Next up... Terminator: Salvation, May 21 2009

Roger Ebert, who IMHO has a bias toward sci-fi films (his best film of the year was "Dark City") open his review:

One of Hollywood's oldest axioms teaches us: The story comes first. Watching "Terminator Salvation," it occurred to me that in the new Hollywood, the storyboard comes first. After scrutinizing the film, I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours.

The action scenes, which is to say, 90 percent of the movie, involve Armageddon between men and machines 10 years in the future. The film's most cheerful element is that they've perfected artificial intelligence so quickly. Yes, Skynet is self-aware and determines to wipe out humankind for reasons it doesn't explain. A last-ditch resistance is being led by John Connor, or "J.C." for you Faulkner fans.

Looks like I'm not seeing this in the movie theatre. It opened today, but only showing at night time. I refuse to pay full cost ($8.00 here) for any movie.

So, will be hoping that it shows as a matinee somewhere in the next few weeks, or I will wait for the DVD, I guess.

Rotten Tomatoes has tabulated their most current compilation of reviews of sci-fi movies and this was their result:

Rotten Tomatoes Top 10 Best Reviewed Sci-Fi Movies

1. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Metropolis
4. Alien
5. Minority Report
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Children of Men
8. The Host
9. Star Wars
10. Aliens

Rotten Tomatoes has just taken a sudden dive in credibility....

Dark City was great. A relatively unknown, but very good Sci-Fi flick.

That "Enternal Sunshine" isn't sci-fi? It could be placed in a romance category but the central premise would make that comparison ridiculous.
Sure, this list is based on what reviews could still be assembled so it is, at best, an estimation.

AFI's list which includes film critics, but also script writers, directors, film historians, producers, actors, others in the industry as well as the general membership is almost entirely different:

1. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 1968
2. STAR WARS: EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE 1977
3. E.T. - THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL 1982
4. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE 1971
5. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL 1951
6. BLADE RUNNER 1982
7. ALIEN 1979
8. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY 1991
9. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 1956
10. BACK TO THE FUTURE 1985

Except for "Star Wars - A New Hope" which should have been "Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back", Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" for "ET," "Aliens" for "Alien", it seems more credible. Where will the new resounding critical success of "Star Trek" fit in? Only "The Wrath of Khan" or "First Contact" get really good critical marks out of that entire franchise. There's a sweet sentimentality to "ET" remaining at the top, but it borrows heavily from fantasy and the only science is the makeshift communications device and the final globular space ship (which I hated) -- ET rescued by a giant armored basket ball?

BTW, has anyone seen "The Host?" Its' sample footage is on YouTube and is a Korean monster movie which is actually quite well done -- the Asian version of "Jaws."

I love "Dark City," a film noir of the future in the vein of Philip K. Dick but holds its own right up to the final revelation. It could be in a top ten list but perhaps its quirkiness kept it just out a top ten list. It has to be in a top twenty-five.

There were a number of sci-fi films that I liked a lot but which I suspect were not much appreciated by "critics", although I can't point to any specific critical reviews, just my feeling of their general consensus.

One that comes to mind was Predator, which I thought was a very good Sci-Fi film. I'm not sure what the original "critical" reviews said about that.

Another was Pitch Black which I enjoyed a lot, but probably didn't get good critical reviews.

And how many critics liked Dark City?

What were the initial critical reviews on movies like Serenity, Terminator, T2, Alien, Aliens, Donnie Darko, Matrix, and The Hidden?

The premise certainly makes it SciFi. I just didn't think it was all that great of a movie.

I like this list much better.

