jencat | all night long (Reply)

I need sleep. Like, really, really badly. Like, it's now 3pm, and I've been awake since 8am yesterday on account of, er, doing the Terminator All-Nighter at the Imax last night...

Which rocked, obviously, but seriously? there's a reason I've never pulled an all-nighter for anything before, and it probably has something to do with the fact I was having trouble stringing two words together on the way home this morning, steps were presenting an insurmountable problem (they keep moving!) and I consumed so much caffeine last night/this morning that I now feel seriously icky.

But, ohhhh... all the flicks at once. That was fun :o)

Of course, not one bit of the timeline makes sense (they kept changing it! who the hell knows how old Sarah is supposed to be in the first film?!), they re-record Sarah's tapes from T1 for T:S for absolutely no reason, and the multitude of recasting from sequel might have been to do with alternate timelines, but none of the actors are really believable as playing the same person...! (the one thing that did strike me this time: Anton Yelchin ends up looking sooo much like Thomas Dekker at one point, that was kinda cool. Timeline freakishness aside, of course..)
And the first film, for me, still holds up as the best of the bunch. It's dark and horrific and atmospheric, and one of the best romances in cinema, for all its grounding is paper-thin.

Not the popular view, I know, but having to actually sit through the whole of T2 (without just catching the cool bits when it's on tv) kinda just brought it home quite how much I can't stand the whole 'Uncle Bob' thing. Edward Furlong seriously can't act for a big chunk of the film (if I had to listen to his 'unique' approach to reciting his lines for more than one film, I would go doolally), and Arnie slips straight over into self-parody the moment Bad to the Bone chimes in. The shark from the original has well and truly left the building, and it's painful watching his gurning Pinocchio-wannabe attempts to 'become more human'. It's no wonder T3 had to over-egg the pudding so badly with one-liners and cheesy terminator moments - they were just copying the worst bits of the last film without understanding why it wouldn't work.

How can I put this - when the first T100 says "I'll be back", he's deadly serious. "Hasta la vista, bebe" - not serious at all. It's a cheesy '80s/'90s Arnie blockbuster one-liner that makes the entire film more and more pantomime-like. T2 is the Titanic of the franchise - overblown, overambitious, cheesy and making lots of money (why did Cameron get it so right with Aliens, when he saw you had to switch from horror in the first film to a bombastic action flick for the follow-up? Because Aliens is still freakin' scary. T2... nah, not so much. The apocalyptic nightmare hits the right note, and Sarah's Pescadero incarceration is fantastically disturbing. The T1000 has its creepy moments when it copies its victims, but it's just not scary enough as a monster chasing John...).

T3 came out of it surprisingly well, considering it's the long-neglected bastard child of the franchise, whose existence everyone wants to forget. No, it makes very little sense, but it all plays out well-enough. Nick Stahl - haven't seen him in a while! - now just brings to mind his Sin City role when you see him, so that doesn't always work so well... Ah, hell, it's the B movie one, but at least nobody expects great things from it...

...Unlike Salvation. Heh. Well, it still holds up second time around - the action is gorgeously shot, Anton Yelchin absolutely steals the show, it's a bit clearer this time that no, Kate isn't actually performing the heart transplant herself (thank god!), Bale is still playing his character a la Batman... It was bombastic but the fanservice was there and it was still fun. Sam Worthington's accent = gah! The boy is Aussie. Apparently nobody seems to notice that he spends the entire opening scene with an Australian accent for absolutely no reason. The fact he's acting opposite the Brit Helena Bonham Carter who manages a flawless yank accent just shows him up unfortunately...

of course, by the time we actually made it to the start of Salvation (around 7am!), everyone was beyond tired, over-caffeinated and verging on hysterical... the round of applause that followed someboday in the audience sneezing loudly almost made sense at that point...!

Glad I went, glad to see there were so many other peeps around who consider it their idea of fun too, lol! Walking back down the Southbank so early on a sunday morning for breakfast was cool, too - I sure as hell never make it down there for 9am usually!!