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

First of all, I agree -- Rotten Tomatoes database is not nearly comprehensive enough to go more than two decades back in averaging out reviews. It looks like they did it for fun but it didn't mean much as far as being helpful. "The Host" is a great film in the sci-fi monster sub-genre but hardly belongs in a top ten list. I really offered it as a reference to other top ten, and the user ratings on IMDb may point out films one hasn't seen, or at least not recently seen:

Top Rated "Sci-Fi" Titles
Rank Rating Title Vote

1. 8.8 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 238,980
2. 8.8 Star Wars (1977) 280,981
3. 8.6 The Matrix (1999) 323,742
4. 8.5 WALL·E (2008) 129,896
5. 8.5 Alien (1979) 151,290
6. 8.4 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 193,621
7. 8.4 Aliens (1986) 143,459
8. 8.4 Metropolis (1927) 32,584
9. 8.4 Star Trek (2009) 54,565
10. 8.3 The Prestige (2006) 160,174
11. 8.3 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 137,323
12. 8.3 Back to the Future (1985) 168,474
13. 8.3 Blade Runner (1982) 159,604
14. 8.3 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) 183,256
15. 8.2 Donnie Darko (2001) 175,888
16. 8.2 Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu (1973) 2,201
17. 8.1 The Thing (1982) 62,639
18. 8.1 V for Vendetta (2005) 182,114
19. 8.1 The Terminator (1984) 146,216
20. 8.1 Frankenstein (1931) 19,536


That's a good top ten list and with only three that were reviewed at less than three stars -- "Pitch Black," "Predator" and "The Hidden." But I'd have to look them up and don't think I don't have my list of guilty pleasures where I know the film is not that great but I liked it anyway. I know everyone doesn't take up a lot of time making up such a list -- it's partially off-the-cuff, but "Pitch Black" in the company of those other films doesn't work for me. I don't think they were as overwhelmingly panned as "Terminator Salvation." Sometimes a film gets reviewed for just being too presumptive of its greatness and it shows up on the screen. Perhaps Christian Bale wasn't just railing out against the lighting grip, actually thinking, "Hey, I'm trying to turn this piece of crap into something that has a chance of making money."

Right off, Twohy, the director of "Pitch Black" also directed "The Arrival," a far better sci-fi flick for me and much better reviewed.

I'm seeing it on Monday, so will report on my take on it, too. Thanks for your feedback.

I wouldn't worry about big crowds if you're going to see TS -- it lost out by 2 million bucks to, of all movies, "Night at the Museum" last night. If Saturday night doesn't improve, it's headed towards doing about half of what was expected.

Yet, it's getting about 8 out of 10 of the user reviews on IMDb -- very suspicious, however, in only one day and one night of attendance.

The Guardian, UK Top Ten Sci-Fi Films:

Follow link to find out how they did it -- lots of scientists in their poll.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/page/0,12983,1290764,00.html


Our expert panel votes for the top 10 sci-fi films


1. Blade Runner (1982) Dir: Ridley Scott
Whether you prefer the original theatrical version (with a bored-sounding narration and without the famed unicorn scenes) or the director's cut of a few years later (sans narration and unicorn duly re-inserted), Blade Runner was the runaway favourite in our poll.

The story revolves around Harrison Ford's policeman, Rick Deckard, and his hunt for four cloned humanoids, known as replicants, in a dystopian version of Los Angeles. Replicants have been deemed illegal and Deckard is a blade runner, a specialist in exterminating them.

The film is loosely based on Philip K Dick's short story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? "Blade Runner is the best movie ever made," says Stephen Minger, stem cell biologist at King's College London. "It was so far ahead of its time and the whole premise of the story - what is it to be human and who are we, where we come from? It's the age-old questions."

It also discusses consciousness with an attempt to formulate a way to tell a human from a machine. The Voight-Kampff empathy test is used by the police in the film to identify the replicants - who have memories implanted and are programmed with artificial emotions. "The Voight-Kampff empathy test is not far away from the sort of thing that cognitive neuroscientists are actually doing today," says Chris Frith of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College, London.