Back to the matter at hand, this is the Online Film Critics Society compilation of reviews:


3/5 "This time out, the studio has gone for stuntwork. Here's hoping that, once the inevitable follow-up hits screens, there'll be more vision and less violence." PopMatters Bill Gibron

2/4 "Salvation is a cold, blunt summer movie misfire, infatuated with mindless explosions like an infant with fecal matter...a lumbering, joyless detour into unappetizing Hollywood recycling." Sci-Fi Movie Page Brian Orndorf

"...sometimes feels like just another link in a chain to nowhere." PopMatters Chris Barsanti

B- "There is a wellspring of potential in the franchise for the right filmmaker to generate a "Starship Troopers" kind of frisky movie that goes beyond the constraints of spectacle-generated entertainment toward sophisticated sci-fi satire. Until that time co" ColeSmithey.com Cole Smithey

"It's late in Terminator Salvation when Arnold Schwarzenegger makes his much-hyped non-appearance." PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

A- "A blockbuster that satisfies both the die-hard aficionado and the newcomer to the Terminator brand, with just the right mix of action and self-aware humor to overcome the film's emotional deficiencies." EDGE Boston David Foucher

1.5/4 "The Terminator series grinds to a distinct and palpable halt with this inert, flat-out worthless entry..." Reel Film Reviews David Nusair

2.5/4 "The emotional element takes a backseat to the special effects, but Terminator Salvation is pulpy and fun as a rousing summer diversion, and more than respectable for being the fourth part in a twenty-five-year-old series." TheMovieBoy.com Dustin Putman

1.5/4 "Like the human skulls crushed under sleek metal feet in those feverish sequences, the Terminator film series is finished." Slant Magazine Ed Gonzalez

C "Suffers from pedestrian dialogue and a surfeit of bad plot devices ranging from the merely too-convenient to the laugh-out-loud preposterous." EricDSnider.com Eric D. Snider

1.5/4 "By the time it looks like Richard Dawson's Running Man crew created another stunt body double to get audiences all riled up, all the nostaglia has been sucked out thanks to a script unworthy of a direct-to-video sequel." eFilmCritic.com Erik Childress

C "Big, handsome, loud and dumb -- and it dishonors everything that preceded it." AMCtv.com Eugene Novikov

C "Does pretty much what you'd expect but little more, and its sullen efficiency doesn't make up for its lack of imagination." One Guy's Opinion Frank Swietek

1/5 "A revved-up and conflicted sci-fi drama of unrelenting carnage trying desperately to peddle a message of heart." Spirituality and Practice Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

3/4 "This is everything a good summer movie should be and, while it does not dishonor the Cameron chapters of the saga, neither does it prove to be an indispensable adjunct to them." ReelViews James Berardinelli

2/5 ""Terminator Salvation" promised moviegoers a war between the human heart and the cold, cruel efficiency of machines. So why then is it so mechanical itself, so good at repetition, so preprogrammed and clunky?" MSN Movies James Rocchi

5/10 "It neither adds to nor subtracts from the mythology. And with Judgment Day upon us, there's no more tension, nothing compelling left to explore." ReelTalk Movie Reviews Jeffrey Chen

"Parental Content Review" Screen It! Jim Judy

2/4 "This ambitious redefinition of a franchise is also loud, clumsy and, in the end, doesn't make much sense." Big Picture Big Sound Joe Lozito

2/5 "the whole ordeal made me fantasize about building a time machine so I could send a cyborg into the past to terminate McG's mother before she could give birth to him" 7M Pictures Kevin Carr

C+ "While some of its demographic may be happy to see the return of the man-machine apocalypse, much of the writing...is hokey as hell." Reeling Reviews Laura Clifford

"[T]he hugest of the movie's many problems: [it's] sentimental... It's damn near close to character rape, what McG, Brancato, and Ferris force Christian Bale's Connor to do..." Flick Filosopher MaryAnn Johanson

B "Worthington is electrifying as Marcus a character who raises questions about what it means to be human but provides a definitive answer about what it means to be a star." Beliefnet Nell Minow

"Strives for bleak gravity with misguided fervor." The Screengrab Nick Schager

1/5 "That said, the real problem with "Terminator Salvation," when all is said and done, is that it never for a single moment makes a convincing argument for its own existence." eFilmCritic.com Peter Sobczynski

C+ "It's a far more compelling world than a narrative." Mania.com Rob Vaux

"... little more than big machine spectacle with a little lip service paid to humanity, identity and free will, which are not exactly themes so much as plot points." Seanax.com Sean Axmaker

