Comments on: Terminator Salvation: A Nerd’s Notes

By: republibotthreepointoh

republibotthreepointoh — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:31:46 +0000

The perfect tragic ending to that movie is him pinned under the ocean within sight of the “Blue Fairy.” Everything from that point on is gratuitious and pointless. Also, obviously fully-grown adult clones with all the memories intact – that’s just goofy. I’d accept time travel before I’d accept that, it’s just too laborious a plot device.

The original BSG used a trained chimp named “Shirley” in a robo-teddybear suit to portray “Muffett the Daggit,” which was Boxey’s pet. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but the chimp proved to be hard to work with, prone to freakouts and crapping in the suit, and they started to phase “Muffett” out after Shirley bit Noah Hathaway on the set one day.

The Cylons themselves were always stunt men in armor. When the show started filming, the script said they were reptilian aliens in armor, but then the network balked about killing so many aliens, so they hurriedly re-wrote it so that the Cylons were machines (in armor).

By: lostepic

lostepic — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:53:30 +0000

first. the mom was cloned from a lock of hair he had and she couldnt live long because the process wasnt perfect. That wasnt dumb as much as him “dying” at the end of the day on his own after being with her. It was depressing, and anti speilberg. Of course nothing is as dumb as almost everyone I know when they saw the movie saying, “so whats with the aliens in the end of the movie?”
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True. But I would dare say that Simpsons struggles at this more than most. SG1 survived because SCIFI channel picked it up and revamped it when showtime dumped it.
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Oh and the original BSG had monkeys. Yes. It was a theorized plot point that the Cylons were really Apes in a suit. What can I say “Planet of the Apes” was big so everyone was doing it.

By: republibotthreepointoh

republibotthreepointoh — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:03:44 +0000

AI was a good movie that was ruined by its coda. That whole “We bent time so your mommie could come back for an evening” made no logical sense and undercut everything else that happened before. Up to that point, it felt *basically* like a Kubric movie. That happy ending felt tacked on and tasted to me of Spielberg brand cheeze (TM).

I think a show *can* have a ludicrously long run and still stay vital, but it’s got to figure out a way to reinvent itself about every five years or so. The Simpsons is the classic and best example of this. Stargate: SG1 did a really good job of that, too.

Incidentally, we’ve got an interesting article on my site about what B5 set out to be and how it reinvented itself after the first season when they realized ‘what they set out to be’ didn’t quite work. If you’re interested in that sort of thing.

By: lostepic

lostepic — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:21:41 +0000

lack of perfect pace and implimintation of characters and story arcs is the death of any story. Reading that the last season of BSG was….not up to par of what it should is disheartening as I am about to watch it.
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Great point on B5. That says it all. If a show is pushed to continue beyond its life or is resurrected it starts to loose the magic and flar that made us love it. Monk, dare I say the Simpsons, ER, even Law and Order has suffered that. There are exceptions but few.
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I liked AI even though I recall many people and critics not liking it. Aside from the fact that it was to be a Kubrick film and Spielberg, who was originally only a producer on the project, picked up the pieces and directed the film to the best he could the way Kubrick would, after his death.

By: republibotthreepointoh

republibotthreepointoh — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:07:42 +0000

@ Kemper – thanks!
@ Church – I hadn’t thought of that, but it is an interesting notion that Galactica was actually better before it had a more traditional season. If they’d done 4 years and 52 episodes, it probably would have been a lot better than 5 years (by default) and 72 episodes. That’s kind of an inherent problem in the franchise, interestingly. The *original* galactica wasn’t intended to be a weekly series – it was intended to be a series of 4 or 5 “Movies of the week” per year. They made the decision to go weekly after the first 2 of these “Movies” were already filmed, and the third was half-done, and the show was never really up to the demands of a weekly production.

I dunno. I don’t think we’ve seen the definitive version of Galactica yet. Hm…maybe I should do something about that on Republibot.com…?

By: Church

Church — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:32:53 +0000

Yeah, BSG would have been even better if they halved the number of episodes. Aside from the (short) first season, each one has a bunch of filler in the middle that didn’t really need to be there. Although they probably helped pay for the cool CGI stuff in the good ones.
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I just saw on Twitter that Lev actually liked Spielberg’s “AI,” so I’m wondering if all our Sturm und Drang about BSG is worth it after all. Pearls before swine, and all that.

By: Kemper

Kemper — Wed, 27 May 2009 13:57:20 +0000

@ Church – Thanks. I needed that.
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@ rosseau – I’m not trying to convince everyone to watch BSG. I have a very narrow focus. I just enjoy browbeating a certain writer who has a blog called ‘Nerd World’ and stubbornly refuses to watch one of the best reviewed sci-fi TV shows ever made. Even after he himself called it a ‘triumph’ in his Star Trek write-up. *ahem*
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And just for the record, I am not a blind BSG fanatic. The last two seasons had some problems, and it’s obvious that they made stuff up as they went along. (Which Ron Moore freely admits.) rb3.0 has a good point that the 4th season was probably too long. The finale didn’t satisfy a lot of fans. (I liked it, but it wasn’t perfect.) But even at it’s worst, there was always a great moment lurking around the corner.
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Plus, hot killer robots in slinky red dresses? What’s not to like?

