Blind Spot Review: Terminator 2: Judgement Day

I sit here at 19:33 on Sunday night with a stinking hangover, having watched Terminator 2 curled up in a ball in my sofa.  I thought with my fuzzy head I might struggle to follow it but I'm pretty sure I got it all!

The sequel to Terminator (which was in last years Blind Spot list) "T2" brings back the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) but this time recruited to protect John Connor (Edward Furlong) from the advanced T-1000 (Robert Patrick) sent to kill him.  John, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) and the T-800 go on the run staying one step ahead of the killer robot.

First thing I have to say is straight away you can see the improvements in the special effects, helicopters, huge explosions and melting robots, its exciting from beginning to end.  I have to admit, I think I prefer this one to the original, mostly because of Sarah's kickass-ness and also the humour and light heartedness that John brings to the game.  Him trying to teach the T-800 how to be a bit more human really made me laugh and I can see where this movie influenced Terminator Genisys with that version of Sarah Connor teaching "pops" how to be more human.

I think this is an important time to mention the bizarre order in which I have watched these films, I started years ago with Terminator Salvation, followed by Terminator 1 then Terminator Genisys and now Terminator 2.  If the timelines get confusing when you watch them in order, try watching them in the wrong order.

Overall, I really enjoyed this, I was entertained from beginning to end (even with my hangover) and loved the father/son type bond that developed with John and the Terminator.  I did miss Kyle Reese though!

Not going to wait until the next Blind Spot challenge to watch Rise of the Machines, I'm so intrigued as to how Arnie is in it again!

Review: Terminator Genisys (2015)

UPDATED POST: Now that Jenna's seen the movie!

I’m doing fairly well with the summer blockbusters so far, which is unusual for me. Thanks to my local Odeon sending me a 50% off tickets for the weekend offer, I got to go and see Terminator Genisys on a Sunday evening. I’m so glad Jenna and I watched the original Terminator movie a few weeks ago, or I would have been tempted to skip this one all together. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to see Judgement Day, which I now think would have really helped.  Seven months after the original post, I managed to get round to seeing it.  I'm now annoyed that I waited so long!

Excuse me now while I set the scene badly. John Connor (Jason Clarke) sends Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back in time to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) from the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), just like in the original. However, something goes wrong, and now Kyle has been sent back to some kind of alternate timeline where Sarah is already tough as nails, and has her own Terminator looking after her, named Pops.  That was pretty good!

Let me start with what I loved. The nods and references to the original movie were awesome and are the reason I’m so glad I watched it. There was even (were even?) purple pew pew lazers at the start! Arnie as Pops was my favourite character, as terrifying as his smile was. I only know Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones so it was nice to see what else she can do, and damn that girl kicks ass!  Loved that smile, it was hilarious, i'm guessing there would be a few out-takes from those scenes because how could you not laugh at this face:

I can’t help but feel that a viewing all the previous movies is mandatory before watching Genisys. As clear as the references to the first movie were, I got the distinct feeling there were many moments from the others as well, and that really hindered my enjoyment of the whole thing. I knew enough to (almost) understand what was going on, but I might have to revisit this review in the future after watching the full series.  This is surprising because I noticed a few mentions of Judgement Day but I didn't feel like I was missing anything having not seen it.  However, I do now REALLY want to see it!  

Now, I feel like I should say that I love time travel. You can do almost anything you want with it, and I love trying to work my head around alternate timelines and what not. This was too much for me though. I think I was doing okay and then I got myself confused halfway through and missed probably 20 minutes of the movie trying to get my head around it. Again though, I think the knowledge of the previous movies would help.  I struggled with the timelines and such for a while but about half an hour in I got to grips with it and I think I managed to hold onto it until the end.  I've lost is now though so don't ask me to explain it! I feel like I may have watched the films in the wrong order as I started with 4, then 1, now 5 and I still haven't seen 2 and 3 but I'm desperate for number 6 - now I am confused!

