Is the fifth time a charm?
Alan Taylor, director of Thor; The Dark World, was hoping so with this
latest installment of the Terminator franchise. Arnold is back, as promised ad nauseam, this
time playing the T800 version of his infamously iconic incarnation; and yes
they have a rationale for his obvious aging.
In fact, Taylor manages to explain almost every nuance and anomaly of
his rebooted timeline with some degree of credibility. So, as far as
sequels go, or pentequals, and yes, I just made that up, he is able to take a
done to death idea, which seemed utterly inflexible in its cemented mythology,
and create a semi-unique take revisiting many of the quirks that made the first
two so awesome while fabricating a new canon of his own. But that is where the good ends and the bad
begins its T1000 style pursuit. The
acting is stale and tiresome with any attempt at recapturing the humanity of T2
an epic fail. Arnold tries to duplicate
the charm of his T2 persona but never remotely delivers and, in the end, merely becomes a three-dimensional caricature
of himself. And although the effects are
visually stunning and imaginative, the absolute ludicrousness of some of the
action sequences makes it feel more like a well financed Wylie E Coyote
cartoon. I mean, I need at least hint of
science in my science fiction. Finally,
despite a rather impressive twist, which
was revealed before the movie's release on its poster, smooth move Hollywood,
the story does drag and become weighty with the overabundance of theoretic possibilities regarding time
travel. It is complex as it answers some
questions while leaving some rather large, important ones confusingly
untouched. Then again, I guess we have
to leave something for Terminator 6: Arnold's Third House Payment. 2 out of 5 Kernels: Even Skynet has to be
bored with the whole thing by now seeing how every facet of any entertainment
value has now been effectively
terminated.
No comments:
Post a Comment