Debates rage on whether Deckard himself is a replicant. Ridley Scott says that he is artificial, but Harrison Ford argues that during filming Scott told him Deckard was human. Whatever the answer, it is a worthy winner also because of the quality of the film-making: Vangelis' brooding score, Rutger Hauer's replicant's seminal "I've seen things..." speech and that shot of the future LA cityscape, which kicks off the story.


2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Dir: Stanley Kubrick
A very close second, this mystifying story came out of a collaboration between Kubrick and science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke. It achieved enormous fame for its then revolutionary special effects.


Spacecraft consultants Frederick Ordway and Harry Lange, who had worked for Nasa, persuaded companies such as Boeing and IBM to supply prototypes and technical documents for use in the film. Astronauts visiting the set at Borehamwood referred to it as "Nasa East".

Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at Edinburgh, praises 2001 for "the brilliance of the simulations - still never done better despite all the modern computer graphics. The brilliance of using Brazilian tapirs as 'prehistoric animals'. The brilliance of the cut from the stick as club, to the space shuttle. Kubrick declaring that once tool use begins - the rest is inevitable. Hal: the first of the super computers with its honeyed East-Coast-Establishment voice."


3. Star Wars (1977)/Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The first two films of the original Star Wars trilogy make it onto the list probably for reasons of nostalgia rather than science.

Essentially westerns set in space, they both cover the universal themes of good versus evil while making lead actors Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher spit out mind-boggling technospeak on a regular basis. There is also an element of mysticism (which some say sets them apart from the rest of science fiction), with the idea of an all-pervading "force" that can be harnessed by certain people for good or evil.

The epic saga revolves around the battle between the all-enslaving Empire (led by the Emperor, a force-wielding maniac and his part-human part-machine henchman Darth Vader) and a small band of rebels.

Its use of science is sketchy at best - light-speed travel is dealt with by the use of a "hyperspace" where the normal laws of physics don't seem to apply and force-wielding Jedi fight with theoretically impossible lightsabers - but the emphasis here is certainly not on answering the problems of the human condition. Two of the first blockbusters, they also started the franchises for toys, games and replicas that no science fiction film can do without nowadays.


4. Alien (1979) Dir: Ridley Scott
Remembered for the iconic scene of an infant creature bursting bloodily through John Hurt's chest, but Alien was about much more. An interstellar mining vessel takes onboard a lifeform with concentrated acid for blood and two sets of jaws, which then messily dispatches the crew.

Praised for the gothic set design and Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of reluctant hero Ellen Ripley, it is notable for its underlying themes of motherhood, penetration and birth. But for UCL space physiologist Kevin Fong it's the mundanity of the crew's lifestyle that makes it stand out.

"For the first time we got the idea that, in the far-flung future, people who live and work in space might be a bunch of Average Joe slobs sitting around with leftover pizza, smoking and playing cards to pass the time," he says. "It captures much of what long duration space flight is about now: dirty, sweaty and claustrophobic with long periods of boredom followed by moments of sheer terror."


5. Solaris (1972) Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
Remade by Steven Soderbergh in 2002, but the original still holds a fascination for fans of the novel by Stanislaw Lem. A psychologist travels to a base on a remote planet to replace a mysteriously deceased scientist. There he encounters the secretive survivors - and his dead wife. Reality is supplanted by the increasingly attractive alternative of the planet's alien intelligence.

"The 1972 Solaris is perhaps the only film to address the limits of science set by our constrained human perceptions, categories and tendency to anthropomorphise," says Gregory Benford, professor of physics at University of California, Irvine and author of Timescape. "That it is also a compelling, tragic drama, not a mere illustrated lecture, makes it even more important."


