Thursday, September 24, 2009

Terminator: Salvation "not enough to save the franchise"

Terminator movies have always been about robots that disguise as humans go back to the past and kill someone. But this new movie takes the franchise into a new time, during the war against the machines. Basically the movie is about John Connor's (the leader of the resistance) fight against the machine. Without spoiling it too much, he basically have to save his own dad, Kyle Reese.

Those who have seen the first three movies will know who John Connor, Kyle Reese, Skynet and a couple of characters in this 4th movie. The new character, Marcus Wright, is okay, but he was sort of a staple (to the Terminator franchise) character. It was nice to see more machines other than the humanoid Terminators, like there's the Hunter-Killers -flying machines that hunt and kill humans, this humogous biped robot that can deploy smaller, motorbike-like Terminators and the machines from Terminator 3. The humans or Resistance in this movie were more organized and have more access to military hardware than shown in the first two movies, then again it was still early in the war.

Chrisitian Bale in this movie used his Batman voice, there was one scene that I wished he yelled "WHERE IS HE?" like he did in The Dark Knight. But, Bale did an okay job portraying John Connor but his Batman voice made him as if he was still playing Bruce Wayne. Another thing I don't get is why Skynet made humanoid terminators that wield human weapons, while they made gigantic biped robots and huge flying machines, that makes it look silly. They haven't even fully made Arnold Schwarzenegger (oops, I guess I spoiled a bit of the movie) yet. Think about it, the machines that use human weapons are basically like "Beat me and get a prize". I could nitpick more but, I wouldn't want to ruin it for whoever is reading this.

If I were to compare this with another movie, I guess Star Wars Episode I comes in mind since this is a start of a trilogy, both being a prequel if you think about it.

Overall I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5

It is better that Terminator 3 but Terminator 2 will always be the best Terminator movie.

Bayformers 2 : The Revenge for more money

Back in 80s there were lots of cartoons which is are called "30 minute toy ads" like G.I Joe, Thundercats, TMNT, etc,etc. Transformers is one of these so called "30 minute toy ads". It all started when a toyline from Japan called Diaclone and Microman, Hasbro took intrest, give names and story to these characters and voila you get Transformers. Transformers is about the war between two factions of beings from the Planet Cybertron. One of the factions is the heroic Autobots led by Optimus Prime, fighting against the evil Decepticons. The Transformers franchise has lots of story arcs and different story, so there is lots of versions of Transformers. Starting from 1984 which most fans call G1 (or Generation One), followed by G2 in 92, then Beast Wars in 95, Robots in Disguise in 2000, Unicron Trilogy in 2002 and Transformers Animated in 2007. That's just most of the cartoon series, I haven't even mention the comics.

Transformers: RotF is the sequel of the Transformers 2007 movie. It sets 2 years after the first one. The Autobots have made an alliance with the humans who made a task force to fight against the remaining Decepticons called NEST (Don't know what it stands for). Without revealing much of the plot, The Autobots and the humans are going up against one of the oldest and powerful Decepticon, The Fallen. All of the old cast are back and even new addition like Sideswipe (An Autobot who is an expert with blades), Arcee and her sisters (3 Autobots who have wheels for legs), Jolt (An addition to please the sponsors) and of course The Fallen. These are the only characters that I didn't mind although there were some annoying ones like the twins, Mudflap and Skids, they are supposed to be "comic relief" but their way of speaking sounded like (excuse the language) redneck wiggers. Wheelie, I didn't mind, but man, the Twins were annoying as heck. If you've seen the movie, you'll see why. I wished Jolt and Sideswipe were the one who helps Bumblebee escort Sam, not these two annoying waste of CG. They could've given them more screen time. Also they've ruined Soundwave's voice. Most of the robot voices were (sort of) true to the cartoons while Soundwave's voice is WAY off. His original voice was a synthesized-esque voice which made him an important character, while in this he sounded like a cartoon-reject villain.

With all the bad thing said about the twins, the action in this is WAY much better than the first one, although some problems still persist like most of the time it was unclear who's bashing who. But, there is more intense action fights with lots of pyrotechnics just like a typical Michael Bay movie...never mind.

So overall, if you've seen the first one and quite enjoyed it, you will not be disappointed in RotF. I also recommend this movie if you just want to see robots beating up other robots.

It is a good movie but the flaws almost overlap the good things.

3 out of 5


Obligatory Introduction

This blog is a product of mostly boredom and messing around. If you are expecting a top-notch journalism in this blog, you may now close this window (or tab). What you'll probably read are opinions, so don't get mad if you be hatin'.