'Terminator' 1 and 2 Save Their Reveals for the Right Time | Hacker News Reader

'Terminator' 1 and 2 Save Their Reveals for the Right Time

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154 pointsgeorgecmu151 comments

I think the horror element in T1 that is particularly striking is the invasion and destruction of the police station. I recall the power of that as a kid: the dismissal of the concept of a safe place. I think it shows the idea-power that horror can have.

T1 shows just how terrifying it would be hunted by a killer robot, or by ani killer that simply cannot stopped by any means short of a battle tank. Something the other films, including T2, failed to show.

It did work in T2, because the whole story was different. Oh, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles did a good job of it as well, shame that got cancelled.

It seems like any decent plot succumbs to soap opera writing. e.g. Raised by Wolves season 2. I thought the SCC was a lot of fun for about 6 hours. Then it waned… Sometimes I’ll see a different “written by” on sci-fi credits and think “ahh, that’s the reason!”

Slaughterbots video shows that nothing we have can stop them. Here are some videos:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=40JFxhhJEYk

Real: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ndFKUKHfuM0

Well. That first video was terrifying. I'm too scared to click on the others.

I still got that feeling on T2 - for instance the classic seen where the liquid terminator melts through the jail-style bars. Or the seen where it chases them down the highway at full speed.

It made the robot feel so inescapable.

That scene was incredible! And Robert Patrick as the T1000, he was scary! There was somewhat less terror so, that it was part two didn't help, as a viewer you already knew what a Terminator was.

Arnold was so perfect as the embodiment of the birth of a dangerous, unrefined new force, and Robert Patrick was the perfect turn for the next generation. While Arnold's terminator had unbelievable levels of the familiar properties of strength and durability, handling the bikers exactly the same way the bikers would have handled a 90 pound weakling, the next-gen terminator had a bizarre new capability that we had never encountered. Arnold was frightening because we could imagine exactly how he would pursue us and how our efforts to escape or defend would fail against him. With the Robert Patrick terminator, we were confronted with something much stranger, even alien. Our culture had not yet worked out the consequences of what he could do. In the few moments we had to react, our imaginations could only scratch the surface of what he was capable of. In broad daylight, we were in the dark.

It verges on cosmic horror, where you realize that your imagination, which is fully stocked with you culture's complete menagerie of horrors and abominations, may be utterly inadequate to imagine what is about to happen to you.

(The plot didn't quite deliver on that, since the new terminator was just faster and more unstoppable that the old one, but the fear was there.)

And there's a Gattaca vibe in that the limited (human flesh and old t800) flirt with death to then defeat the superior model.

Just to let you know, it should be "scene" in this case.

Gah! Stupid brain autopilot. Thanks. Sadly, it won't let me edit anymore.

> just how terrifying it would be hunted by a killer robot

Black Mirror, Metalhead did this for me. Those robot dogs are scary.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)

There was a rather disturbing recent TV adaptation of The War of the Worlds[0] that also featured similar killer robots. I found it particularly terrifying, because it nailed down an aspect of realism most action and sci-fi shows purposefully violate - those robots had accurate aim. There isn't much firefighting or daring escapes. You spot one of them (or don't). It spots you. A second later, a bullet goes through your head. Then the robot continues to look for other humans and single-shot killing them on sight.

Almost all the evil robot/AI movies, shows and games give people an impression that robotic weapons are tough, but pretty bad, and have to rely on overwhelming force or sheer numbers to be dangerous. In reality, computers can think, observe and act much faster and with much higher precision than humans. A military-grade skynet robot with a gun may be stupid when it comes to tactics, but will be more than capable of scoring a headshot from a distance, mid-flight, on first shot, before you even know it's there.

(And of course the real reality is that we already have much more terrifying and effective killer robots than anything wielding a firearm https://xkcd.com/652/.)

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_ser...

I remember reading some a Terminator fan-fiction story where most of the time Terminators were intentionally in a downgraded mode w.r.t shooting.

However when things were important Skynet made sure they could shoot properly, at which point they started shooting very accurately.

I don't know if others had this feeling but "No country for old men" felt like a non sci-fi Terminator. The relentless cold blooded death threat aspect.

I wonder if it’s any worse than being hunted by drones; knowing that a fiery death by incendiary bomb is lying in wait.

I can only imagine the PTSD civilians must feel living in areas in which drones have a heavy presence.

It's Cameron's most amazing scene in my opinion. The other arc that's resolved by this scene is that after the safety and sanity of the old world is blasted away by the terminator, Sarah is forced to decide once and for all on Reese. She's left alone, in the dark, hiding under a desk. Reese is searching for her and she's frozen for a moment before she finally decides to trust him and responds to his call. This is why I say that T1 is James Cameron's greatest love story.

Sounds like you would enjoy Assault on Precinct 13. It came out nearly a decade earlier and is basically that police station scene expanded to 90 minutes. Cameron is an exceptional director, but when it comes to horror, it is hard to beat Carpenter.

It's one of the best Sci-fi Thrillers of all times, the pacing is stellar.

Where do you live that a police station seems like a safe place?

Where do you live that if being chased by a murderer, you'd run past a police station rather than seek safety inside?

I get the political angle you are aiming at but it's BS in the absolute.

" The release also sadly lacks the full spectrum of special features that were available on the 2001 release, including script drafts and an hour-long documentary. "

This is something that I noticed as a pattern for DVD releases in general. When DVDs were first arriving, titles were slower to be released. There's plenty of reasoning behind this. However, "they" also did not know what level of effort would be required to get people to buy into DVDs. So the first DVDs were in effect overly produced with so much extra content. The first DVD that I bought was Contact, and the entire second disc is nothing but BTS and making of type content. Skip to the time when Blu-ray/HD-DVD were being introduced, and you had <$5 DVDs in bins at WalMart with 2 or 3 movies on it that had nothing but the movies with essentially no effort whatsoever being applied.