By: republibotthreepointoh

republibotthreepointoh — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:35:35 +0000

I think Clonus is late 70s, actually.

Over at John Varley’s website, he says the problem with this movie is that there’s really not a Terminator in it. Sure, Marcus probably is intended to fit the bill, but if he’s got a human brain and a human heart and thinks he’s human, then he’s not really a Terminator is he? He’s The Tin Man. It’s a good point.

Here’s my problem with the ending of Galactica: Once upon a time there was a show called “Babylon 5″ which was pretty brilliant, and because it was brilliant it angered the Television gods and was cancelled. The Writer/Producer wrapped up as many plot threads as he could in season 4, and shot a ‘final episode.’ Then it got un-cancelled, and they shot Season 5, which – chronologically – fit in between the penultimate and final episodes of Season 4. Unfortunately, it takes season 5 forever to get going, nothing in there is terribly interesting, most of the major plot threads are already resolved, and when the good stuff finally gets going, most of the season is over, and the ‘good stuff’ mostly consists of people saying goodbye. So in short, the final year of B5 is mostly a frustrating waste of time, and you really don’t miss much of anything if you skip it entirely.

Likewise, the final season of BSG is pretty much just putting stuff on the table and moving it around for no good reason to give the illusion of stuff going on, when in fact the story has ground to a halt. There is some very cool stuff in there, but it’s spread out way too thin. It would have made for a pretty good 10-episode arc, but stretched out over 22 hours, it’s just too much for no real payoff, and most of the stuff introduced in this season is patently only there to fill time. They don’t even bother to resolve most of it.

By: lostepic

lostepic — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:11:53 +0000

Finally saw the movie. Worth the 5 bucks but……it could have been a whole lot better.
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Characters, characters, characters. Moon was perceived to be important but fell flat. as did Marcus, the main character, and Connor. The opening scene of Marcus on death row, which if this spoils it for you they you never saw the theatrical trailer that spoils it, is disjointed and makes for a poor opening, going from that scene to the text detailing the setting.
The characters weren’t fleshed out as we would want them to be and to be honest the idea that an intelligent AI would not take in to account the risky proposition of giving a human an exoskeleton that he wouldnt be against you for, you know, having him betray his people, be the usher of the destructon of the people he cares about.
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Boham Carters character? Love her but why her? Did she really want to be in the movie?
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I love Star Trek and its optimistic outlook. But one must realize that you cant get hung up on one thing. Terminator details that regardless of fate or how dismal the future is there is hope beyond it. As for Star Trek, I always found it humorous that the Federation touted that crime, murder, war, hunger, poverty ended in their world, i.e. community, only to have them, succumb to having to deal with war, murder, crime, etc… all of which has been dealt with in either OS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, even the dreaded Enterprise, which I must admit I have enjoyed on occasion. Don’t tar and feather me, I said on occasion.
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@Church: Thanks! I am all about being civil and intelligent in such discussions. Thanks for shaking things up.
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@rosseau I get what your saying you really should invest and get TNG complete series. The show really is all about characters. But one must understand character driven shows/movies is new to mainstream Hollywood still. That concept use to be reserved for indie, European, or dramas. Rarely did you find it in mainstream action or even scifi, while there are exceptions in those genres.
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This summer, BSG final season here I come. I understand I may be disappointed. There are not too many shows that create a decent ending to a series unless they planned it from the beginning. Thus I am extremely hopeful and confident that the final season of Lost next year will be the best.
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Fans can be biased. Such as, all fantasy writers own their lives to Tolkien, all Scifi films own theirs to Blade Runner or Star Wars which changed the clean sleek style of the ’70s and brought the genre to mainstream with legitimate quality. So as long as people notice when a film, book, comic, etc… is faking it or copying a classic or ripping of a premise from a previous idea or creator, then we are good.
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Speaking of rip offs. I still can’t get over the fact that Michael Bay’s “The Island” is a rip off of “Clonus”, A B-Sci-Fi movie made in the ’80s.

By: rosseau

rosseau — Wed, 27 May 2009 02:39:38 +0000

@Kemper: Thanks mate.

@Kemper and @Church: Because you guys, I believe, are the BSG experts, I do want to say that there is no real reason I haven’t seen the show. I just came in late, saw the first season on DVD, enjoyed it very much and appreciated the glorious political questions/anologies; however, I never got around to the rest of the series. It’s like reading Melville’s Moby Dick: you know his book is a classic, you love the dozen or so pages you read so far, but you put it down thinking, “Eh, I have time.” That will probably be my summer: reading Moby Dick and watching BSG! (Forgive the constant book name dropping; despite my bad spelling and grammar, I am a book guy and they, those novels, came to mind today).

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The Star Trek TV shows that I watched, for what its worth to anybody, had some of the political/philosphical elements BSG is reputed to have, and for me, those were the best things about TNG, DS9, and Voyager. Maybe not the last one.
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Oh, and Turdburger! (I got nothin’) If any are on the East Coast, goodnight. Trying to inflate the number of comments tonight to this wonderful, wonderful blog…