6. Terminator (1984)/T2: Judgment day (1991) Dir: James Cameron
Robots from 2029 send a relentless cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) back to 1980s Los Angeles to assassinate the mother of a future human rebel. One of a few films to deal with problems of time travel, such as the grandfather paradox: if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, you wouldn't exist so wouldn't be able to travel back in time to...

The sequel featured another cyborg made of shapeshifting metal. "Despite the incoherent fictional science, it is a perfect piece of film-making in its genre, which I would call 'action movie' rather than 'sci-fi movie' if it were not for the fact that there are very few, if any, movies that genuinely deserve to be called sci-fi," says David Deutsch, quantum physicist at Oxford.


7. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Dir: Robert Wise
Set amid the cold war paranoia of postwar America, a flying saucer lands in Washington DC and a humanoid alien, Klaatu emerges, accompanied by his robot, Gort.

Klaatu (who pronounces: "I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it") tries to convince the world's leaders - and when they won't listen, scientists - to stop the rush toward mutual destruction.

It is cited by Beagle 2 project leader Colin Pillinger as one of his favourite sci-fi films. "During the showing, the cinema manager pulled a classic Orson Welles stunt and stopped the film to announce that a spaceship had landed."


8. War of the Worlds (1953) Dir: Byron Haskin
Famously adapted for radio by Orson Welles, HG Wells' tale of a Martian invasion of Earth became another cold war movie.

"The idea that there could be life that's developed in completely other circumstances in a completely different world which you would never recognise. That's a very appealing idea," says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, California.


9. The Matrix (1999) Dir: Andy & Larry Wachowski
Cod philosophy, fetish clothing and incredibly cool special effects combined in 1999 for a fresh take on man-made artificial intelligence enslaving the planet.

The science behind the fiction is conspicuously absent, being replaced with the permanently befuddled Keanu Reeves stumbling around being confused by nonsense about spoons, and jumping off buildings. Tak Mak, a cell biologist at University of Toronto, doesn't think this matters: "It's good old-fashioned entertainment value ... Future bad guys fighting future good guys."


10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Dir: Steven Spielberg
"We are not alone", declared the poster and this tale of Richard Dreyfus' escalating obsession with alien visitors against a backdrop of a secretive, omniscient government agency has provided the core of science fiction ever since.

"While it is highly unlikely that 'they' will rock up in a vehicle that looks like a giant, inverted Christmas tree or make their presence known by doing Jean Michel Jarre impressions on a cosmic synthesiser, Close Encounters is for me still the classiest alien visitation story in celluloid history," says UCL's Kevin Fong.

love The Host and Dark City, thinking of buying the directors cut of Dark City that came out a while ago

i expected night at the museum to do well this weekend, stiller has been out promoting like crazy, it's a family movie on a holiday weekend, pretty good timing for a release

I just saw that cut on one of the HD movie channels, I think HD Net, and would like to eventually replace my DVD with the Blu-Ray -- the darkness of the movie actually has detail in it! Haven't seen "The Host" since it was released.

The early reviews are probably mostly teenage boys who are most impressed by explosions and loud noises rather than cool ideas.

IMDB has a breakdown of the voting patterns, but I haven't checked it out yet. My guess is that it's doing well with the younger male audiences.

I know there's a lot of juvenile "weighter" votes -- in other words, they haven't even seen the movie yet, or have just seen it, and would vote any action movie with a big star with a lot of 9's and 10's. It's probably the least reliable statistical poll unless it's a really good independent film which gets released into the art movie houses. I still will stick by the critics who give sci-fi a fair shake -- they certainly liked the new "Star Trek" movie (and that's unusual as they've not given good reviews to over half of that string of the movie franchise, but as far as I'm concerned, that's right on the button -- only three of the Star Trek movies are 3 stars with no 3 1/2 stars and dream-on about 4 stars). Well until now -- the new movie might end up with 4 stars in the annual compilation -- Premiere Magazine publishes that compilation in their January issue.