"When I revisited the film on Amazon a year or two ago, I realized I was watching a remastered HD version, which featured a more contemporary color grade, generally referred to as “teal-and-orange.” The bluish look of the theatrical release, which was reproduced in previous video versions, gave way to an overly greenish look that was common on HD transfers of 80s pictures."

With DVD still being SD, a lot of the films had digital masters like a DigiBeta or D1 tape format which made for excellent DVD sources. This meant the DVDs looked like how people had seen them (only much cleaner compared to VHS). For HD discs, the studios had to go back to the film sources to rescan them at HD resolution. Since they were going back to the negatives, the sources would need to go back through a color session. Most film types can't leave things alone and must always tweak, but even if they didn't it's a completely new color session and usually not the same colorist. Maybe for A-list titles did they get anything other than factory floor treatment. They had entire back libraries of films to get transferred. You also had the decisions of keeping OAR, reframing for 16x9 full frame, or even pan&scan 4x3. It was a tremendous amount of work, and the longer it took meant fewer sales. Let's not forget that some of the people that originally worked on titles could very much be "no longer available" to work with on the projects.

A similarly awful change was made to the color grading for several streaming releases of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It feels like whoever did the color had just watched Breaking Bad and decided to imitate the "make any scenes in Mexico have an orange color grading" style but for the entire movie: https://imgur.io/a/Ub5MO5R

just like everything else, styles/trends come and go in color correction. my least favorite was the flat/desaturated look. although, i still have my suspicions that came from someone uninformed/unfamiliar with color grading that the digital camera they shot on recorded the image flat in expectation someone would grade it later. (Recording flat helps preserves details in highlights/shadows.) i could then absolutely see some one else mimicking that as a style and the whole thing snowballed.

your examples GBU are less offensive to me than the desat look. however, i still agree that it's strange to change the whole look/feel of the movie. color grading is as much art as science, so no two people will do the same thing.

one film-to-HD project i was involved in used a colorist that would be considered a grey beard (only he was clean shaven). he "knows" film just from the decades of working with it. when he received the film for the HD transfer, he looked at what stock the film was, and then found reference film of the same stock. he then based the colors off of that reference. the director was taken aback by how in all of the years of this film being transferred by various people for various projects, this version was the closest to actual color he had wanted it to look. so just a fun story about how sometimes changes can be good vs keep it as it was. i guess as all things, intent matters

Re: the flat look, I, too, suspect it comes from log footage, although I’m not sure it has to do with not knowing. It could also just be that if you do your dailies and editing without a LUT, as seemed to be common at one point, you get used to the way it looks and are less likely to go for a very contrasty look in grading.

I've met more than one person that has admitted that they did not know anything about flat/log and just thought that's what the footage was supposed to look like. Not the sharpest tacks in the box, but not all "artists" are technically savvy. They had no idea about color correction because that was primarily the realm of film production. Up to that point, video cameras always came shot as full range. There was a big learning curve for non-techy shooters.

God, that’s so clowny. I have to assume that it was a decision made by “smart people who know better” (just like everything outside my professional domain that perplexes me), but you could post this exact side-by-side to /r/movies with a title like, “So, I tried updating the color scheme—what do you think, Reddit?”

>but you could post this exact side-by-side to /r/movies with a title like, “So, I tried updating the color scheme—what do you think, Reddit?”

but it's art, so of course you're going to get a plethora of opinions. some people just like warmer tones, some like cooler tones. even if you apply those tones in a way that makes the image less realistic and much more, ahem, artistic, people will naturally like/dislike depending on their perspective.

the provided GBU examples and all others with side-by-side comparisons are stark, but if you only saw the "everything in mexico is orange" color scheme, it's not atrocious. i don't like it, but that's my opinion and doesn't mean it is wrong. when i grade images i shoot in RAW, i make decisions that others may or may not like. with the colors, i tend to keep them in the real world ranges if not with a bit of punch to the saturation. other people immediately hit the filters or swing the tint to get an otherworldly feel.

at the end of the day, if the new color scheme is attractive to a younger audience and it gets younger people to watch an older movie, then is that so bad? it's not like Ted Turner got out his crayons to colorize a B&W movie.

Not just orange, but looks like they tried to make it "HDR" by dragging all the sliders to max.

I usually refer to these kinds of amateur fake HDR as "clown vomit".

if it was actually using negatives during the transfer, it isn't necessarily fake HDR. the dynamic range of film is incredible. with a good colorist, you can grade something to have that HDR feel even if it wasn't specifically shot as such. yes, some knobs/sliders might get pushed to max, but not in the disparaging manner in which you mean.

even in cameras shooting RAW, you can push the exposure higher knowing that highlight recovery is possible much more than shadow recovery. so you "expose-to-the-right" to allow for much more shadow exposure while pushing your highlights. in post, you can then grade/develop how you like.

but yes, i'm tired of the HDR-for-HDR-sake post-apocalyptic looks as well

I don't mind HDR. I'm talking about the, usually amateur photographers, who pull all the slides to the right, creating clown vomit.

Do a Google image search for "overdone HDR".

i'm not saying i have no idea what you're talking about. i'm well versed. just trying to add to the conversation that HDR feel can be achieved without having to acquire as HDR when shooting RAW and exposing for effect.

