Akratus
Bleep bloop.
There's a butterfly effect 2 and 3?
Well. . . .
Well. . . .
The Ultimate Movie Thread of Ultimate Destiny
- Thread starter Serge 13
- Start date
yes there have been Sequels, but they have been made for a straight DVD release, so ... yeah. Kinda like the same shit as with Species, I think Species 2 was "okeish", not as entertaining like the first Species movie, but there seems to be even a third movie, which has only seen a DVD release. A DVD release only is like a garand for mediocre quality it seems. Though the main reason why I like Species as movie is because of Gigers work, the actors are shit and the story nonsensical, but hell, Gigers work simply is awesome. Sad that he is dead.
Hey. I liked them. At least I didnt feelt bad watching those movies, because I like the trilogy as whole and the ideas they had, even if I think that both Matrix 2 and 3 are not close to the quality of the first movie, which was a bit disapointing. But to be honest, Matrix 1 has set the bar so high, it was close to impossible to reach that. A trilogy has always that problem. When you save the world/Galaxy or fighting this big kick ass war, where do you go from there? Take Star Wars Episode 5 and 6, Episode 6 is a good ending for the 3 original movies, but compared to Episode 5 it is ... well not as impressive, particularly with the arch of the characters, Luke is a Jedi now, and seriously, you cant really get much further then "I am your father! Search your feelings!", except for making the emperor his aunt or something. Also Ewoks. They simply SUCK.
Hey. I liked them. At least I didnt feelt bad watching those movies, because I like the trilogy as whole and the ideas they had, even if I think that both Matrix 2 and 3 are not close to the quality of the first movie, which was a bit disapointing. But to be honest, Matrix 1 has set the bar so high, it was close to impossible to reach that. A trilogy has always that problem. When you save the world/Galaxy or fighting this big kick ass war, where do you go from there? Take Star Wars Episode 5 and 6, Episode 6 is a good ending for the 3 original movies, but compared to Episode 5 it is ... well not as impressive, particularly with the arch of the characters, Luke is a Jedi now, and seriously, you cant really get much further then "I am your father! Search your feelings!", except for making the emperor his aunt or something. Also Ewoks. They simply SUCK.
Akratus
Bleep bloop.
Agreed on starwars. When it comes to movie series that get shit on, it's too bad the story was usually still open with the one or two good movie(s). Like in the Matrix. But, series like Highlander, Terminator and Alien, whilst receiving bad or terrible sequels, where pretty tightly ended and we can safely ignore the shit. Hell, we can just deal with the open ending and cast all of the shit out of our head canon. At least, that's what I do.
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Oh boy, Alien and Terminator ... don't get me started on those. If you ask me Terminator stoped with T2 - anything the came after that is just a really cruel dream. And Alien had only 3 good movies. The third one ... because of the actor. Fincher tried the best he could. Seriously. If you ever have a chance, get some making-of for Alien 3 and watch it. The fun part is, Fincher is not inside it! The story goes, that he refused to have ANY interview because he could not say anything nice about the studio (20th century fox), now I dont want to ONLY blame the studio, but it seems that they really gave Fincher a lot of issues and preasure, not to mention he was like only the second choice because the first director got fired or something, so he got to the movie in the midle of the production, when they had 12 scripts without a clear choice, some of the sets already done and no clear direction. Its sad to think about what Fincher could have done if he had been there from the start, I mean looking at his later movies. I think he could have delivered a true master piece.
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Akratus
Bleep bloop.
I watched all of the behind the scenes extras for alien 1. It seems alien 3 would be on the other side of the spectrum of interesting material, hah. That is, interesting in how it went wrong rather than right.
And I agree on Terminator. That's what I meant, in my previous comment. In my head there is but one real highlander movie and two real alien and terminator movies.
Right now I'm nearing the end of Der Untergang. And that movie is simply grand. It is a powerhouse of acting. All of the german cast truly give their best. Bruno Ganz really gives it his all in portraying the deranged hitler.
And I agree on Terminator. That's what I meant, in my previous comment. In my head there is but one real highlander movie and two real alien and terminator movies.
