[HN Gopher] 'Terminator' 1 and 2 Save Their Reveals for the Righ...
___________________________________________________________________
'Terminator' 1 and 2 Save Their Reveals for the Right Time
Author : georgecmu
Score : 138 points
Date : 2023-01-09 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago)
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| pjc50 wrote:
| This is a spinoff of the Terminator sidetrack discussion of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34310047, isn't it?
| bilsbie wrote:
| It's strange I've never considered them horror movies whatsoever.
| Just pure sci-fi.
| birdymcbird wrote:
| 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.
| mattnewton wrote:
| 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.
| runevault wrote:
| 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.
| bilsbie wrote:
| 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.
| runevault wrote:
| 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.
| legohead wrote:
| 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
| intsunny wrote:
| 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
| RichardCA wrote:
| 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
| hairofadog wrote:
| 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.
| stonogo wrote:
| 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.
| scandox wrote:
| 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.
| type0 wrote:
| It's one of the best Sci-fi Thrillers of all times, the pacing
| is stellar.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| EGreg wrote:
| 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
| methodover wrote:
| Well. That first video was terrifying. I'm too scared to
| click on the others.
| agumonkey wrote:
| 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.
| mankyd wrote:
| 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.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Just to let you know, it should be "scene" in this case.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| dkarl wrote:
| 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.)
| agumonkey wrote:
| And there's a Gattaca vibe in that the limited (human
| flesh and old t800) flirt with death to then defeat the
| superior model.
| semireg wrote:
| 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!"
| lostlogin wrote:
| > 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)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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...
| btbuildem wrote:
| Where do you live that a police station seems like a safe
| place?
| [deleted]
| xyzelement wrote:
| 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.
| slg wrote:
| 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.
| jollyllama wrote:
| 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.
| tacticaldev wrote:
| "Sex, in other words, literally makes them too ignorant to live."
| -- anyone with Kids can tell you this is true...
| suction wrote:
| [dead]
| thomashabets2 wrote:
| 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.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| 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.
| everyone wrote:
| 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.
| havblue wrote:
| 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.
| grubbs wrote:
| 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.
| Karellen wrote:
| 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.
| CottonMcKnight wrote:
| Then there's The Abyss. Where the Director's Cut is pretty
| much a completely different movie.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| 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.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| 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.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| ... except for the fact that the T2 trailer gave away the big
| reveal within the first 30 seconds. Cameron must have been
| apoplectic.
| iso1631 wrote:
| 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.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Also The T-1000 murders people prior to the reveal, while
| Arnold doesn't.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| 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.
| adenozine wrote:
| 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?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| everdrive wrote:
| 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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 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.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| True, though prior to the reveal, Arnold does stab one of the
| bikers and proceed to throw him onto a hot kitchen griddle.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| He'll live.
| devonkim wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _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.
| robg wrote:
| 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-...
| sillyquiet wrote:
| 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.
| the_af wrote:
| 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?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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 :).
| Karellen wrote:
| 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
| yread wrote:
| One more reason never to watch any trailers
| cloudking wrote:
| So true. Good trailers should reveal very little about the
| movie, but give you enough to get you interested.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| 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
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 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...
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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.)
| t-writescode wrote:
| 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.
| delecti wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| >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.
| dwringer wrote:
| 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.
| secabeen wrote:
| 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."
| jvm___ wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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?
| david422 wrote:
| Uggh, yea, trailers in general include a scene from every part
| of the movie. Why???
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| a3w wrote:
| Most trailers give away 90 % of the plot. Therefore, I do not
| watch trailers.
| Marazan wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| tiborsaas wrote:
| 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...
| scandox wrote:
| 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.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| 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.
| dokem wrote:
| He just has 30 years of Hollywood brain rot and feels like he
| has to atone his sin of being authentic and having fun.
| dbspin wrote:
| 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.
| jonhohle wrote:
| 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.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Not Tarantino? Admittedly I didn't see the Hateful Eight
| either...
| jonhohle wrote:
| 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 41/2 excellent movies (counting Kill
| Bill as 1) and a bunch of OK movies.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| guilhas wrote:
| I like how accessible the movies were. It looked like a regular
| mainstream shooter movie, but incorporated things like time
| travel. For the masses to think or have fun at same time
| chamanbuga wrote:
| 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?
| jrm4 wrote:
| 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.
| bnralt wrote:
| There were even two other "people stuck inside simulated
| reality" SciFi films released within two months of The Matrix
| (Existenz and The Thirteenth Floor).
| formerly_proven wrote:
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/05/instagram-...
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| 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.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Terminator is already listed as having copywright issues with
| another author though.
| slater- wrote:
| what do you mean by this?
| drivers99 wrote:
| Harlan Ellison got a settlement when he said that
| Terminator was based on his story from The Outer Limits: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(The_Outer_Limits)#The.
| ..
| xsmasher wrote:
| https://electricliterature.com/was-1984s-the-terminator-a-
| ha...
| scandox wrote:
| 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 :)
| thomashabets2 wrote:
| 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.
| tgv wrote:
| Not close enough, IMO, after reading the wikipedia page. It
| says more about US legal practices than about the stories.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Ellison really only won his case because James Cameron had
| made some careless comments about cribbing some ideas from
| Ellison's works.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Says more about Harlan Ellison than about either.
| dylan604 wrote:
| " 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.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| What is "OAR"?
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 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
| lostlogin wrote:
| 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.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| xxr wrote:
| 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?"
| dylan604 wrote:
| >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.
| thomashabets2 wrote:
| 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".
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| thomashabets2 wrote:
| 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".
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| rebuilder wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| scelerat wrote:
| 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
| orev wrote:
| 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.
| jonhohle wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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.
| simne wrote:
| I wonder, if creators will save pure T1, or will do like with
| Star Wars, where first episodes re-rendered with modern graphics.
| HighChaparral wrote:
| 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.
| type0 wrote:
| Here's what would happen if Stalone played Terminator [deepfake]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71c80ab_TgQ
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