Breaking Bad’s use of colour was great. In characters clothes and scenes. Also the car changes that progressed as character progressed (in colour and badness). Great series.

I agree, I wasn't trying to rag on Breaking Bad. But BB didn't use the Mexico orange color grading for the entire series, they used it to convey a specific sense of location. Meanwhile The edits I linked were applied to the entire film indiscriminately.

If you want to do some sleuthing, you can look up the colorists name from the credits and probably the name of the post facility and the team there that worked on any title. you'll probably start to see patterns in artists/company names.

just like in the dev world with rockstar coders, you have rockstar colorists too. once an artist works on something and gives us a style, all of the up and comers will say to the colorists they work with to "make my content look like ______". so that's what they do even if there's no compelling reason than they want to follow a trend.

I think the bonus content on DVD mostly comes down to tossing in anything they could think of as an effort to say "this is so much more amazing than VHS"

But it turns out what consumers actually care about is the better video quality

Bonus content in the early days was a scramble to get produced. Eventually, it became part of the negotiations with the actors to make themselves available for bonus content just like their promotional tours. Producers also started paying for BTS docs to be produced during production just to have the content available. The docs definitely changed over time as not everyone cares about some of the detail. Edge cases remained like the LotR box sets with the details kept in vs let's just see famous people "at work".

Yes, the quality difference in video/audio from VHS to DVD was a no-brainer kind of upgrade decision path. It was visible on the existing TV equipment already owned. That's also why HD-DVD/Blu-ray sales were not as large of a spike in the adoption rate. To see the difference between HD and a really nice SD DVD, you needed the larger screens which not everyone had. Otherwise, there was no noticeable difference between HD-down-convert to SD on an SD screen to the SD DVD. I was in that industry for both format introductions/adoption cycles. Once people started getting the larger HD screens, they could see how poorly the SD->HD conversions looked compared to HD sources.

DVD + HD didn't hit the quality plateau for everyone but it did for a lot of people. I'll generally buy BluRay discs on the rare occasions I buy a movie. But I'm not getting replacing a perfectly good 60" plasma TV in favor of whatever the latest and greatest is.

What is "OAR"?

Original Aspect Ratio. Typically, that would be 2.35 instead of 1.78 for 16x9. OAR fans will accept letterboxing on their 16x9 displays. Lots of people don't, and so they make a 1.78 out of the 2.35. Luckily, as time has passed, I think the full frame 16x9 versions are going away, and more people are accepting of the OAR and its letterboxing

I usually can take or leave director's cuts. They're usually good but dont fundamentally change the movie or anything.

But the director's cut of T2 does. That one scene where they explain that Arnie is in read only mode, take out his brain chip and reset him. Apart from being an important scene in itself: John making his first leadership decision and deciding, against Sarah's wishes, to not destroy the T100; It is also soooo relevant to so many things that occur later in the movie. It's crazy to me that they cut that scene.

The theatrical cut was already pretty long without it. John demonstrating more leadership would likely help the viewer think of him as more than a whiney kid, but he was still the third most important protagonist.

I also think of aliens where a lot of early footage is cut after Ripley is rescued. You're left wondering how exactly Burke betrayed the colony and what happened with Ripley's life when she was drifting for so long. Again, the theatrical was already too long.

I always enjoyed the longer cut of Aliens. Where they show some of the life on the space station before the Aliens actually show up. I always found that whole backstory very interesting - but you only get very small glimpses of it in the theatrical release.

Then there's The Abyss. Where the Director's Cut is pretty much a completely different movie.

Interesting take.

I always thought that the "colony life" parts of the special edition were completely unnecessary. The rest of the movie works really well as being told almost entirely from Ripley's viewpoint, so seeing the colony only when she does (as in the theatrical cut), torn apart and lifeless, I personally think works better.

I still prefer the director's cut because of the backstory about Ripley's daughter, and the deeper relationship she forms with Newt as a result. It gives so much more depth to why she goes back for her at the end. Also to the stand-off in the egg chamber with one mother against another, and the shared understanding there.

The sentry guns are pretty cool, too.

> I always thought that the "colony life" parts of the special edition were completely unnecessary.

Not only are they unnecessary: they completely ruin the tension of Ripley and the marines later arriving at the colony (because we already found out about Newt), and spoils the reveal that Burke sent the colonists out to the alien crash site.

The sentry guns are just watching a boring ammo counter, and the Ripley daughter retcon is just a lazy way to smash us over the head with the motherhood themes, which are obvious on their own without being spelled out.

The theatrical release is amongst my favourite movies. I find it disappointing that the only version available these days is the director's cut; I find it entirely inferior.

> they completely ruin the tension of Ripley and the marines later arriving at the colony (because we already found out about Newt), and spoils the reveal that Burke sent the colonists out to the alien crash site.

Not sure what we found out about Newt? That's she's a character? Who screams?

I also didn't remember Burke being named as the one who sent the colonists to check out the crash site - I thought it was just "the company". Can't believe I never noticed that.

> The sentry guns are just watching a boring ammo counter

There are also a few cool shots of aliens getting shredded by them. But, more importantly IMO, there's the discussion about the aliens intelligently probing the defences they've set up to find a way in. That adds a level of set-up to the aliens later cutting the power which I liked.

> the Ripley daughter retcon is just a lazy way to smash us over the head with the motherhood themes,

Are you sure retcon is the right word there? Not sure what Ripley being a mother changes about anything that came before that reveal? I can't think of anything it recontextualises from the first film - but then I never considered that before.