McG is a television producer who directed a few films, nothing especially that good, and music videos. It looks to me like he was influential in getting a story that would have fit into an hour TV episode. Are you giving a 6.7 rating for the story, the acting, the directing, the production design, the soundtrack, the special effects? Will you really care about this movie and want to see it again soon? What are the cool ideas in TS? Apparently nobody wants to the divulge them.

Thursday night through Sunday, the box office picked up some steam at $56,382,000. The picture's estimated budget is $ 200,000.00, so it needs tomorrow, the week but especially next weekend's box office to show enough steam for a profit. "Star Trek" muddled through at least three meagerly profitable efforts and after also being put into the dead horse category as far as franchises has reinvented itself for the third time and will make a lot of money, not to mention overwhelmingly good reviews. I'm doubting TS can even come close.

Okay, so I saw Terminator this afternoon, and have just come home.

I thought the plot was a bit slow, muddled, and somewhat lacking in the first third of the movie. It did continue to pick-up though towards the latter parts.

Of course, it was action-packed, with good special effects, that did not let down, as I would have expected. Some times, perhaps a wee bit over the top.

Overall, for me, I found it to be good entertainment. Having said that, seeing that the ending was left up in the air for a sequel, I do feel that this movie should have had a definite ending to it, and not have any further sequels. It's time to move on with a different storyline, in my opinion.

The producers have claimed it's not a bid to restart it as a franchise (three parts is a trilogy and really hasn't yet become a franchise), but this is really Part IV and if it makes the money they are hoping for, there will be more. It's success now really depends on next weekend when it's up against the newest Disney-Pixar animated film "Up." If it drops by half, it's in big trouble.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ben Stiller's "Night at the Museum" sequel crushed the fourth installment of the "Terminator" franchise in a battle for North American box office supremacy between two special-effects extravaganzas.

According to studio estimates issued on Monday, "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" earned $70 million during the four days beginning Friday, outperforming the expectations of its distributor, 20th Century Fox.

On the other hand, Warner Bros.' "Terminator Salvation" -- the first in the series without Arnold Schwarzenegger -- made its debut at No. 2 with a disappointing $53.8 million.

"Star Trek" slipped one place to No. 3 with $29.4 million in its third weekend. Reigning champ "Angels & Demons" fell to No. 4 with $27.7 million in its second weekend, although the Tom Hanks Vatican thriller remained the top choice internationally.

Big studio movies rarely open against each other during the lucrative summer period in order to avoid cannibalization. But in this case families made up almost half of the audience for "Night at the Museum" while men accounted for 70 percent of the audience for "Terminator."

Stiller, one of Hollywood's most reliable box office performers, set a personal live-action record with his new film. His previous best was the $46 million start for "Meet the Fockers" in 2004.

The 43-year-old actor reprises his role as a night security guard at a museum where historical figures come to life. The cast also includes Robin Williams as former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and Amy Adams as aviatrix Amelia Earhart.

Fox, a unit of News Corp said it would have been happy with a four-day opening above $60 million. The film cost about $125 million to make.

The first movie, "Night at the Museum," earned $30 million during its first three days just before Christmas 2006, and went on to make $250 million.

The previous "Terminator" film, "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" finished with $150 million in 2003, an indication of the new film's underdog status in the weekend derby.

Since opening on Thursday, in order to get a head start on the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend, "Terminator Salvation" has earned $67.2 million, falling short of industry forecasts in the $70 million range.

But Warner Bros. domestic distribution president Dan Fellman said he was happy with the performance, noting that the latest entry in the 25-year-old sci-fi franchise had a narrowly defined target audience.

The post-apocalyptic film, in which "Batman" star Christian Bale takes on the freedom-fighter role of John Connor, cost about $180 million to make, the studio said.

The Time Warner Inc unit paid $50 million for domestic distribution rights from closely held producer Halcyon Co. Sony Corp's Columbia Pictures has foreign rights.

After 11 days, Columbia's "Angels & Demons" has earned $87.8 million, far short of the $145 million haul in the same time period for its 2006 predecessor "The Da Vinci Code."