I loved this way more than I thought I would and personally, I preferred the chemistry between Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney than I did the original cast (this comment may get me some stick but hey ho!).  I really did enjoy trying to keep track of the timelines and how it differed from the original.  One thing that did throw me was how Sarah knew how her entire life was supposed to play out, I pondered over that one for a good half an hour before I clocked that Pops obviously told her!

Ahhhhh how could I forget JK Simmons, love him!!  Didn't know he was in this, loved watching him bumbling around, tripping over stuff.  He can play anyone and I will automatically love him!

That said then, my score is a placeholder for now based solely on my enjoyment of the screening (as always). I’ll watch the other movies and revisit this at a later date. Or should I say...I’ll be back.  Now's your chance....

Blind Spot: The Terminator (1984)

It’s been a strange and busy old month this month, what with Jenna’s new house and my family members seemingly dropping like flies, and I’m surprised we’ve managed to get together, but we did it! This might also be the second most fun I’ve ever had watching a movie with Jenna. I was about to say the absolute most fun, but then I remembered Sharknado.  Nothing will ever beat Sharknado but this did come pretty close, especially with the exceptional CGI work! I think we’re both a little embarrassed to have never seen our pick this month, but hey, better late than never! 

We were planning on watching Platoon for this month’s Blind Spot, but time and tiredness wouldn’t allow for it, and with Terminator Genisys out next month, it seemed like a suitable swap around.

If you didn’t know already, or had simply forgotten, The Terminator has been sent back in time to 1984 with one mission, to murder Sarah Connor, who, in the future, will give birth to John Connor, who in the future leads a war against machines and computers. Future John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect Sarah...and now my head hurts. Did I get that right? Yep I think that's right...ish!

A fly on the wall would have had a great time whilst we were watching this.

‘Oh, he’s naked!’

‘Umm...he’s very much naked, oh my’

‘Where’d that other naked guy come from?!’

We also had a funny discussion over the plot twist (spoiler alert, obviously) which we had worked out fairly early on, which went something like this…

Jenna: Oh, what if Reese is actually Connor’s Father? Wait, how would that even work…

Allie: No, no, what if he was actually John Connor’s Father!

Jenna: ...That’s what I just said.

Allie: I thought you meant Sarah Connor’s Father!

Jenna: How would that make sense?!
This conversation was too funny and also spanned about 40 minutes - i.e. it took Allie a further 30 or so minutes to come up with the same theory as me but without realising I had already stated the same theory 30 minutes earlier! 30 minutes!! It was 10!

Sometimes I worry for us...but we do have fun when we watch movies together! Onto something more constructive though, I really did  enjoy watching The Terminator. I kind of wish I had done so years ago when I could appreciate the special effects, because watching them know was laughable. Some of the stop motion effects were really dodgy, but that’s just down to the time this was made. I’m sure we’ll all be poking fun at our recent special effects in years to come.  We shouldn't have found it funny because as Allie said it would have been great when it was realised THIRTY years ago, but it was a great giggle comparing the work to an episode of Thunderbirds and watching the scenes quite obviously change from prosthetic faces to real faces, real filming to stop motion!!

In fairness, looking past the graphics and CGI (or lack of it) this is a great Sci-fi movie, the concept is bloody brilliant (if you don't get tied up in time travel paradoxes as I did a couple of times while watching).  Its terrifying to think that in the future machines could take over the world.  Did anyone else think that the writers of Avengers: Age of Ultron may have taken some influence from Terminator?!  There seemed to be a lot of similarities in both the storylines and the robots.

This is a really hard one to score. If I put on a professional blogger hat and analysed the effects, cheesy dialogue, etc, then this would have a lower score, but we’ve always scored films on our enjoyment more than anything else!  As much as I took the piss out of the dialogue and the graphics I do have to account for when the film was released and the awesomeness of the story...