Yeah, the motherhood bit is a little heavy-handed in the director's cut, but, it's not exactly a subtle film! I still think it adds some value though. For example, after the first firefight with the aliens, Hudson notices that some of the marines they thought were dead actually aren't, and it's suggested they should go back for them. Ripley shoots the idea down, saying there's no point, they can't be saved. But later she decides to go back for Newt? Why? The surrogate daughter aspect gives her a reason - even if Newt is almost certainly beyond saving, she has to try anyway, no matter the odds.

Yeah, the extra runtime those things take does slow the directors cut down slightly, and it's not quite as tight and focussed as the theatrical cut. But I think they do have some merit, and the extra details are worth that for me.

That said the film was improved immensely by cutting the scene of the T-1000 using touchy feely scan of John's house and the pointless and sadistic killing of his dog.

… except for the fact that the T2 trailer gave away the big reveal within the first 30 seconds. Cameron must have been apoplectic.

Also The T-1000 murders people prior to the reveal, while Arnold doesn't.

Wait, Arnold shot the guy in the gun shop? I haven't seen the movie in ten years, but I think that's prior to the shootout at the police station?

In Terminator 1, yes. He loads up on guns at the shop and Muir sees the owners there. That is the firepower he uses to take out the police station.

I loved that scene. Uzis, full auto assault rifles, laser sight pistols, phased plasma 40kilowatt rifles (not in stock apparently), "good for home defense" line.

Such a good scene, and captures a window into the terror and deadly force we add to our own society, just a corner gunshop visit away.

I'm talking about in T2, Arnold doesn't kill anyone in the entire movie. In T1 he kills several people while Kyle Reese doesn't kill anyone, even when he has the opportunity.

True, though prior to the reveal, Arnold does stab one of the bikers and proceed to throw him onto a hot kitchen griddle.

He was attacked with a knife and was even stabbed, and I believe the response was non-fatal in all cases. We don't understand yet why the Terminator isn't killing everyone like in the first Terminator movie at this point until later on, but at the same time most people don't realize the Terminator isn't killing indiscriminately either due to how effortlessly its enemies are subdued. Sorta maybe like how Batman beating up people makes some forget that he doesn't shoot / kill enemies.

> Sorta maybe like how Batman beating up people makes some forget that he doesn't shoot / kill enemies.

Kinda reminds me of my top-3 favorite TV shows ever, Person of Interest. The protagonist there had a habit of knee-capping the criminals instead of shooting to kill, which seems like the more humane alternative, but the more I think about it, the less I'm sure.

He'll live.

This may have been changed from the original cut but I recall it being intentionally unclear that the T-1000 killed the first cop. They made it look like he just passed out from a gut punch, which of course makes little sense.

Even if Arnie had killed anyone prior to the reveal, it would've still been consistent. He didn't have any orders not to do that until later, and the way he took them onboard it seemed clear that the orders were a change to his tactics. Although, seeing who sent him back, it's probably strange they weren't his original orders anyway. I always found the Terminator movies full of that kind of circular weirdness.

Anyway for the T2 twist, I always just assumed that when T1 was shot, Arnie was kinda unknown, but by T2 he was a pretty big Hollywood action star and couldn't be the bad guy anymore. So they had to wrangle him being the good guy into a sequel if they wanted him back.

See also the trailers for "Predator". Movie is still fantastic, but plays out so much better if you don't know the nature of the predator.

I watched Predator when I was very young, on VHS, without having watched any trailers, and I still remember how amazed I felt. What was this monster? How was Arnie going to win, the creature was unbeatable and was everywhere!

A couple of other movies -- again, no trailers -- which made me feel this way were "Aliens" (they are everywhere!) and "Die Hard" (how is this cop going to beat all these bad guys?).

I don't really feel that way anymore with scifi or action movies, and of course much of it has to do with growing up. But I wonder if teenagers feel that way about the current crop of scifi/action movies, do they feel the thrill, do they feel "the good guys can't possibly win", or is this forever lost in modern cinema, what with all the rushed pacing, spoilers and trailers?

Superhero films kindof kill the tension. Superheros always win, and the suspension of disbelief is heavily established for the superpowers. The tension of a possible failure by the heroes is lost.

Helps if one isn't too familiar with the source material. With my Marvel experience prior to MCU limited to a bunch of animated shows I watched as a kid, I left the cinema furious after watching Captain America: Civil War - I was pissed at them showcasing and then destroying S.H.I.E.L.D., the one thing I actually found most interesting in the whole setting. It was a moment of genuine, deep surprise, as I had no idea how they planned to recover from losing - what I believed to be - a critical piece of the setting.

Couple more MCU movies and now I know better how this genre works :).

Also you should skip the opening shot (added at the request of the studio) of a spaceship heading down to Earth.

Because apparently audiences are considered too dumb to put 2 + 2 together. FFS

One more reason never to watch any trailers

I now NEVER watch any trailers at all. I watched Terminator Genisys and while it wasn't a brilliant movie I did gasp a little at the reveal part way through the movie.

I asked my brother what his reaction was and he said he already knew going in as the trailer had revealed it.

I don't get the point of trailers any more. Most of them just show you the whole movie in 2 minutes.

Saying that, probably the best trailer of recent times was for one of the Godzilla films, which actually gave away very little and just gave you enough of a vibe to make you want to watch it.

Yeah, the Genisys trailer was pretty bad. The twist was pretty predictable, but I rember watching the trailer and thinking oh, [the reveal], and then they showed the reveal and I was like ... well, I guess I don't need to watch that. Although, I didn't remember that that was inline with the franchise trailer history.

