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beccatoriaOh, Terminator 4. WTF went wrong, bb?
MEH.
I won't lie. I had high expectations. Christian Bale plus all the awesome of the TV series had me seriously excited for this movie, which turned out to be utterly banal and uninspired.
Aesthetically, the future is, I hate to say it, perfunctory and boring. For starters there's sun and daylight, something I don't recall from previous apocalyptic visions of the future, but more than that it just feels too...fake-gritty. John Connor is dressed up like a marine commando with all the extra kit and gear. While presumably it's a massive deal, I really never felt the sense of terrible loss when the resistance lost a helicopter, or as if the two fighters they sent in to scout/escort the civilians out of that valley thing were a rare, rare and valued resource. The horror at losing two of the only fighter jets left in the world, you know?
They felt like a fully staffed, fully kitted-out military unit, in hard times, perhaps, but nothing like the way Kyle Reese in T1 - if I remember correctly - checks to see if he can strip parts from a freakin' TRUCK almost before he checks if his buddy's alive.
The whole thing felt like one of those commando army manly-man video games, you know? The ones all about being part of a manly, homoerotic elite commando unit who have Honour and Brotherhood but it's all code for feeling less geeky about sitting at home playing XBoX live and playing at being soldiers. It was like a testosterone-soaked fantasy with a veneer of "grittiness" (which amounts to a dirty filter on the lens rather than any actual grit or depth) so viewers will feel it's a "real" experience and therefore must be "deeper" than if they had, I dunno, plasma rifles and made-up swear words.
Possibly I'm picking up too much on that and feeling too pissy about that because the thing that REALLY pissed me off was how horrifyingly sexist this film was.
And in the worst possible way too. In that awful, it can't possibly be sexist because we let the girl punch someone and swear a bit to prove she's a "strong woman" and that excuses any sexist cliche we then want to paste on her.
There were, basically, three female characters in this film and two very minor female characters. I'll talk about all of them.
To start with, the little girl that Kyle was looking after - I think her name was Star? When the 7 year old who doesn't speak is your best developed female character you have a problem. And I liked Star and I liked at the start, she's running around helping Kyle survive and stuff and she's hella sweet. And the main reason she serves as an object for people to want to protect and worry about is probably that she's a kid not that she's a girl, but cynically I can't help but wonder if she was a little boy whether they would have given her more moments of plucky bravery like trying to shoot a terminator herself with a saucepan on her head or something. But...the point is, maybe with better context she wouldn't have bothered me. As it is, it pisses me off that, as I said, the non-speaking child c-list character is the best one we've got.
Kate Connor is...not a character. She's John's Wife. She just...wanders around the base being supportive of John, worrying about John, standing in the background with scenes with John, being vaguely medical on occasion, and then, the one time she's out in the field, as it were, she drops the wounded man she's tending to like a hot potato as soon as she sees her poor wounded husband. Again, I'd freak if my husband had a sucking chest wound like that, but this is literally the only thing she does all movie except asking someone else to knock out Marcus, oh, and apparently performing heart surgery on her husband off-scene. When I highly doubt they have either immune-system suppressors or a good way of ensuring that Marcus is even a tissue match, PLUS SHE'S A VETERINARIAN. And you know, having to use a vet as a medic is...one of those things that could make an interesting commentary on the post-apocalyptic world, but it's not like it's ever mentioned in this film. If I didn't know, I would have assumed she was a doctor.
THEN OH DEAR GOD. The character of Blair Williams is just painful. She's the "strong woman" who the writers, and half the viewers, probably genuinely think is a strong woman, and that in itself is painfully depressing.
So basically, she's a fighter pilot. Her character then turns out to be a 2-D collection of cliches for the first few minutes we know her. You know, being all "tough" like a guy to show she's strong and edgy. And okay, this film's standards are not that high, and I can buy that. AND THEN WE GET THE FOLLOWING.
Trained soldier Blair Williams, while changing out in the wastes, decides to leave her gun more than arm's reach away. She is then cornered by three would-be scavenger-rapists. So first off, I get that this is a real threat for women and in a post-apocalyptic world, perhaps more so. But in the insanely gendered world that T4 presents to us (aside from Blair we never see another woman soldier that I can recall and if so, they're like, tiny background people; none of the five generals on the sub was a woman or, well, anyone else), it felt gratuitous and like a cliched shortcut to, well, a bunch of icky things we're about to catalogue.
