I lived in a little blue house. Every day, when I would come home from school, I would get a peanut butter sandwich and watch the 1966 version of Batman. That was Adam West. In the cartoons and shows I watched growing up, from Fairly Odd Parents to Goosebumps, I saw Adam West play the hero.

He was my favorite character in Family Guy and managed to do so without a single Batman reference. He was the Gray Ghost, the hero that inspired Kevin Conroy’s Batman. He played Thomas Wayne for Diedrich Bader’s Batman. Adam West was a kind-hearted man who could take a joke. He loved being lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and reveled in camp.

I am filled with sorrow at his passing. He was everywhere in my life and his work will live on, but he will be so tremendously missed. Adam West represented the Silver Age of Batman. An age where light heartedness and justice could be one and the same. Adam West was so much more than that though, but he thrived in it regardless.

Thank you. Thank you for always being you and not forcing yourself to change. Thank you for always bringing a smile to my face. Thank you for introducing me to Batman. Thank you for everything.

I will miss you.

Alone in the Theater

Posted on by jeffreyfiene

I am a part of a generation that sees going to the movies as a very social event. One night out with friends or a significant other to see a movie is the most basic way to spend a night with people my age.

 

I love movies. I love seeing movies. I love hanging out too, so I have traditionally delayed seeing something in theaters until I had at least one other person to go see it with. In my Freshman year of college, when I was in a relationship and all my friends had the same schedule as me I saw a new movie every week. I saw everything I wanted to see in theaters during that time. The good, the bad, and the ugly (Looking at you The Identical) were all seen by me and my gaggle of pals.

Then things changed. The relationship ended, some friendships faded, and schedules changed. Suddenly going to see movies with my friends went from a weekly thing to maybe once every few months. A part of my life basically disintegrated and I didn’t realize until recently.

Now, I have always been a big proponent of doing things by yourself.  It is very easy for someone who has a girlfriend and sees their friends everyday to say things like, “You can always do things by yourself”, “Being alone doesn’t mean you have to stop having fun”, or “You don’t need friends/a significant other to treat yourself”. When all of that stopped I felt like I had to eat my own words.

I didn’t do things by myself. I couldn’t do things by myself. Isolation put chains around me and the idea of having fun with no one else around became myth. Something I could entertain in my thoughts, but could never aspire to reach.

Then the story, as a tragic number of stories do, took a darker turn. My depression got worse, my anxiety attacks became more frequent, and my bipolar disorder swung harder. It became difficult to even go to bed without suffering from some sort of attack. And I continued to do nothing different in my life. I kept the same habits, I kept the same everything. So, I kept the same conditions.

Then something in me, as many things have, broke. Guardians of the Galaxy VOL. 2 came out. It wasn’t like I was counting down the days to this movie. I’d only seen the original in theaters once and haven’t seen it since. I asked the usual group of people and they had plans with other people to see it, I asked another group and they had already seen it, I finally asked people I had never seen a movie with and I was met with either no response or something that the first two groups had given me. I went to see it by myself. I bought my ticket and drink. Sat my lonely ass down in a theater seat and watched Chris Pratt fight Kurt Russell.

Then, a week later, I saw it again with one of my closest friends.

Last night, I asked less people if they wanted to see Wonder Woman and all of them had their reasons not to. So I went to see it alone. Earlier that day I asked my friend and former film teacher how often he sees movies by himself and it gave me a resolve not to make myself wait so much anymore. I don’t need other people to do what I want and seeing movies by myself is the first step to doing many other things.

John Hurt

Posted on by jeffreyfiene

On John Hurt

By Jeffrey Fiene

 

The first film I saw with John Hurt in it was Ridley Scott’s terrifying Alien. He played the poor sap who gets the egg laid in his chest. The scene everyone knows from the movie. The chestburster scene. It terrified people for decades. Because he sold it. His talent was so massive that the audience, any audience, believed that an alien parasite was burrowing its way through his body. He did such a good job that when Mel Brooks made Spaceballs he repeated the action of dying for a gag. That was who John Hurt was. He took his work seriously in every way one can. He never saw himself so importantly that he couldn’t joke. He was truly multifaceted.

The next film I saw him in was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He played Olivander and gave Harry his first wand. He would later reprise this role as well, after a decade of being absent from the franchise, and flawlessly ease back into a minor part as if he had been playing it every day for every year since his first lines.

He could play contradictions as well. Winston Smith in 1984 was the direct antithesis of his character in V for Vendetta. He lent his voice to Watership Down and the incomparable Aragorn in Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings animated feature.

The role that cemented him as my idol though wasn’t Elephant Man or Caligula or, my own personal guilty pleasure, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He played the War Doctor in Doctor Who. For the fiftieth anniversary, they created an incarnation of the main character that was so complex and dark that he was locked away in the Doctor’s psyche. A character that had no full backstory aside from the occasional cryptic mentions of the Last Great Time War. A version of the Doctor that did the most terrible thing the Doctor ever did. The character was created to give the anniversary special, Day of the Doctor, an inside look at the Doctor’s secret shame. John Hurt, in the span of seventy some odd minutes, the shortest amount of time an actor has ever been given to have a begging an end to his time as the Doctor, established a full-fledged and entirely believable answer to the question of what the Doctor’s secret shame is.

The War Doctor was given the chance to see what would become of him. The War Doctor saw atrocity after atrocity, even some committed by him. The War Doctor could bounce from utter despondency to joy in such subtle ways. This is due to John Hurt. He incredibly gave this performance far more than any other actor coming into that role could. A man who acted for the sake of acting. A man who stood with giants and could have any role he wanted. He gave it his all. He gave every role his all.

If I can have a quarter of the body of work he had when I die, then I will pass satisfied.

Thank you for everything.

Carrie Fisher: More Than A Princess

Posted on by jeffreyfiene

carriefisher

I almost wrote this a few days ago, but decided to hold out hope. Carrie Fisher always inspired that in me.

There will be thousands of tributes from all over the world, but the following will be what I saw her as.

To me, first and foremost, Carrie Fisher was Princess Leia. Is Princess Leia. Leia was the first strong female character I ever saw and she set an extraordinary precedent. She could fend for herself, was incredibly resolute in the face of catastrophe, and was a capable leader. These qualities could also be found in Carrie Fisher.

Carrie Fisher struggled with addiction, something I have no experience with, but she also struggled with mental illness, something I’ve spent the last few years dealing with. She fought against stereotypes. Her beliefs and actions were a testament to her unwavering character.

Beyond the crush I developed by watching Princess Leia on Yavin, Hoth, Tatooine, and Endor, I developed something else that I had only reserved for my mother and grandmother at the time. I respected Leia. She was the cornerstone that I built my respect towards the opposite sex on and continues to be that.

Her legacy will continue with us. I was going to see Rogue One with my family. I got the news right before the showing. Spoilers: The movie ends with Princess Leia saying the word ‘hope’.

2016 has taken many idols and heroes. There are precious few hours left for us to do something worthwhile this year. The close it with love. To close the year with hope.

We have to fight for it. We have to fight against the standard the year has tried to set.

We have to rebel. In honor of the Princess who was truly a Queen.

Rest in Peace and May the Force be with You