I think the most deceptive trailer ever was for The Fountain. You see the trailer and think oh, here's some cool stuff, but it's kind of disjointed, but it's a trailer; but then you watch the movie and it's just as disjointed.

I took my then-girlfriend to cinema for Prometheus, convinced by the "TED 2023" trailer that it's going to be a nice transhumanist sci-fi. I didn't lose the girfriend that day, but I did lose my sci-fi cred - the name of the speaker in that trailer, Peter Weyland, should have rung a bell.

(For those who, like me then, don't know the reference - that's Weyland as in Weyland-Yutani, the evil megacorp that sent the ill-fated crew of the Nostromo to their deaths in the movie Alien. Yes, Prometheus turned out to be an Alien prequel.)

About 15 years ago, my family watched a movie without seeing the trailers. Then, we happened to see the trailers, and the trailer revealed *the* major plot twist in the movie (it was a thriller). We all loudly agreed that we were grateful we didn't see the trailer.

As a result, for any movie that I really care about watching, I now actively avoid almost all trailers. YouTube and TikTok make avoiding spoilers quite difficult, though.

Thankfully, some movies have started to recognize the importance of hiding details, and don't reveal everything in the trailers anymore. Specific examples include Marvel changing the contents of the scenes to hide important details, like which Infinity Stones Thanos had at a given point.

In addition to Marvel, the last decade of Star Wars movies applies too. The trailers feel like they're spoiling things, but then you watch the movie and realize they're only showing things from the first ~1/3 of the movie, or entirely removed from context. I try to avoid trailers these days, but I've never regretted watching too many Marvel or Star Wars trailers.

I do appreciate the effort, but Big reveals reframe the films narrative in some important way. The recent Marvel and Star Wars films have been such a mess they didn’t have much to hide this way.

Ray’s family doesn’t really matter narratively, while Luke’s father killing / becoming Darth Vader shifts it away from a story of revenge. Contact is a great example of how subtle this can be with static on the recording vs hours of static on the recording.

>Luke’s father killing / becoming Darth Vader shifts it away from a story of revenge

At the risk of dating myself, when Empire came out the question of whether Darth Vader was telling the truth was a matter of considerable debate. That summer, at one point, someone at the AI Lab printed out the discussion (from rec.arts.sf-lovers) on the lab's doubtless hugely expensive laser printer and bound it.

I was just reminded up this because a memory popped up on my Facebook feed about totally confusing one of my editors because I apparently made some reference to this in something I wrote and she had never known this was a topic of debate.

This always makes me recall the trailer for the movie Twister in which a large tractor tire smashes through one of the truck's windshields - the scene wasn't actually in the movie, but I was on the edge of my seat any time they were in a truck with high winds around.

I went to a lot of movies in college, at the university film center. They put out a quarterly calendar, with a little blurb for each film. Most were pretty pedestrian, but I still recall that they somehow got me to the theater for _The Usual Suspects (1995)_ without giving away any details.

Obilgatory reference here to Rick Polito's summary of _Wizard of Oz_: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."

I watched Avatar 2 in theaters without watching or reading anything but the title.

Sorely disappointed in the movie. I guess if I expected a Rambo shoot-em-up I would have been satisifed, but a plot based on revenge, with 75-100 on-screen deaths by shooting, drowning, burning, impaling or dismemberment (loss of arm). Torturing of kids, threatening of pregnant women, targeting mothers of new-born animals, burning of innocent villages, scantily clad children, killing animals to make a point (instead of killing the pregnant lady).

There were almost no positive relationships. Parents yelled at eachother, Parents yelled at kids, kids yelled at eachother, people on the same team yelled at eachother. No one showed empathy, love or respectful communication. Out of the 50-75 characters in the movie, I think 4 (including a whale in that number) showed a positive relationship, everyone else was selfish and yelling when others didn't meet their expectations.

I guess I went into it expecting a happy adventure and found a hate-based blood-bath instead.

1/10 happiness/empathy/love 9/10 visuals/graphics.

I'm yet to watch the movie (reconsidering after reading this), but now I have to ask: does the sequel involve humans, and if yes, does it explain why the original antagonists didn't do the obvious thing, which is to drop a thermobaric bomb on that stupid tree, or otherwise sterilize the whole area from orbit, and then get back to their mining operations?

If you liked the first one you'll probably like the second one too.

It sounds like the GP probably hadn't seen an avatar movie before?

We watched them back to back over two days.

The first movie had a romantic couple and lots of characters exploring the beauty of Avatar and discovering it's world.

It felt like that part was missing from Avatar 2.

The plot of the movie is that a human wants to kill the Avatar who killed him in the first movie. Except dead-human got reanimated as an Avatar creature.

That's the first 5 minutes so it's not really a spoiler.

There are other humans, but they're just assistants to the revenge-fest.

The main driver of the plot is revenge, the 'we want resources from planet Avatar' isn't a main plot point, or at least it's not what the story is about - it's about one man/Avatar's bloodlust against another Avatar (and kill anyone who gets in the way Rambo style)

Is all this dysfunction you describe in Avatar 2 with the humans in the movie, or the aliens? If it's the humans, I don't see the problem: the original movie depicted humans pretty poorly too, that was kinda the point.

Both. The humans are secondary characters to the revenge plot, they're just helpers to the main revenge theme.

Neither human not Avatar groups are functional in a family sense. When there's time to be a loving family, no one is (unless someone died). They do work together during battle, but there's almost no friendship, empathy or unselfish love in the movie.

The four of us who saw it could think of 3 relationships that were positive or had any sort of positive element to them. One relationship was only a nostalgic scene included so it could be referenced at the end of the movie.