But the studio has said it never expected the second film to be as big. As was the case with "The Da Vinci Code," the film is a much bigger international draw. Its overseas total stood at $198.3 million through Sunday.

I don't know. Perhaps I was a bit generous, maybe it's more like a 6.3. My rating is based on how much I enjoyed it (all aspects combined).


No, probably not.


I liked the various terminator models (even though they could have been done much better), and found the whole portrayal of an Earth dominated by machines rather creepy. I thought the big terminator was good. And I really liked the terminator motorcycles, not because they were very effective, but because they represented the idea that terminator-machines didn't have to be made in human form. The Hunter-Killer with the built-in maxi-terminator on top of it was pretty cool also.

I think the big problem with this movie is that it doesn't spend any time letting the audience get to know the enemy. In order for terminators to be frightening you have to spend some time (on film) with them, up close and personal. And you have to see them do some killing. For all the explosions in this movie, I don't remember seeing much blood. What was the Original Terminator Film rated, "R" or "PG"? What was this one rated?

The 1-10 ratings system becomes too arbitrary which is why the four and five star system prevails.

I tend to give some movies a rating of 2-1/2 stars if I enjoyed it the first time but wouldn't likely see it again. 2 stars if I was underwhelmed and would avoid seeing it again. However, I wouldn't throw up objections to a friend or relative in either rating if that's what they wanted to watch. But they know they might hear some comments from me, "I always wondered why this flopped at the box office." Less than 2 stars, I might excuse myself to go to the bathroom and escape out the window.

The flash forwards in Terminator II I thought were outstanding and really all I needed to know about the future to imagine my own outcome. I doubt anyone will be making a final film where we conquer the machines at last. They did that with "The Matrix," which was essentially man-against-machine -- a supernatural HAL computer, if you will. But, like "Alien" franchise, you never know when they will find a way to bring everything back to square one and start an entirely new movie, mostly a carbon copy with a barely passable story.

The first and second Terminator were R rated (the Schwazenegger butt and darkly vague frontal nudity shots?) -- you know that the people who are responsible for the ratings will let all sorts of usually really gross, bloody violence throughout a film and rate it PG, then rate another R because of one part of a sex scene or even the F word used once too often. Did they make a mistake with IV in going for a PG-13? I believe we can figure out what was going on in their heads for that one.

I had built no trust in the talent of who was going to write, produce and direct this movie, maybe even a distrust -- if there is a success, so be it. With DVD and cable/satellite TV, they can end up making money with a low box office (it'll have to do over $ 300 M to make any money in theaters) and maybe not as much as they expected, but sequels have been made on that basis. If it drops down to only the male gamers going back to see it again (when they can just buy the game), it's going into murky waters. It can make up some of that with foreign box office but releasing it first in the US could have been another marketing mistake.

I anticipate at least one more Terminator film as a sequel to TS. The logical story to tell would have been the lead-up to John Connor sending Kyle back in time (closing the "loop" so to speak), but they didn't do that in TS. Instead, TS seemed to be setup for (or backstory for) the Kyle goes back in time story.

Even though TS was a disappointment, I don't think we've seen the end of the Terminator world yet.

I think you bring up a good point here. From that perspective, the Sarah Connor TV series was superior, because you did get to know some of the characters better.

Again, to emphasize your point above, this makes the earlier Terminator movies much better than the current one, because you got to see a Terminator character (Arnold S.) on a more personal level.

I doubt I will see any more Terminator movies, should they come out, at least not in the theatre anyways.

I know that Rosborne had posted another discussion on SCC, but this thread has been more active and it's related so I'm posting this from Sci-Fi Wire:

RIP Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Why did Fox pick up Dollhouse and not Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles for the fall television season? Network executives discussed their decisions on those shows, as well as reasons for moving Fringe to Thursdays and other scheduling moves, during a conference call with journalists before today's upfront fall television presentation.

