Terminator: Will's Version

We've designed our blockbuster assault on Skynet, let's talk character.

Obviously the main character is John Connor. We see him as a scrappy, battle-hardened general, not an action hero. 

That Ohio Class missile boat we talked about? Well, it was on patrol during Judgment Day and has its original crew. Now they're old men who've spent the last 30 years surviving at sea. They're pirates bent on revenge.

The hacker team is lead by an old Google exec who has gathered a band of young hackers around him. This is personal as he feels partially responsible.

The tunnel rats are a bunch of West Virginia coal miners who gradually made their way to LA. This allows us to reference the devastation they saw on their trek.

We'll need some young guys who've grown up in the rubble and are intrigued by the pre-Judgment Day life the old-timers describe.

Not bad.

Terminator Week Two: Assault on Skynet

As noted before, what Terminator Genisys did with the assault on Skynet was unimaginative and dull, absolute shite.

We've spent the last day thinking about how we would do it, and here's what we've come up with...

Computer hackers hack Skynet's system and confuse it with dummy reports of human activity in and outside Los Angeles. HKs are in the sky following the dummy reports.

The battle begins with Connor's army ambushing a Skynet convoy. Skynet responds by sending a relief column. Connor's army then ambushes the relief column. Becuase its system is getting contradictory information and multiple reports, Skynet isn't sure what is real and what is not real.

With the base defenses weakened Connor begins the attack in earnest. At sea an old Ohio class missile boat launches all 144 of it's Tomahawk Missiles. Unsure of the information presented, Skynet hesitates. Its defenses nab some of the Tomahawks, but not enough, and the base is significantly damaged. 

Connor assaults the main base. For months Connor's engineers have been tunneling under Skynet, now they blow the main gate  sky high. Connor and his men, riding MRAPs from the old Marine base at Pendleton, storm the base. From there it's room to room fighting, but eventually Connor's men fight their way inside the core...

Terminator: Terminator Week Two

Out of curiosity we looked up the opener to Terminator Genisys:

Everything about that clip is just so off.

We always got the impression that Reese knew John Connor, but only from afar, almost like officers in the Revolution saw George Washington. But here they're close friends.

In The Terminator and T-2 the human army has a scrappy, can-do feel to it. They seem like their pulling old weapons out of the rubble. The background radio chatter really adds something in The Terminator. In Genisys they look like well trained, armed and prepared US Army Rangers.

Watch the conversation Connor and Reese have. The scene is all wrong. The corridor should be packed. An infantry squad should be walking out. Soldiers carrying ammo cans should be squeezing past. There should be a medical team setting up in the background.

The attack on the Skynet base show zero imagination. Coming up with what that should look like would be a good mental exercise, no? Tune in later this week.

Terminator Week Day 5

In The Terminator James Cameron had a great idea. In Terminator-2 James Cameron took a great idea and made it even better. He smartly stopped the saga right there. 

He even more smartly axed this scene:

It's as bad as George Lucas CGIing Hayden Christiansen into the end of Return of the Jedi, only Cameron left it out.

Now, if you were going to go back into the Terminator universe what should you do?

Go back. Forget Rise of the Machines, which takes place after Judgement Day, dumbfucks. Make The Rise of John Connor.

One of the smart things about T-2 is the opening military scene looked and felt like the military scenes in The Terminator. Make it look that. And show the final assault on Skynet.

And layoff the time travel crap.

Terminator Week Day 4: The Terminator

Last night we watched The Terminator for the first time in a decade and half...and it's astonishingly good.

Plot, pacing, duologue, the whole bit. Don't tell us James Cameron doesn't know how to make a movie. 

The man pays attention to detail. Sarah Connor sits at a table in a club amongst beer bottles and cigarette butts. The clocks are right. <>We recall a line in T-2 about the Terminator being wanted for killing 17 cops, and by our count, he killed 17 cops in the police station.

The Terminator takes place in an LA gritty like NYC. No glitz and glamour here, just Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese fighting for their lives.

Across three acts Sarah Connor is changed utterly. In the first she's a contented young woman, university student and waitress, who lets face it, is just waiting for the right guy to come along. In the second act her world is shattered. In the third Sarah Connor becomes the bad-ass she made famous in T-2. 'Move it soldier!' she shouted at Reese, and of course, 'You're terminated fucker.' In the last scene she's driving around Mexico with a German Sheppard and a .357.*

Paul Winfield and Lance Hendrickson play coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, pill popping police detectives, tropey as hell but well done. We love it when they grab M-16s.

Younger reader(s) this is an 80's film. If you want to know what 1984 looked and felt like, watch The Terminator.

*Hey, anyone see the final scene they cut from T-2? It made us air-sick.