So true. Good trailers should reveal very little about the movie, but give you enough to get you interested.

I'm with you, the Prometheus trailed spoiled the whole movie by revealing a major action from the last 5 minutes of the movie, I was so angry.

On the other hand, there's a hilarious counter example where Alfred Hitchcock "spoils" the whole movie in a 6 minute trailer and I would still want to see the whole movie. It would be awesome to see trailers like this for a recent movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJQfFQ40lI

> the Prometheus trailed spoiled the whole movie by revealing a major action from the last 5 minutes of the movie

Which one? If we're talking about the same trailer (TED 2023), it spoiled nothing for me, leading to a rather awkward cinema date. More details elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34315367.

Good for you, and cool story :) That TED viral clip was awesome, indeed not a spoiler. I referred to the cinematic trailer.

There's been lots of trailers where I wondered"huh, maybe the plot will be X or Y, but the actual movie was seemingly more boring.

Of course I forget my unassailably genius alternative plot by the time I leave the theater. But I always thought it would be fun to get plot projections from smart / creatives from trailers.

The phantom menace trailer in particular. Man that could have been a great movie. What if the pod racer was for navigating a dangerous raider filled section of tattooine rather than the dumpster fire race.

The phantom menace has all the elements of the first John Carter film plot (yes I know that series underpins most of star wars anyway), but if the phantom menace was some pulp film where the crash landed Jedi had to make their way through a dangerous unfamiliar land while rallying forces to t heir side and encountering Anakin along the way...

Uggh, yea, trailers in general include a scene from every part of the movie. Why???

Presumably it's because it works to get more people to the movie a lot of the time.

Especially for action films, there's a lot of temptation to put the "best" action sequences in the trailer.

I thought the same, but he actually supported it as a way to drive the marketing.

I believed our potential audience would be more attracted to seeing how the most badass killing machine could become a hero than they would be to just another kill-fest in the same vein as the first film. Sequels have to strike a delicate balance between honoring the most loved elements from the first film but also promising to really shake things up and turn them upside down. Our marketing campaign was exactly that promise, and it worked.

https://www.slashfilm.com/1118938/why-james-cameron-spoiled-...

If I remember the same thing happened with Terminator Genisys

Watched a TV show last night which left the "Special Guest Star" to the start of the end credits, so you weren't spoiled at the start with his name.

The streaming platform stuck his picture on the picture for the episode rendering that protection moot.

I would love, love to have seen T2 unspoiled. The crafting of the first act is masterful if you don't know the twist.

Such as shame that was impossible.

Most trailers give away 90 % of the plot. Therefore, I do not watch trailers.

Terminator 1 is absolutely amazing.

Terminator 2 is great, but it's no T1.

I recently wrote a longish post about it: https://blog.habets.se/2022/11/Terminator-1-is-the-best-Term...

But long story short is that 1) T1 terminator is uncanny valley, and T2 is not. 2) T1 is a perfect time loop, and T2 is not.

The gaps in T2's time loop are pretty alarming in retrospect. Killer robots suddenly materialize in the present, time traveling from a future that never comes about. It's quite a spooky thought. In my opinion the film only gets away with it by riding the coattails of how cleanly T1 executed the time travel concept.

There are philosophical differences between T1 and T2 which I think are much more substantive than critiques of fan service.

T1 is, "if we go ahead with improved computing technology with no thought, ultimately machines will take over and kill us. But with our humanity (Kyle) we can defeat them."

T2 is, "The leader of the resistance, who successfully leads humans towards victory, is someone whose mother was human, but whose strongest father-figure was a machine. It is only if we understand machines, and teach them humanity (like John does the Terminator) can we attain victory."

I think if you reflect on this a while, you will see that T2 has a lot more philosophical nuance in what it says about the relation of humans and technology, than T1.

Yeah that message is not exactly subtle in T2. Though again at the cost of "that's not what happened". John Connor doesn't grow up to become the Great Skynet Negotiator.

I'm not saying every single aspect of T2 is worse than T1. But the little philosophy that T2 adds is vastly overshadowed by what it contradicts from T1, and partly itself.

They are very different types of movies. T1 is an art horror that gambled a lot on Arnold who was just some pretty muscle at that time. T2 is made to be a blockbuster action flock no expenses spared. I think both are among the best movies of their genres.

Sure. But it's still fair to compare them.

I don't think T2 is a dumb movie. But it is a dumber movie than T1.

I think this is a great breakdown and analysis, though "‘Terminator’ Really Is a Horror Movie" is something a lot of people at or near the time of its release, including my eleven year old self watching it for the first time, understood intuitively. In my mind (and perhaps even in my local video store) it was always grouped with Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street

It was quite sad to see this interview with James Cameron that he probably wouldn't make Terminator as we've seen it 30 years ago.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/james-cameron-avatar-2-de...

I don't think it's sad. We all change and some of us also grow up. Older people and parents find violence in general harder to take as entertainment. It's part of your brain changing over time. I would say that isn't an argument for less violence in movies. I'm not making a moral argument about violence in film - it's just an aesthetic thing.

The sad part is that there's a sense of regret. It's fine to mature and focus on different things and change with the climate.

Wouldn't and indeed likely couldn't. Cameron's talent in the early years was writing very fast paced films with stock characters - but adding a richness and depth to those in theory cliche characters (especially the women) that transcended the pulpiness of the material. Viewers got the best of both worlds - action comics meets cyberpunk punchy SF scripts, and (frequently working class and female) witty, humanised characters. This juggling act has been missing (irrespective of their financial success) from his films since Titanic.