Kevin Reilly, Fox's president of entertainment, said that ratings were not the only factor when it came to deciding whether the low-rated Dollhouse would get a second season and remain on Friday nights.

"First, it's a bet on [creativity], and that's something that has never changed," Reilly said. "And I'm happy to say we're doing that. You know how inspired Joss Whedon is. It's a bet on Joss. The DVR numbers are a marker for us, so it is a factor, and we did see an uptick in the ratings from a 1.5 to a 2. That was a pattern for us that we liked, betting on Joss, and I think you're going to see it grow next season."

But is it the factor of "the devil you know," as opposed to the bringing in a new unproven series? "Absolutely," Reilly added. "In fact, I venture to say that if we had put new shows on Friday night, in particular there'd probably be a lot of cynicism about 'Well, wait, ... you're creating an entire new night of television?' Not to mention if we'd canceled Joss' show I'd probably have 110 million e-mails this morning from the fans," he said with a laugh. "So that's exactly right. Bet on something that has a core that you believe can work."

But that doesn't mean Fox will accept low numbers on Friday nights, said Peter Rice, Fox's chairman of entertainment. "We think that we can grow the show," he said, adding: "The show became much stronger creatively during the course of the season. Joss feels very energized about it. And we believe in him as a creator. We've had a lot of success in the past, and we feel that he can build the show, and it can grow in the new season ... and that Friday is a good place for it to do that."

As for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Fox executives viewed that series quite differently. "Terminator has completed its run," Reilly said flatly. "And I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show. It was not an either/or [with Dollhouse]. We did see it tailing off a bit. It had a nice creative core, but ultimately we made the bet on Dollhouse for the night. We had some other shows we thought would make a better profile for the night. So that's it for Terminator." Dollhouse will follow two comedies, the new series Brothers and the returning Til Death.

According to Reilly, Terminator "was not an inexpensive show," and Fox had to "make some choices on the night. But, ultimately, we looked at the ratings track on Monday, where it had a pretty consistent run, and then on Friday, where it moved to. And that trend line was not pointing in the right direction. ... But we make no apologies for that show. We had a huge launch for that show, as you remember. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried, and felt it was time to move on."

Thanks for posting that, LW. It gives the TV viewing public a small window in to the mentality at FOX. I don't happen to agree with it.

I think the series should have been granted at least one more season. If they weren't going to extend it, I would have liked to see a more definitive ending, instead of leaving some plots up in the air.

This is exactly why, with some series, I don't feel like investing time into it, knowing that there's a high chance that it could be cancelled before it really concludes, in a more natural storyline.

As a regular viewer of the SCC series, I felt cheated in the end.

Except that I think the writers became a little lost by getting tangled up in the sub-plots themselves, as some of them were dropped like a transitory experiment they hadn't thoroughly properly mapped out (it's called "writing by the set-of-one's-pants"). I really liked the first season and when the second season began, I watched the first few episodes and lost interest (I could only DVR two shows on at that time and chose not to record SCC with the idea of seeing it in the Summer re-runs), then picked up on it about mid-season where the thought immediately entered my mind -- I didn't feel that I had missed anything. Towards the end, when it moved to Fridays, I did go back to watch some of the previous episodes on HULU and wasn't that impressed. If it goes into syndication during the summer, I might watch the last season in sequence. This just didn't happen to me, it happened the sci-fi fan base -- it couldn't have lost half its viewership from the passably interested general viewer deciding to watch or record something else -- they now are able to clock-in DVR recorded shows that are watched later, but that's not going to impress sponsors as they know their commercials aren't being watched in a time-shift recording.

Rosborne has pointed out that he believes there aren't many film critics who are receptive to sci-fi. The problem is there aren't many writers who can write sci-fi, so they write like they are creating a night-time soap, a cop show, a hospital show, a procedural crime show, a vampire show, et al, refer to some science (in SCC, robotics) and let the directors stick in some special effects.