Right now I'm nearing the end of Der Untergang. And that movie is simply grand. It is a powerhouse of acting. All of the german cast truly give their best. Bruno Ganz really gives it his all in portraying the deranged hitler.
SnapSlav
NMA's local DotA fanatic
I'm of the camp that draws that line at The Terminator, not even T2.
I grew up on T2, being too young to ever see the first film before its sequel had grown so popular that it was the only one of the two you'd ever find on HBO. I loved it, and by no means will I ever say that it was a bad film. But retrospect is a funny mistress, no matter how you want to treat a thing you look back on. For instance, the retrospect that, even as a kid who never saw the ultra-violent this-is-not-for-kids-to-watch film in theaters, it was still such common knowledge that Arnold's character was the good guy in this film, and the T1000 was a badass molten metal bad guy, so the twist was never successfully pulled off because of that common knowledge. It would've been great had that been kept under wraps, even though it probably still wouldn't have impacted me, since kids on the playground aren't affected by what gets omitted from commercials after the movie is out and they start talking.
But my real qualms with T2 were its contradictions with the established canon of the series. The Terminator established the inevitability of the flow of time, and it used the twist of the film, revealed at the last second, that the Terminator being sent back in time to attempt to kill Sarah Connor was crucial to developing Skynet; that Kyle Reese being sent back in time by his friend John Connor to protect his mother from the attempt on her life was actually to conceive John's very birth. The revelation that all these attempts to stop the inevitable were merely instrumental steps in their culmination, the only really good interpretation of the time travel paradox. But T2 stepped all over this with the idea that they could end Judgement day. It wasn't enough that the ultra awesome spectacle that resulted from Skynet's last ditch attempt at survival was suddenly segmented into multiple attempts and sending several different, increasingly advanced Terminators back in time in several different periods for different objectives, making each totally redundant. No, they had to make it possible to change the future, and insert more paradoxes into the story about a paradoxical notion that the first film had very cleverly addressed. (For those not following along, how do they stop Judgement Day by destroying Skynet before it's created if there was no time travel developed by a future Skynet to warn the past of the impending Judgement Day? How could John Connor exist to stop Judgement Day if his father couldn't travel back in time to have him conceived? How could ANY of the tools used to stop Judgement Day exist if they weren't provided by Judgement Day?)
In that respect, T3 was a "better film" because it brought back the inevitability of the future... in a bad film. I'll still agree with all the later Terminator stuff has a tendency towards shitiness, but hey, at least T3 had a few good concepts down. I love T2, I think it's an immortal film, I just can't stand the contradictions it introduced into the story and I cannot avoid the fact that it simply doesn't stand up to the original.
In other movie news, I was haunted by memories of a movie I'd seen as a kid many years ago, managing to catch on TV several different times, not just seen once, but besides recalling the general plot and how much I enjoyed it, I couldn't remember its name. It was getting to bother me so much, I was almost about to use the thread here at NMA to inquire about things we're trying to track down, but I didn't enough googling that (I think) I finally found my answer: Warning Sign (1985). Yet again, another fantastic movie from the 80's! What was it about that period of time that led to such great filmmaking that we've since then lost? Anyway, it's a movie about a government lab responsible for creating biological weapons, taking a psychological affliction and mutating it into a bacteria, thus turning a non-contagious malady into an epidemic. Of course, an accident releases the contagion, and now we have a film. It was a "rage virus" before there was rage virus movies. Apocalyptic viral outbreak before there was obsession with zombies. I loved that film, and for a long time I wanted to see it again, and now that I'm pretty sure I tracked it down, it shouldn't be long before I finally can, once more! =D
valcik
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Yup, pretty good one. I'll add tip for Demon Seed (1977), another excellent American sci-fi thriller. There's Proteus, the most badass artificial intelligence evah!