So Blair starts by making big talk about how she's gonna beat them up and I'm like, okay, maybe she'll get herself out of this. Nope. She takes down one guy and then the other two pile on her and start to beat her up. It's a fairly transparent and uncomfortable token effort at giving her a fighting spirit which a lot of people would probably claim makes her "strong" and then fall back on the literal truth that three on one is hardly a fair fight. But the point is that the film put the character in the situation in the first place and especially given the would-be-rapists reactions to her pugnacious attitude, it essentially slides into the yucky trope of, "I like a bit of fight in them." So like, that's one of the main reasons Blair Williams' character goes beyond pissing me off and starts venturing into territory that actually offends me is that a lot of the more vile sexist shit that occurs in her storyline is wrapped up in these lies, these things that I know if I say to a lot of people, they'll use as evidence it isn't sexist, rather than proof that it is and blatantly so.
So anyway. Blair, of course, gets saved by a big manly man.
Who she then falls for in like...thirty second flat complete with outrageous flirting and jokes about it being cold and needing body heat. Because nothing gets a woman hot and up for a lack of personal space like almost being raped.
THEN she compromises the safety of her base and everyone in it by freeing a potentially deadly machine. Now I know that it was the right choice in the context of the movie. And I have sympathy for the dilemma that the character was facing. But it doesn't change the fact that really we have no basis for why she'd be willing to trust this machine - when machines have spent most of her life trying to wipe out her species - beyond she WUVS him and apparently that trumps all common sense or loyalty to the people who are, in essence, her family.
THEN she gets wounded during the escape and is saved by a big manly man, only to be captured by John Connor - another manly man - to be magnanimously released by him instead of punished.
*cries*
I mentioned two other minor characters. They are - an old woman who is in charge of a small enclave of survivors and who silences dissent and orders her people to share food with Kyle and the little girl and Marcus. All well and good, sure she's in a position of authority, but also, the immediate response to this is a challenge to her authority at the point of a gun from a big manly man, which we never see the resolution to because everyone gets captured by robots. Also she's yet another stereotype - the kind wisewoman. Perhaps a less harmful one than "Failed Rape Gets Me Hot," but...still not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Finally there's Helena Bonham Carter. I can't remember her character's name. She's a crazy dying scientist and frankly, I love that Skynet looks like her if only because then I can imagine it looks like her from that Planet of the Apes remake.
As herself (rather than the Skynet talking head) she really only appears in one scene (and the Skynet Head only appears in one other and it's just...well it's not really a character). There are interesting things about her character; that one of the chief Cyberdyne computer scientists is a woman, in a film such as this, is in itself gratifying since that kind of desire - to built killer robots - is usually firmly portrayed as masculine.
While hampered by hamfisted dialogue, the prologue with Marcus and Dr. Helena Bonham Carter was without doubt the most complex thing in the movie. It was hampered by hamfisted dialogue but I did feel it was trying to say something complex, and more than that interesting about both characters. The way and reason Marcus sold his body to her, and her motives for wanting it in the first place. In a film with good treatment of women in other areas, I probably would have found this scene predominantly interesting and found any sexism in it to be a reference to the reality of the world; something we're supposed to incorporate into our reading of the scene and our judgements on what it's trying to say about both of the characters.
In this film however, I can't help but note that in her ONLY scene, the key emotional beat is, essentially, sexual humiliation; when Marcus sells her what she wants for a kiss, only to turn around and announce he wanted to know what death tasted like rather than any desire for her. The expression on her face suggesting she was hoping it was the latter.
So yes.
WOMENFAIL.
Also there is PLOTFAIL.
Because really, John, would it KILL you to say, "Please don't attack, there are civilians inside Skynet, I'm gonna rescue them, THEN we can blow it sky high?" Instead of some vague messianic plea to resistance groups who aren't even in contact with each other, not to attack for NO REASON AT ALL other than he asked?
And Skynet, really, you're a robot, you should be SMART.
You have Kyle Reese. KILL HIM. Okay, fine. I can buy that you want live bait. Perhaps you're not 100% sure that he's John's father, or even that killing him will prevent John's existence and you want to be sure and really kill your problem right now. Great. WHEN JOHN FINALLY ARRIVES IN THE BUILDING, WHY IS YOUR GRAND PLAN TO SEND ONE, UNARMED, NAKED COPY OF ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AT HIM? Why not a squad? WITH GUNS?
Why were they even taking prisoners? Okay, sure, to lure John so that he'd have reason to believe that Kyle was alive, FINE, but the resistance aren't even SURPRISED that they're taking prisoners suggesting this is...normal now? What happened to the horrifying stories Kyle Reese told about how they kept only enough people alive to burn the bodies of everyone else and that's what all the fires are?