Something that frequently gets lost in the consideration of the work of artists is that is doesn't always improve. Lots of artists / craftspeople make less vigorous, audacious work when the pressures of early career establishment are removed.

Spielberg and Lucas are both great examples of the same thing - with the same mix of humanised, droll, often working class protagonists much more richly drawn and well portrayed than was common for the time. Without these characters and this balance of pacy storytelling, the blockbuster has become mushy fan service. See any recent marvel, 'fast franchise' film, or indeed Avatar.

Hayao Miyazaki is the only director that I know who has consistently put out masterpieces his entire career. Before Avatar I would have put Cameron in that same spot.

Not Tarantino? Admittedly I didn't see the Hateful Eight either...

I didn’t care for Hateful Eight or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s always hard for me to decide whether Tarantino is exceptional or has the right people around him at the right time (which is also an exceptional quality). He has 4½ excellent movies (counting Kill Bill as 1) and a bunch of OK movies.

I'd put three of his as no brainers excellent (Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, and Reservoir Dogs. I'd put everything else in the good to very good category.

He just has 30 years of Hollywood brain rot and feels like he has to atone his sin of being authentic and having fun.

Terminator 2 is my fav film for weeding out pretend-wanna-be-film snobs. I've had this conversation more times than I'd like:

Me: Terminator 2 was a great movie

Fake film snob: Terminator 2?! A shoot-em-up movie?! What?!

Me: Yah, it isn't what James Cameron is most known for, but still good

Fake film snob: Wait .... James Cameron???

Me: Yup, he even got five Oscars for it. Obviously not best picture or best actor/ess, but still

Fake film snob: five Oscars?!

Edit: formatting

I guess count me as a fake film snob? I love a good "shoot-em-up", and I loved the first Terminator, but the second one felt hokey to me. I just couldn't get past James Cameron's idea of how a kid behaves or talks.

John Connor behaves and talks like a figure any kid in the movie theater want to associate themselves with.

I've never met anyone who considered James Cameron to be other than a blockbuster factory. Aliens, the Abyss, True Lies, writing the second Rambo film... who the hell would be surprised that James Cameron was involved with a Terminator movie?

Aside form that, Terminator 2 not only isn't Cameron's best effort, it's not even the franchise's best effort. It was the beginning of "to hell with making sense, look at these explosions," which got worse with each passing film, and better in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.

There is a documentary called "Los Angeles Plays Itself". Thom Andersen is as erudite about movies as anyone could possibly be, but he still saw value in movies like "L.A. Crackdown" and "Death Wish 4". Terminator and Terminator 2 are both given shout-outs for their depiction of L.A. and the LAPD in particular.

https://youtu.be/Ifii8LvR-ss

Wouldn't actual film snobs know that Oscars don't mean shit?

And wouldn't technical Oscars mean even less for film snobs, when it comes to the worth of a movie as a movie?

Also, why would a film snob be impressed by it being by James Cameron? He is closer to Michael Bay than to a director a film snob would actually like...

and we have to mention https://filmschoolrejects.com/terminator-2-helicopter-stunt/ 'With a lot at stake and not a lot of room for error (quite literally), as Tamburro, himself put it: “If I made a mistake, I would be killed.” The stunt was so obviously dangerous that the scheduled camera crew tasked with shooting the close-ups refused to take part in it. Proving that he’s not one to ask of others what he isn’t willing to do himself, Cameron said “okay fine, I’ll shoot it” and shot the stunt with the help of a very courageous insert car driver.' Oh and he did it twice.

I never even noticed T2 trying to hide the fact the T1000 was the bad guy. I suppose it was thanks to the lovely spoiling trailer [1] of the day. Plus I remember it being all over the news about the amazing graphics and how they did the famous "mercury scene".

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRRlbK5w8AE

I think a big part of the delayed reveal of the skeleton only version in T1 is pretty simple: once you reveal that, Arnie is no longer in the movie, and the special effects required to fully animate it didn’t exist back then (other than stick figures or rotoscoping which would have looked awful). As is, the scenes with just the skeleton look like a stiff puppet show instead of some intimidating killer robot.

As an audience member, you’re expected to maintain some suspension of disbelief. At a musical no one would say, “no one would actual sing what they could just say!”, or reading a book “those letters could have been scrawled by any kindergartener!”

At that point of the movie the thing the protagonists thought they killed is resurrected in an even more frightening form and dread is elevated. Obviously the viewer is not at risk, so how that is implemented has little bearing on the impact of the scene.

On the other hand, if you are interested in the technical details of how this creature appears next to actors, knowing Cameron’s history in the model department on low budget movies and Ray Harryhausen’s similar technique used in Jason and the argonauts would allow you to appreciate how it was made.

I don’t buy that the late reveal was due to effects limitations. It’s really to take an audience that may have allowed themselves to relax to be immediate brought back to an even higher anxiety level than the proceeding chase.

I think GP's point is less about breaking or sustaining suspension of disbelief, or technical limitations themselves, and more about costs. Once the Terminator loses its human skin, the (then) relatively cheap actor is replaced by a prop that's (then) stupidly expensive to animate. Deciding to do it earlier would likely force the movie to look entirely different at least from that point on.

Such considerations were a major driver of how sci-fi in general was done up until early 2000s. With TV shows, a lot of the tropes and patterns of sci-fi, particularly around how the aliens look and behave, boil down to the fact that about the only way to make non-grotesque aliens without breaking bank was to glue prosthetics to the actors and apply tons of makeup. The writing was thus constrained by what the makeup department could handle.