Talking about old sci-fi movies. This one gave me the creeps as child
though I am not sure if because of the robot or the other creature that was present in the movie
----------------------- @SnapSlav
Oh well, I hear yeah. But I think they dodged that issue at least somewhat by never showing really how the apocalypse was prevented. Have you ever seen the alternate ending for T2? Where they show the future, with an old Sarah watching over her grandchildren. It is an interesting look on it, even if I agree that it makes absolutely no sense. T2s real ending is a lot more open in that regard, particularly as far as the time travel thing goes, which yeah, lead to T3 in the end. So you could always assume that Sarah thought she stoped the machines, but they never did really. They just delayed it. But ... we should maybe not try to think to hard about time travel in movies, the whole thing is a contradiction in it self and pure science fiction. So there is no real logic that you could follow anyway, except for the ones that the movie is creating. The moment the movie starts to break its own logic and rules it is where it falls apart. No clue if that is true for T1 and T2. I always take both movies as well done action movies with awesome acting.
But my real qualms with T2 were its contradictions with the established canon of the series. The Terminator established the inevitability of the flow of time, and it used the twist of the film, revealed at the last second, that the Terminator being sent back in time to attempt to kill Sarah Connor was crucial to developing Skynet;
Wasn't this actually established with T2? Maybe I am wrong here, my memory about the first movie is not super fresh, but if I remember correctly she crushed the Terminator and there was no hint in T1 that this machine would be used to crate skynet, again, if my memory doesnt fail me, then I believe this idea came from T2, which made a big part of T2s plot! Though, yeah I also like T1 more then T2. But both are awesome movies in my opinion.
An interesting movie in that sense is Judgment at Nuremberg and Nurmberg (1996) which is a movie dealing with the Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust. An old but still good movies.
though I am not sure if because of the robot or the other creature that was present in the movie
----------------------- @SnapSlav
Oh well, I hear yeah. But I think they dodged that issue at least somewhat by never showing really how the apocalypse was prevented. Have you ever seen the alternate ending for T2? Where they show the future, with an old Sarah watching over her grandchildren. It is an interesting look on it, even if I agree that it makes absolutely no sense. T2s real ending is a lot more open in that regard, particularly as far as the time travel thing goes, which yeah, lead to T3 in the end. So you could always assume that Sarah thought she stoped the machines, but they never did really. They just delayed it. But ... we should maybe not try to think to hard about time travel in movies, the whole thing is a contradiction in it self and pure science fiction. So there is no real logic that you could follow anyway, except for the ones that the movie is creating. The moment the movie starts to break its own logic and rules it is where it falls apart. No clue if that is true for T1 and T2. I always take both movies as well done action movies with awesome acting.
But my real qualms with T2 were its contradictions with the established canon of the series. The Terminator established the inevitability of the flow of time, and it used the twist of the film, revealed at the last second, that the Terminator being sent back in time to attempt to kill Sarah Connor was crucial to developing Skynet;
Wasn't this actually established with T2? Maybe I am wrong here, my memory about the first movie is not super fresh, but if I remember correctly she crushed the Terminator and there was no hint in T1 that this machine would be used to crate skynet, again, if my memory doesnt fail me, then I believe this idea came from T2, which made a big part of T2s plot! Though, yeah I also like T1 more then T2. But both are awesome movies in my opinion.
Yeah, it is really a very good movie and I can recomend it to everyone who is intersted in WW2 movies. Though, make no mistake, pretty much every prominent character they show in the movie had its ties with the Nazis and probably comited at some point war crimes, particularly those that have a military background, characters like Ernst Günther Schenck who was an member of the SS physicians and experimented on humans in concentration camps or Herman Fegelein who was at some point a member of SS units known for war crimes, Jodel, Keitel etc. and many others had to face a trial after the war, much to the surprise of some of those Generals as they seriously believed that they had some kind of political role in rebuilding post-war Germany. It is hard to know about this because the movie obviously doesnt mention this since it covers only a rathe short period of the war. So one might get a to positive image about characters like Fegelein or Scheck when it is not clear in the movie what their true role was in history. Fegelin and his unit have been responsible for clearing areas from jews masked as fighting partisans in the war against the Sovietunion. Some sources say that more then 40.000 people have been killed by his unit alone. He was at some point directly under the command of Heinrich Himmler and even beeing his liason officer in the Führer Headquarters, you dont get promoted to such a position if you have a problem in killing jews.