And this is without even worrying about the technical continuity details like the fact that when Kyle Reese was sent back by John Connor, Skynet didn't have records of Sarah's face or Kyle's or anyone's because the records were lost on Judgement Day, so presumably BEFORE that happens, they still won't know what they look like? I mean, I'm honest more willing to handwave those details but on top of a poorly thought-out plot they kind of suck.
A simple, "Huh, we're in a different future from the ones my mother told me about on her tapes," as I think we GOT in the trailer, but not in the movie, would have helped! But no.
Plus the weird, convoluted plot to get Marcus to bring in...someone he met completely by chance and who Skynet had no idea the location of. And if the DID know that and it WAS programming that should have been a hell of a lot clearer. I guess maybe their plan was just for Marcus to infiltrate the resistance and get Connor into the base after realising what he was somehow? I don't know. And that's the point. I DON'T KNOW.
Not to mention the fact that NOTHING HAPPENS in this film. The entire film is like...what the first twenty minutes should have been before we launch into the real meat of the story. I mean, really, what happens? John Connor becomes the leader of the resistance because everyone else dies. Kyle joins the Resistance proper. That's it. And neither thing happens in a particularly interesting or surprising way.
Which leads me to the other place where they suffered a serious lack of balls. The robots. I was disappointed that Marcus wasn't actually a completely manufactured Terminator because I think that it's a bit of an easy out - his brain is human with some tech bits and he has metal throughout his skeleton, but essentially, it's easy to justify a belief that really, he's the same guy just with extensive prosthetics. But I was also okay with that. True cyborgification is also fascinating.
And there was this one, glorious moment near the end of the film where I thought, OMFG, they're totally gonna save John Connor by using the Skynet facility to robotify him the same as Marcus! OMG OMG OMG!
BUT NO. Of course not. Instead we get belabored metaphors about the strength of the human heart and the one last true and fundamentally human thing about Marcus goes to John Connor in some hamfisted attempt at a theme.
There's nothing interesting about robots in this film. They aren't even smart.
So, what did I like? Kyle Reese. He was okay. And his storyline with Star and Marcus was definitely the best bit of the movie.
Thus ends my ranty review!
MEH.
I won't lie. I had high expectations. Christian Bale plus all the awesome of the TV series had me seriously excited for this movie, which turned out to be utterly banal and uninspired.
Aesthetically, the future is, I hate to say it, perfunctory and boring. For starters there's sun and daylight, something I don't recall from previous apocalyptic visions of the future, but more than that it just feels too...fake-gritty. John Connor is dressed up like a marine commando with all the extra kit and gear. While presumably it's a massive deal, I really never felt the sense of terrible loss when the resistance lost a helicopter, or as if the two fighters they sent in to scout/escort the civilians out of that valley thing were a rare, rare and valued resource. The horror at losing two of the only fighter jets left in the world, you know?
They felt like a fully staffed, fully kitted-out military unit, in hard times, perhaps, but nothing like the way Kyle Reese in T1 - if I remember correctly - checks to see if he can strip parts from a freakin' TRUCK almost before he checks if his buddy's alive.
The whole thing felt like one of those commando army manly-man video games, you know? The ones all about being part of a manly, homoerotic elite commando unit who have Honour and Brotherhood but it's all code for feeling less geeky about sitting at home playing XBoX live and playing at being soldiers. It was like a testosterone-soaked fantasy with a veneer of "grittiness" (which amounts to a dirty filter on the lens rather than any actual grit or depth) so viewers will feel it's a "real" experience and therefore must be "deeper" than if they had, I dunno, plasma rifles and made-up swear words.
Possibly I'm picking up too much on that and feeling too pissy about that because the thing that REALLY pissed me off was how horrifyingly sexist this film was.
And in the worst possible way too. In that awful, it can't possibly be sexist because we let the girl punch someone and swear a bit to prove she's a "strong woman" and that excuses any sexist cliche we then want to paste on her.
There were, basically, three female characters in this film and two very minor female characters. I'll talk about all of them.
To start with, the little girl that Kyle was looking after - I think her name was Star? When the 7 year old who doesn't speak is your best developed female character you have a problem. And I liked Star and I liked at the start, she's running around helping Kyle survive and stuff and she's hella sweet. And the main reason she serves as an object for people to want to protect and worry about is probably that she's a kid not that she's a girl, but cynically I can't help but wonder if she was a little boy whether they would have given her more moments of plucky bravery like trying to shoot a terminator herself with a saucepan on her head or something. But...the point is, maybe with better context she wouldn't have bothered me. As it is, it pisses me off that, as I said, the non-speaking child c-list character is the best one we've got.