2/5 "applies big-budget defibrillator paddles to the hulking franchise but can't breathe fresh life into the now 25-year-old concept." Filmcritic.com Sean O'Connell

7/10 "Pow! Blast! Annhilate! The action-packed, bullet-riddled popcorn pictures have officially arrived." SSG Syndicate Susan Granger

1/4 "shooting guns at things that aren't harmed by guns... following which there will be cheap philosophizing and the promise of another sequel." Film Freak Central Walter Chaw

Only one critic there brings up the magic word --imagination, which I forgot to mention is the top priority with the storytelling. Getting beyond the seen that, done that clay feet of sci-fi ideas is not all that difficult.

Gene Shalit is on The Today Show reviewing the film now -- he made a reference to the film related to the construction of a "Dawn of the Dead" zombie movie -- the zombies being the terminator cyborgs.

Well, looks like I'm seeing this movie real soon then. I just checked the listings and matinees are have now been included.

Does anybody here who has seen the movie like it then?

Opening in a few days, Six Flags wooden roller coaster (why wooden?), Terminator:

Out of this list I consider ET to be a kids show, Metropolis to be an antique, Minority Report to be weak and Children of Men to be a waste of time completely (I hated Children of Men and almost walked out of the theater due to boredom). The Host was interesting, but certainly not top-10 material.

The only entries above which I consider top-10 are the Star Wars ones and the Alien entries.

ET wouldn't be on my list -- I admit when I first saw it, it was charming, the characters were engaging including, of course, ET, and it's one of those uplifting feel good movies where you left the theater walking on air. Ultimately, I've found it to sentimental for my taste although I can hardly wait for my niece and nephew to be old enough to see it (I think ten to twelve years is appropriate). "Metropolis" might be vintage but for film reviewers, it's an early masterpiece that kicked off the inspiration to make great sci-fi films. It took what, besides "Things to Come," about thirty years before anyone made a serious sci-fi film that wasn't a silly monster movie -- "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Okay, Ieft out "Frankenstein," "King Kong" and "The Invisible Man" which are technically sci-fi, but only because, again, they didn't spark any kind of a sci-fi era.

"Children of Men" is genuinely prophetic and rather depressing -- I liked it because it did deliver a potent message, the characters were real and there was a story to tell. I can relate to people who don't like the bleak future type of sci-fi -- it's not a movie I'd pull out often as entertainment, that's for sure.

I didn't find "Minority Report" weak at all -- a good suspense murder mystery with, again, a terrific Philip K. Dick story which had the aside of criticizing the attack first, ask questions later of Bush politics.

You'd have to go to Rotten Tomatoes and read how they weighted (or handicapped, I'm not too sure) movies based partly on lack of reviews of older films.

So what would you top ten look like?

I differentiate between Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Super Heros.
Not necessarily in this order, but the sci-fi list would look something like this...
* Blade Runner
* Terminator
* T2
* Alien
* Aliens
* Serenity
* Dark City
* Star Wars (a few of them)
* The Matrix
* Pitch Black
More...
** Predator
** The Hidden
** 2001 Space Odyssey

I just got back from Terminator Salvation. I give it a 6.7 on the IMDB scale. The basic theme of the movie is that humans have heart and machines don't, and that makes us better. Unfortunately the film itself has no heart.

This McG director guy should have been less focused on his cute nickname and more focused on how to film a scene with some real emotional content. He seems to have figured out how to copy the visuals of the original Terminator, but not the feelings and the pacing.

Films like this often make me wonder just what it is that makes some scenes in films carry such intensity, while others with almost the same words and situations, just feel like fluff. I'm not sure what causes that, if it's the actors, or the pacing or the editing or something... I don't know. Even though many scenes in the movie are swarming with ruthless lethal terminators, somehow they aren't scary at all. How does a director manage to take the "scary" out of a Terminator, you wouldn't think it could be done.

It must be buried quite deeply, because I could only see the special effects. They, of course, were stunning, but wore off over time.

I can't believe Plan Nine from outer Space isn't on their top ten.