An interesting movie in that sense is Judgment at Nuremberg and Nurmberg (1996) which is a movie dealing with the Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust. An old but still good movies.
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Yesterday evening I watched The Way Way Back, from the same studio that brought us Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, both movies I've never seen. It's a coming-of-age story with a certain Liam James playing the lead role. He's mediocre at best. It also features Sam Rockwell and Steve Carell, who save the movie from being bad. I thought the movie ended quite abrupt: the last ten minutes are jam packed with content even though the rest of the movie is pretty laid back and slow. I thought the movie was an okay way to spend one hour and a half of my life on, but it's not exceptional or even memorable.
As for the discussion at hand:
Alien and Aliens were brilliant, as were Terminator and Terminator 2. The rest of these franchises is sub par.
Dude, that's Farrah Fawcett. How could she have scared you? She was hot as fuck.
As for the discussion at hand:
Alien and Aliens were brilliant, as were Terminator and Terminator 2. The rest of these franchises is sub par.
though I am not sure if because of the robot or the other creature that was present in the movie
Dude, that's Farrah Fawcett. How could she have scared you? She was hot as fuck.
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SnapSlav
NMA's local DotA fanatic
What? Yes it did. It showed EXACTLY how it was stopped. Cyberdyne's labs were destroyed, all 3 Terminators which had been sent through time were completely destroyed, so there was no longer any means for Skynet to be created, thus preventing Judgement Day. That's what T2 established which was nice for the movie on its own, but a problem for the greater Terminator lore as a whole.
That's my point, that T2 introduced glaring contradictions with the lore the previous film had firmly established, meanwhile the first film didn't contradict itself in the slightest. To answer your question of "if this is true for T1", no it's not.
T1 introduced us to very few concepts and left the course of the movie to determine how important or how true these things were. There were two guys, a scary looking silent type and a shifty looking guy both trying to track down the same girl, one trying to kill her, the other trying to protect her. While on the hunt, we see flashbacks of post traumatic stress from the latter of the hellish life he's from, and part of that was his attachment to a photo of Sarah Connor. Because the whole notion that someone is traveling back in time to stop a psychotic robot from from killing the mother of humanity's future savior sound completely insane, no one believes Reese, including Sarah, however his desperate attempts to answer police interrogation add more exposition to the movie to further flesh out the details of the world.
When the Terminator's unstoppable onslaught makes it clear to everyone that Reese isn't lying, Sarah and Reese go on the run, which gives them enough time to bond, another opportunity to recall the picture of Sarah that Reese had always treasured, and give enough emotional growth between the two characters for them to develop strong feelings and sleep together. Then, when they decide to confront the Terminator in an attempt to destroy it, they manage to to damage it, but otherwise still leave a functional, undeterred Terminator chasing after them. Fleeing into the factory where the Terminator ends up getting crushed, Reese is killed, and Sarah is deeply shook by the tragedy that she's experienced, and the knowledge that a far worse hell awaits the world, and she even knows when. The movie ends with an epilogue of Sarah recording her thoughts for her then-unborn son, when a picture is taken of her, which turns out to be the photo Reese would end up inheriting.
In short, the entire structure of the film was designed around a loop, stressing inevitability, and showcasing that everything which was going to happen would eventually happen. The photo taken of Sarah would be given to her son who would eventually give it to Reese to eventually fall in love with Sarah over it. Sarah knowing Reese's importance in saving her life AND conceiving John would lead her to impart this knowledge onto her son, leaving Reese the only one in the dark why he was given Sarah's photo or that he was knowingly sent on a one-way suicide mission, because it already happened. Every hole there could have been was very carefully addressed, including the matter that the Terminator was a cyborg and therefore could be sent back using the time machine, despite the machine being unable to send inorganic material through time. The second film is where all the incongruities and contradictions became introduced, with a fully-inorganic T1000 being sent back in time, yet the reprogrammed Arnold model is still stripped of its clothes when it travels back, and with the previously mentioned paradoxes being introduced as of the second film. These paradoxes existed as of the second film, not the first one, because the contradictions broke the circular structure of the story that T1 followed, making the time travel ideas theoretically impossible, whereas they were at least consistent in the first film.