Kate Connor is...not a character. She's John's Wife. She just...wanders around the base being supportive of John, worrying about John, standing in the background with scenes with John, being vaguely medical on occasion, and then, the one time she's out in the field, as it were, she drops the wounded man she's tending to like a hot potato as soon as she sees her poor wounded husband. Again, I'd freak if my husband had a sucking chest wound like that, but this is literally the only thing she does all movie except asking someone else to knock out Marcus, oh, and apparently performing heart surgery on her husband off-scene. When I highly doubt they have either immune-system suppressors or a good way of ensuring that Marcus is even a tissue match, PLUS SHE'S A VETERINARIAN. And you know, having to use a vet as a medic is...one of those things that could make an interesting commentary on the post-apocalyptic world, but it's not like it's ever mentioned in this film. If I didn't know, I would have assumed she was a doctor.
THEN OH DEAR GOD. The character of Blair Williams is just painful. She's the "strong woman" who the writers, and half the viewers, probably genuinely think is a strong woman, and that in itself is painfully depressing.
So basically, she's a fighter pilot. Her character then turns out to be a 2-D collection of cliches for the first few minutes we know her. You know, being all "tough" like a guy to show she's strong and edgy. And okay, this film's standards are not that high, and I can buy that. AND THEN WE GET THE FOLLOWING.
Trained soldier Blair Williams, while changing out in the wastes, decides to leave her gun more than arm's reach away. She is then cornered by three would-be scavenger-rapists. So first off, I get that this is a real threat for women and in a post-apocalyptic world, perhaps more so. But in the insanely gendered world that T4 presents to us (aside from Blair we never see another woman soldier that I can recall and if so, they're like, tiny background people; none of the five generals on the sub was a woman or, well, anyone else), it felt gratuitous and like a cliched shortcut to, well, a bunch of icky things we're about to catalogue.
So Blair starts by making big talk about how she's gonna beat them up and I'm like, okay, maybe she'll get herself out of this. Nope. She takes down one guy and then the other two pile on her and start to beat her up. It's a fairly transparent and uncomfortable token effort at giving her a fighting spirit which a lot of people would probably claim makes her "strong" and then fall back on the literal truth that three on one is hardly a fair fight. But the point is that the film put the character in the situation in the first place and especially given the would-be-rapists reactions to her pugnacious attitude, it essentially slides into the yucky trope of, "I like a bit of fight in them." So like, that's one of the main reasons Blair Williams' character goes beyond pissing me off and starts venturing into territory that actually offends me is that a lot of the more vile sexist shit that occurs in her storyline is wrapped up in these lies, these things that I know if I say to a lot of people, they'll use as evidence it isn't sexist, rather than proof that it is and blatantly so.
So anyway. Blair, of course, gets saved by a big manly man.
Who she then falls for in like...thirty second flat complete with outrageous flirting and jokes about it being cold and needing body heat. Because nothing gets a woman hot and up for a lack of personal space like almost being raped.
THEN she compromises the safety of her base and everyone in it by freeing a potentially deadly machine. Now I know that it was the right choice in the context of the movie. And I have sympathy for the dilemma that the character was facing. But it doesn't change the fact that really we have no basis for why she'd be willing to trust this machine - when machines have spent most of her life trying to wipe out her species - beyond she WUVS him and apparently that trumps all common sense or loyalty to the people who are, in essence, her family.
THEN she gets wounded during the escape and is saved by a big manly man, only to be captured by John Connor - another manly man - to be magnanimously released by him instead of punished.
*cries*
I mentioned two other minor characters. They are - an old woman who is in charge of a small enclave of survivors and who silences dissent and orders her people to share food with Kyle and the little girl and Marcus. All well and good, sure she's in a position of authority, but also, the immediate response to this is a challenge to her authority at the point of a gun from a big manly man, which we never see the resolution to because everyone gets captured by robots. Also she's yet another stereotype - the kind wisewoman. Perhaps a less harmful one than "Failed Rape Gets Me Hot," but...still not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Finally there's Helena Bonham Carter. I can't remember her character's name. She's a crazy dying scientist and frankly, I love that Skynet looks like her if only because then I can imagine it looks like her from that Planet of the Apes remake.
