Comment by Magic Marmalade:
The movie I hate to love.
OK, so I'm afraid I'm ging to have to be "that guy" who doesn't like this movie... or rather, I do, but against my will, or better judgement.
The reason is, in the initial instance, I grew up watching the original, first Terminator on TV, who's atmosphere, tone, concept, and story totally entranced me, fitting nicely in with the lower budget, performing miracles on a shoestring movie making ethos that John Carpenter made, along with others who made such sci-fi on meagre budgets because this genre was more marginalised back in the day - not so much main stream - and as such, you'd only catch these kinds of movies - Scanners, Terminator, Brainstorm, and others - late at night, on one of those secondary tv channels, so it felt like you'd slipped into some twilight netherworld of your own when watching them...
(I had a 14" colour TV next to my bed then, my second tv, after my Dad's 10" black and white portable one)
...The glow from these small, curious movies being the only light illuminating the room, and drawing me in in such a truly immersive way that no amount of modern big screen TVs, 3D, Imax, and all that jazz could ever hope to match subsequently.
...And along comes this, when I was in my teens, early movie-going years...
...Already dubious, as Arnie already looked too old to play a Terminator - they shouldn't age, surely! - and much less forbidding, formidable, and scary than he did in the first, somewhat detracting from the concept of this character before I'd even set foot in the cinema - and the movie "production values" and budget, had obviously been vastly upscaled, thereby removing most of the things I loved about the first one... this was just
too slick.
And then, we get into all the reasons I really dislike this one, as it has a whole lot to answer for!
...Firstly, the addition of "personalitly" to the Terminator, killed that character stone dead for me, and then adding some throw-away cheesy humour got me really disliking it.
I'll admit, Seeing that opening sequence, with the Robot Terminator head looming through the flames on the big screen then is a movie going experience indelibly etched in my mind, and truly brilliant.. along with the development of Sarah Connor's character, and of course, a brilliant performance by Robert Patrick, now deservingly Iconic, and many other details besides, but all of the cons I've mentioned, plus the truly insufferable, obnoxious hysterical squeaky teen John Connor really set me against it in a big way.
The final insult, which is beyond cheese - but which seems to get everyone else emotionally - and is a total deal breaker for me, is shall we say.. a total
Thumbs Down!
I personally trace everything that I consider wrong in modern cinema to this movie: Self referential, treating your own world building lightly, and buggering about with it, over commercialization due to mega budget bastardisation of something previously good, that had it's own integrity - "rebooting" and the beginning of the age of flogging a once live horse beyond dead, until it's all but fragments... this movie seems to show the way to that, due to it's massive commercial success, and set the trends we now have to suffer.
Objectively, I suppose, it's a very good film, and exceptionally well made, and all that, but it's a bit like that thing people have with rock stars - if you knew them before they were famous, and accepted, it's very difficult to look at them as the icon they have become, especially, with the compromises they have made to get there.