No, it was firmly established in the first film. There was a deleted scene that showed the factory in which the Terminator had been crushed was owned by Cyberdyne, so while one could argue that the finished film didn't have that made apparent because the scene had been omitted, it was still intended from the start, rather than retroactively added in as of the sequel. Also remember that the machine never crushed the Terminator's arm, since it was trying to reach Sarah when she activated the machine. Even had T2 never been made, you could still foresee that whoever owned that factory would find a highly sophisticated robotic arm next to a pile of crushed alloy.
In other movie news, I found Warning Sign that I'd been meaning to watch, and indeed it is the movie I was thinking of that I'd seen so many years ago! Damn that was a fine trip through memory lane. Also pretty decent horror. Good watch, if anyone's interested.
I just dont like those boots man. THOSE BOOTS! Ah well ... not that I was really serious anyway, I just find that idea of the "future" where females in space wear such suits pretty hilarious in its own way. It kinda reminds me to HEAVY METAL FAKK 2. Not to mention Alec, I was not born as a pervert child, when I watched the movie I was 10? Maybe? The perversion came, like with all normal people, with puberty.though I am not sure if because of the robot or the other creature that was present in the movie
Dude, that's Farrah Fawcett. How could she have scared you? She was hot as fuck.
I really dont want to start a religious war about the movie now, but ... that would mean T3 is pretty much completely impossible. Lets not go down that route though, the Termiantor franchise is fucked up beyond recognition, with alternate timeline shit, the Sarah Conor TV series, T4 and possibly T5 screwing up the Canon of Terminator more and more. I see T2 as the end of the Terminator series, and in my little dream world, nothing outside of T1 and T2 is canon. But I do understand why someone might think that even if they destroyed Cyberdine and the remains of the Terminator that it didnt stoped the war. I dont agree with this, but that is pretty much the premise for T3. It was impossible to stop the war. That is their explanation. Like it or not.
I have never seen those deleted scenes, so I can not say really much about it. Though, even if the company was owned by cyberdine, the movie never tells you "cyberdine did it all because of this terminator!", again this was explicitly refered to in T2. That is the whole plot of the T2 movie. Nothing in T1 says that Skynet was created by Cyberdine based on the remains of the terminator, as far as T1 goes, the humans in the future know very little about the past anyway and the war, if I remember correctly, Skynet was not even really mentioned by name in T1, but I am not sure about that, I think I have to watch it again some time just for nostalgia. Reese talks about highly advanced machines and a military network build for SAC NORAD by Cyberdine. That is all he knows really. Which makes Conors role even more important since he was told by his mother about the events in the future and that he should hide and prepare.
I am not saying your logic is wrong, but it is your opinion and theory that this is what Cyberdine did with the remains of the Terminator in T1 and that they had enough to reverse engineer it. And knowing T2 this is what they actually did in the end, but if you would for example say that T2 never happend, then all you can do is to speculate that they might or might not have engineered those killer-machine because of the events in T1, or simply to have some artificial inteligence to help in the cold war. The first movie really never explains much here, giving a lot of room to speculation.
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Looking at the deleted scenes (thank god for the internet,no?), I can definitely agree with you that it is very likely that cyberdine eventually engineered Skynet based on the remains of the computer chip. But no reason to argue about it anyway, since it is the plot of the second movie. Like I said, I never watched the deleted scenes for T1 before. Looking at all the deleted scenes right now they do give a lot of new insights in to the movie particularly on Kyles character, albeit I can see why those scenes ended up as cut content. Heh, it is really like Cameron cut all of it with the idea "hey that would make a great story for a Sequel! because there is this one scene where Sarah wants to convince Reese to blow up cyberdine, almost exactly like what she ended up doing in T2"
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All the best parts of Terminator 3 came at the end. My God, that ending.
If they'd been able to slap together a better hundred or so minutes to tack that onto, the movie could have been amazing.
