4/2/2009 - Terminator 2 3D

There are two episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles left this season, and if rumors are true, it may be the last we see of the series. It would be sad to see another great science fiction series fall prey to low ratings. I knew the show could never reach the level in terms of special effects and action that the movies did, but it certainly had great drama and it really paid great homage to the movies. Even for someone like me who watched Terminator 2 seven times in the theater, the show had to remind me how Sarah got the scar on her shoulder.

Anyway, even if the show does get canceled, that does not mean the end of the Terminator. Terminator: Salvation hits the theaters in May and it's looking awesome, especially with the casting of Christian (Batman) Bale in the lead role of John Connor. If it somehow becomes one of the summer's blockbuster hits, I would dare say that it might give the Fox or Warner execs second thoughts about the TV series. At the very least, the sequel will be greenlit without hesitation.

It's ironic to me how Terminator "purists" will say that the Terminator storyline should have ended with Terminator 2 since that was the last feature film to be directed by creator James Cameron and that it the ending seemed made it look like it was the end of Skynet. What they forget is that the storyline did continue in the Terminator 2 3D experience for the Universal Studios theme park, and that it was indeed directed by James Cameron. It had a lot of the great elements of Terminator 2, but toned down to PG audiences and enhanced with 3D effects. The experience can't be adequately shown on YouTube, but here's the feature footage minus the 3D:

3/3/2008 - The Terminator Deleted Scene

I just got finished watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles "season finale" and I just hope that they renew it for another season. Because of the stupid writer's strike, the season came out to only 9 episodes and it ended on a cliffhanger! Because of a TV budget, the action on the show isn't like it is in the movies, but when they do turn on the special effects, it has been quality work all around. The show may be pigeon-holed into the science fiction category and it has concepts that are, dare I say, too sophisticated for the casual viewer. With all the brainless shows out there in primetime, shouldn't there be a smart show that rounds it out? Fox has a notorious history of not supporting sci-fi shows, so I'm not overly optimistic.

Anyway, I wanted this opportunity to bring out a very special video to any Terminator fans out there. This is on the DVD, so it's not exactly new, but I think it's one of the best deleted scenes of any movie out there. I can understand the reasoning behind James Cameron's decision to leave it behind, but I think it's essential to the Terminator lore:



This one scene sets up so many things... the entire second movie AND the TV series is based on Sarah Connor trying to prevent Judgment Day by destroying Cyberdyne and prevent Skynet from being built. If you thought all the pipe bombs Sarah and Kyle Reese were making was for the Terminator, you were wrong! And that line that John Connor repeated in Terminator 2 about "no fate but what we make for ourselves" was mysteriously absent from the theatrical cut of Terminator. Well, it can finally be revealed where it came from. This is why DVD was invented.

1/2/2008 - Terminator 2 1990 rare teaser trailer

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles debuts next week and while I have my doubts about the show, I still want to see it. Why? Well, this season of 24 has been postponed indefinitely because of the whole writers' strike thing and there's nothing else to watch on Mondays. Also, it's Terminator, man! Yeah, there's no Arnold, or James Cameron involved, but it's still going to be about killer robots and time travel. I like time travel movies in general, but when James Cameron added the concept of killer robots... it just spoke to me. I didn't watch the original Terminator in the theater (I was only 8 years old when it came out!), but when I saw it rebroadcast on TV years later, it blew my mind. It had everything: great action, special effects, drama, and a great ending. The thing is, I thought the ending was final. I mean, at the time, I was really eager to see some kind of sequel to the movie, but according to the story, Skynet was about to be destroyed soon after Kyle Reese was sent to the past, making any more time traveling impossible. There was no internet back then, so I had NO idea that they were indeed planning a sequel. So when I saw this teaser, I just about crapped my pants:



Again, I really did not expect this. This brief teaser had my mind racing... a whole assembly line of Terminators? Holy crap! Was there going to be an invasion? Are they still after John Connor? Who's gonna be the hero? I thought Arnold said he would never play a bad guy again. Well, all those questions were answered in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a movie I saw SEVEN times in the theater. Of course, Arnold didn't play a bad Terminator, but this teaser sure made it look like he would. Which is a little disappointing because I thought he was a badass in the first movie. It turns out that he would play a bad guy again years later in... guess which movie... Give up? Batman and Robin. He should have stuck to his promise.

10/24/2007 - No Reflection Practical Joke

Normally, I don't like to watch shows purely showing practical jokes like the stuff they do on Candid Camera. Something about watching others getting made fun of behind their back just turns me off. I don't know... maybe it's from personal experience or something. However, there is something so very clever about this particular practical joke that made me smile:



As you can see, perfect strangers are led to believe that they are not casting a reflection, despite seeing the supermodel next to them casting her own "reflection". This is similar to how a certain special effect was pulled off in the Special Edition of Terminator 2: Judgment Day where you see Linda Hamilton drill into Arnold Schwarzenegger's skull to remove his processor. Not many people know, but Linda Hamilton has an identical twin sister. And now that you know, you can see how that practical joke was done and how this special effect was done:

8/7/2007 - Terminator Versus Robocop

More than 15 years later, I can still say that Terminator 2 is my favorite movie. I thought my taste in movies would be more "sophisticated" by now, and in many ways, it is. But whenever I watch T2, I'm taken back to that first late-night showing when my cousins and I were so jazzed up after becoming enamored with the original Terminator only a few months earlier. We saw the trailers, and we thought, "Wow, is Arnie going to be a bad-ass villain again?" It turns out the trailers were purposely misleading and Arnold Schwarzenegger did not play a bad Terminator, but he was still bad-ass.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day might not be a masterpiece in acting or drama, but it (in conjunction with the first one) is simply a masterstroke in sci-fi action storytelling. For its time, the special effects were a breakthrough, and all the special effects in todays movies show only evolutionary progress from T2. When I first saw the T-1000 turn from a liquid-metal humanoid into the police officer disguise, I nearly crapped my pants. Stories dealing time travel are always tricky (in terms of all the paradoxes that can take place), but the movie never strays too much into the scientific/philosophical arena. It's just two and a half hours of Arnie in the greatest role of his career, kicking butt and saying cool catchphrases.

The first Robocop movie was another favorite of mine. I first enjoyed it for the cool futuristic concept of a robotic policeman and its great action, but now I see it for what it was intended to be: a satirical take on society with plenty of black humor. If you think about it, Robocop is kind of the opposite of a Terminator. A T-800 model Terminator is living tissue over metal endoskeleton, while Robocop has a high-tech metal shell protecting his organics. Everybody always wonders who would win in a fight between Robocop and the Terminator. There have been graphic novels by Dark Horse comics on the subject. But this video, I think, is the best showcase of what would really happen...