If they made the scene today I imagine it would be a smoothly walking CGI metal skeleton with less of that awkward jerkiness that made it so scary. Yet another benefit of practical effects.

> I think a big part of the delayed reveal of the skeleton only version in T1 is pretty simple: once you reveal that, Arnie is no longer in the movie

Not true: they could have revealed the skeleton earlier and still have Arnie, e.g. via opening scenes set in the future, or via a Reese flashback (flash forward?), or showing the process of hybridizing the T1 before it was sent in time.

The articles argument seems congent to me: the movie FX and story reveals are carefully structured such that the terminator appears less human over time, until it is not human at all.

Add to this the fact that the T1's red-hued HUD is not shown early (this could have been shown with no loss of Arnie as the T1, but wasn't) shows that the robotic nature of the character was being intentionally being hidden at first.

I wonder, if creators will save pure T1, or will do like with Star Wars, where first episodes re-rendered with modern graphics.

Cameron has had plenty of opportunities and never has. There was something of a controversy when the DVD was re-released with a new Dolby Digital surround track and the original mono was left off. A lot of people felt very strongly about how those guns sounded.

"Sex, in other words, literally makes them too ignorant to live." -- anyone with Kids can tell you this is true...

>So, when Robert Patrick’s T-1000 arrives on the scene, the structural repetitions position him as the T2 analog of Kyle Reese. As in, we are led to believe that he is another human rebel fighter sent to protect Sarah and/or John Connor.

Actually, that's the biggest flaw "reveals"-wise for T2 in my opinion.

Robert Patrick plays his character as too robotic and even icky even before the reveal. He looks off, so people start wondering if he really is a "Kyle Reese" type or some enemy, perhaps robotic...

He should have been played the "cop" with more neutral maunerisms until the reveal, so that the reveal has bigger impact.

This is a spinoff of the Terminator sidetrack discussion of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34310047, isn't it?

Here's what would happen if Stalone played Terminator [deepfake] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71c80ab_TgQ

I remember the feeling of sheer awe while watching both movies. "Wait, what, he is a metallic skeleton underneath?!! No goddamn way!!!". I really miss that feeling in today's movies, even "Avatar 2" by the same James Cameron. He replaced it with some gizmo gimmicks, like exoskeletons or crab sumbarines, which are impressive, but not awesome.

I like how it looked like a regular mainstream action movie, but incorporated things like time travel. Accessible for the whole family to think or have fun at same time

It’s strange I’ve never considered them horror movies whatsoever. Just pure sci-fi.

me young when I saw T1 and what memorable to me exactly the horror element of movie.

> “Terminator allows viewers to have a legitimate sense of discovery while watching the movie, to learn crucial plot details largely as Sarah learns them, which makes for very efficient storytelling.”

feel today interesting story points would get shown in trailer.

One of the things I wished they did even more is keep it ambiguous whether the terminator is really a machine just a bit longer into the film. Everyone else thinks Sarah is hysterical, including herself ant first, and Kyle sounds just nuts after the tech noir bar scene- let the audience wonder a little more too! Did the guy just have a bullet proof vest on? Could Kyle actually be crazy?

I think a lot of the psychological horror here is traded for some very cool tech shots of the future, time travel and arnold vision early - probably a worthy trade. But it would be awesome to see a cut that holds its cards even closer to the chest and let’s more of that tension build.

Out of curiosity do you feel the same way about Alien? Because both movies obviously use sci-fi elements (space and an alien vs robots and time travel) but the plot arcs for both are 100% horror. Frankly outside slasher flicks a LOT of horror has either SF or fantasy elements because things we don't understand are the scariest.

It’s the strangest thing. I don’t. I don’t like horror and I could never get into alien. I think the plot/story in terminator is just so compelling and horror doesn’t seem to be used just for scares but furthers the story.

I'm not a huge fan of horror either as things like jump scares annoy me. But man, the unrelenting nature of Arnold in that movie leaves you on the edge of your seat.

As of late I keep hearing/reading/seeing that the original author of Terminator and the Matrix is Sophia Stewart. It seems even the FBI ruled in her favor, yet both wikipedia pages have not mentioned her at all. Is this a case of really good fake news, as of late, or Wikipedia simply hasn't caught up?

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/05/instagram-...

Yeah, her deal strongly sounds like "coincidental invention" type stuff. Especially for me with The Matrix. As a Matrix fanatic I could point you to dozens of works for which you could make this sort of argument.

There were even two other "people stuck inside simulated reality" SciFi films released within two months of The Matrix (Existenz and The Thirteenth Floor).

I don't know which FBI you're speaking of, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't rule (adjudicate) on anything.

The courts threw her case out. No, she didn't invent those.

Terminator is already listed as having copywright issues with another author though.

what do you mean by this?

Harlan Ellison got a settlement when he said that Terminator was based on his story from The Outer Limits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(The_Outer_Limits)#The...

Which, if you've seen that episode, is about like saying The Wizard of Oz ripped off Alice in Wonderland... but Harlan's gotta be Harlan.

https://electricliterature.com/was-1984s-the-terminator-a-ha...

The plot is a very close take on Solider by Harlan Ellison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(The_Outer_Limits)

I don't think they needed to steal it from anyone else :)

Not close enough, IMO, after reading the wikipedia page. It says more about US legal practices than about the stories.

Ellison really only won his case because James Cameron had made some careless comments about cribbing some ideas from Ellison's works.

Says more about Harlan Ellison than about either.

Ellison's claims are BS.

He says it stole from Soldier and Man with a glass hand, but anyone who's seen those can see that it's not even remotely close.

You don't own "time travel", man.

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