"Skynet was software." The dawning realization that the bunker they were in was the one shown in the original films. The humble beginnings of the resistance. Most of all, I think, the feeling that we were witnessing history, almost prophecy, being fulfilled and subverted at the same time-- The people on the other end of that radio were getting the John Connor that Kyle Reese had lionized in the first film: mysterious stranger who knew the score when everyone else was lost in the dark, man in control, last best hope of humanity. To us, the audience, though: John Connor, scared kid, placed in the right place and forearmed with the right knowledge by the vagaries of fate, forced to play out a pre-ordained part he'd known by rote from childhood but had spent his entire life trying to dodge.
If they'd been able to slap together a better hundred or so minutes to tack that onto, the movie could have been amazing.
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
Yeah, hated that one. One of the most pretentious, self-absorbed movies I've ever seen. Plus, those siblings continue to rip things off from much better sci-fi (in this case, Soylent Green).
A really strange movie is Videodrome, 1983 by David Cronenberg with James Woods:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/
Omid
the baddest witch in town
If you want strange, watch Upstream Color or Primer. They're not even that good, they're just what the hell.
Akratus
Bleep bloop.
You've obviously never watched The Fountain (2006).
Hey I thought Primer was quite good. Upstream Color didn't really interest me.
Omid
the baddest witch in town
Primer was a little 2edgy4me, it's not exactly my style and Upstream Color was a mess.
Quick, imagine the perfect cast for a new Terminator movie!
Did you immediately think of Dany Targaryen, Matt "Fish Fingers & Custard" Smith, and that Australian guy from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes whose head looks kind of like a wedge of metamorphic rock? If so, you might be one of the producers of Terminator: Genisys, and I must politely ask you to leave this forum immediately and walk naked into the open desert.
(Actually, Clark as Sarah Connor might be one of the best choices they could have made for this movie aside from not doing a reboot at all, but her and the presence of J.K. Simmons are the only saving graces I've seen so far. I hope I'm wrong, but when was the last time a pessimist was wrong about a Terminator movie?)
Did you immediately think of Dany Targaryen, Matt "Fish Fingers & Custard" Smith, and that Australian guy from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes whose head looks kind of like a wedge of metamorphic rock? If so, you might be one of the producers of Terminator: Genisys, and I must politely ask you to leave this forum immediately and walk naked into the open desert.
(Actually, Clark as Sarah Connor might be one of the best choices they could have made for this movie aside from not doing a reboot at all, but her and the presence of J.K. Simmons are the only saving graces I've seen so far. I hope I'm wrong, but when was the last time a pessimist was wrong about a Terminator movie?)
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
I hope this 80's movie remakes shit fad goes away fast....
Don't worry, I'm sure they'll move on to 90s movies soon enough.
UniversalWolf
eaten by a grue.
I don't know what could be re-made form the 90s. Most of the franchise movies in the 90s were already continuations of 80s movies. That's why I see it going the opposite direction: re-makes of 1970s movies like Logan's Run.
Speaking of 90s movies, I was trying to put together a "top ten best" list. I failed utterly, since all I managed to come up with was a list of a dozen favorites in chronological order with a few honorable mentions:
Favorites:
Goodfellas-1990
The Silence of the Lambs -1991
Unforgiven -1992
Groundhog Day - 1993
Pulp Fiction - 1994
The Shawshank Redemption - 1994
Casino - 1995
Seven - 1995
Gattaca - 1997
L.A. Confidential - 1997
The Big Lebowski - 1998
Fight Club - 1999
Honorable Mentions:
Reservoir Dogs - 1992
Fargo - 1996
Rushmore - 1998
American Beauty - 1999
The Sixth Sense - 1999
Speaking of 90s movies, I was trying to put together a "top ten best" list. I failed utterly, since all I managed to come up with was a list of a dozen favorites in chronological order with a few honorable mentions:
Favorites:
Goodfellas-1990
The Silence of the Lambs -1991
Unforgiven -1992
Groundhog Day - 1993
Pulp Fiction - 1994
The Shawshank Redemption - 1994
Casino - 1995
Seven - 1995
Gattaca - 1997
L.A. Confidential - 1997
The Big Lebowski - 1998
Fight Club - 1999
Honorable Mentions:
Reservoir Dogs - 1992
Fargo - 1996
Rushmore - 1998
American Beauty - 1999
The Sixth Sense - 1999