As herself (rather than the Skynet talking head) she really only appears in one scene (and the Skynet Head only appears in one other and it's just...well it's not really a character). There are interesting things about her character; that one of the chief Cyberdyne computer scientists is a woman, in a film such as this, is in itself gratifying since that kind of desire - to built killer robots - is usually firmly portrayed as masculine.
While hampered by hamfisted dialogue, the prologue with Marcus and Dr. Helena Bonham Carter was without doubt the most complex thing in the movie. It was hampered by hamfisted dialogue but I did feel it was trying to say something complex, and more than that interesting about both characters. The way and reason Marcus sold his body to her, and her motives for wanting it in the first place. In a film with good treatment of women in other areas, I probably would have found this scene predominantly interesting and found any sexism in it to be a reference to the reality of the world; something we're supposed to incorporate into our reading of the scene and our judgements on what it's trying to say about both of the characters.
In this film however, I can't help but note that in her ONLY scene, the key emotional beat is, essentially, sexual humiliation; when Marcus sells her what she wants for a kiss, only to turn around and announce he wanted to know what death tasted like rather than any desire for her. The expression on her face suggesting she was hoping it was the latter.
So yes.
WOMENFAIL.
Also there is PLOTFAIL.
Because really, John, would it KILL you to say, "Please don't attack, there are civilians inside Skynet, I'm gonna rescue them, THEN we can blow it sky high?" Instead of some vague messianic plea to resistance groups who aren't even in contact with each other, not to attack for NO REASON AT ALL other than he asked?
And Skynet, really, you're a robot, you should be SMART.
You have Kyle Reese. KILL HIM. Okay, fine. I can buy that you want live bait. Perhaps you're not 100% sure that he's John's father, or even that killing him will prevent John's existence and you want to be sure and really kill your problem right now. Great. WHEN JOHN FINALLY ARRIVES IN THE BUILDING, WHY IS YOUR GRAND PLAN TO SEND ONE, UNARMED, NAKED COPY OF ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER AT HIM? Why not a squad? WITH GUNS?
Why were they even taking prisoners? Okay, sure, to lure John so that he'd have reason to believe that Kyle was alive, FINE, but the resistance aren't even SURPRISED that they're taking prisoners suggesting this is...normal now? What happened to the horrifying stories Kyle Reese told about how they kept only enough people alive to burn the bodies of everyone else and that's what all the fires are?
And this is without even worrying about the technical continuity details like the fact that when Kyle Reese was sent back by John Connor, Skynet didn't have records of Sarah's face or Kyle's or anyone's because the records were lost on Judgement Day, so presumably BEFORE that happens, they still won't know what they look like? I mean, I'm honest more willing to handwave those details but on top of a poorly thought-out plot they kind of suck.
A simple, "Huh, we're in a different future from the ones my mother told me about on her tapes," as I think we GOT in the trailer, but not in the movie, would have helped! But no.
Plus the weird, convoluted plot to get Marcus to bring in...someone he met completely by chance and who Skynet had no idea the location of. And if the DID know that and it WAS programming that should have been a hell of a lot clearer. I guess maybe their plan was just for Marcus to infiltrate the resistance and get Connor into the base after realising what he was somehow? I don't know. And that's the point. I DON'T KNOW.
Not to mention the fact that NOTHING HAPPENS in this film. The entire film is like...what the first twenty minutes should have been before we launch into the real meat of the story. I mean, really, what happens? John Connor becomes the leader of the resistance because everyone else dies. Kyle joins the Resistance proper. That's it. And neither thing happens in a particularly interesting or surprising way.
Which leads me to the other place where they suffered a serious lack of balls. The robots. I was disappointed that Marcus wasn't actually a completely manufactured Terminator because I think that it's a bit of an easy out - his brain is human with some tech bits and he has metal throughout his skeleton, but essentially, it's easy to justify a belief that really, he's the same guy just with extensive prosthetics. But I was also okay with that. True cyborgification is also fascinating.
And there was this one, glorious moment near the end of the film where I thought, OMFG, they're totally gonna save John Connor by using the Skynet facility to robotify him the same as Marcus! OMG OMG OMG!
BUT NO. Of course not. Instead we get belabored metaphors about the strength of the human heart and the one last true and fundamentally human thing about Marcus goes to John Connor in some hamfisted attempt at a theme.
There's nothing interesting about robots in this film. They aren't even smart.
So, what did I like? Kyle Reese. He was okay. And his storyline with Star and Marcus was definitely the best bit of the movie.
Thus ends my ranty review!
