Just finished watching the premier of the new Terminator series on FOX and DOF hit me up in Google Talk about starting an open thread. I’ve already given my feelings on the first episode thanks to finding a copy of it on the net, but DOF and I are curious what the rest of you who caught it thought of it.
So let’s hear your opinions.
(Risk of spoilers if anyone missed it but here goes)
Major geeking out, I loved seeing the original Tarissa Dyson, and the ‘80’s-style music, action, and typography. A couple annoyances:
All the characters seem to lack strategic intelligence. John would have told his mother that the names “Sarah” and “John” make too easy a search string, so they’d be using at least one different first name. The teen terminator (cool idea) would have been a better strategist and would not have left a bank vault full of future tech. And a Terminator could not rip open a bank vault door.
(Was that whole bank vault time travel thing lifted from Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold?)
Shouldn’t John have gotten over his personal doubts by now?
That FBI agent has to know there really are robots running around now. Whole football team’s worth of witnesses and all.
Loved the narration at the end: “Until then, a hell of a dogfight!”
I’m trying to avoid reading any spoilers tonight as I’m engrossed in the Australian Open Tennis. The first ep of SCC is on my DVR and I’ll watch it in a few hours.
I liked it well enough to watch it again.
There were some pretty dumb moments (if they didn’t take the time to build that gun they wouldn’t have needed it) but it has Glau, so I’ll overlook them. After all… look at the first episode of STTNG.
I don’t know. Do you really want them to leave an active terminator running around in the past?
Watched it also with some interest. The teenage Terminator was a good idea..a few plot holes that should get plugged with tonight’s episode.
At least this will give me something to watch until “Heroes” returns if the writers strike ends.
Second episode: cooler than the first but (with the exception of House first episodes usually aren’t that good.)
Teen Terminatorchick is a loose cannon. Much harder to control than her counterpart from T2.
Important safety tip: If you are working for the highway department and you find a really cool and suspiciously well-crafted titanium skull by the side of the road, use an oxyacetylene cutting torch on the electronics inside before you put it on display in your apartment.
Wonder if FBI dude will end up helping Sarah?
The second episode had one major continuity error and several plot holes, but I still managed to enjoy it.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Yep, I spent too much time thinking about that episode just before bed time.
Okay…. nearest I can figure is that the first episode takes place after the second movie. When they hop forward in time, Sarah is told by the good terminator that she is dead in the future four years after they left the bank vault…
So they are sometime before the third movie? or are we just going to do one of those “That movie was crap so we’ll pretend it never happened” things?
If we’re before the third movie, then is this particular “Skynet activation” what the third movie was about or did hopping forward in time already change that future?
And anyway, didn’t happy boy in the first movie say that they destroyed the time-travel thingie after he went through so that no bad things could use it again?
I’m sure someone can come up with an explanation that doesn’t make my head hurt. This is why I hate time-travel in the movies.
Sarah and John and TerminatriTeen should be in the UK – Britain wound up building Skynet.
Did anyone else catch the homage to Hitchhikers Guide? “Remain calm”
Les; yeah, I think we’re going to have to put up with considerable plot slop and technical inconsistency. It does bug me that the T800 model is way stronger than it should be. As an engineering problem no way could articulated cyborg hands pull bank-vault pins out of a door, even if titanium were 100 times stronger than steel. Its internal actuators would concentrate stresses and cause breakages.
However, since “the future is not fixed” perhaps events after the second movie have changed it so that awful third movie simply never happened, or will happen in some completely different way. Works for me.
I would guess that they could have just rebuilt it?
OK, the series has more plot holes than a crocheted afghan, but… that scene where she’s standing in the room where the atomic bomb was invented, and she wastes those scientists and they turn into Terminators was worth the price of admission. I could do a ‘philosophy of history’ class session on that scene.