INVINCIBLE JUNK

It's a shame we've got to endure several more sequels after Terminator: Genisys, John Connor as a bastardised electronic murderer would be a fitting end to this increasing ordinary series. It weaponises the idea of sequels, and their incestuous, obsessive reconfiguring of already extant material.

To wit, the incessant time stream meddling by both Skynet and the human resistance has given rise to alpha being who wants to be the only thing left standing. John Connor as a temporal God of Destruction. He combines both aspects of his enemies, he is simultaneously human and machine. Invincible but scarred.

This John Connor doesn't want to save humanity, he needs to eradicate the forces that put him in this position - the futuristic hyper-computer who rules the future and the parents who conceived him. Kill them all, stamp them into dust so John Connor, seated on a throne of bones and twisted machinery, can finally feel a sense of peace.

SUPER BOWL SPOTS - Terminator: Genisys

Terminator: Genisys goes for the Dad crowd in its Super Bowl Spot, selling heavily on Schwarzenegger's presence. Shame he looks so rickety. The star's big reveal is a straight cop from Indian action flick Singham, with Schwarzenegger looking pained as he casually disembarks from a speeding car. Genisys, whose best moments here are still essentially nostalgia prompts, looks like a Terminator film filtered like superhero histrionics. The films cyborgs look like they have zero in common with James Cameron's pursuit men, instead they're invincible junk who'll throw their arm away.

The Terminator: Hunters and Killers by Walter Simonson

TERMINATOR by James Cameron

Terminator Model T-800 by Halfdan Pisket

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

With a lengthy stint of dilute stinkers to his name, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was Arnold Schwarzenegger's last starring role before he embarked upon a political career that saw him elected as the 38th Governor of California. As such, T3 can be read as both a payday sequel to stuff Schwarzenegger's coffers, and a public relations push for the star's impending aspirations. Certainly, this terminator resembles little more than a flagging, toothless repurposing of Schwarzenegger's Terminator 2: Judgment Day performance.

Although in similar shape to his mid-forties, T2 self, Schwarzenegger sports a deep red tan that clashes with his leather-daddy outfit and any pretence that he's actually from a terrible future. Director Jonathan Mostow also fails to give the star any killer establishing shots that aren't immediately voided by ugly, after-the-fact tinkering. It's a kick to see Schwarzenegger juggling a coffin full of rocket launchers like a futureshock Django, but the moment is mangled by Mostow's need to paste on post-process slow motion.

The film rolls on and on, never finding any way to make Schwarzenegger look iconic. Instead he's a bumbling old man, hair permanently fixed in a state of greased shock, snowboarder sunglasses stapled to his face. He doesn't look cool, he looks absurd. Factor in a reprogramming shorthand that replicates the near-human state of T2's father figure, a suffocating rash of Schwarzenegger career quotes, and a long streak of bawdy, contemptuous humour at the killing machine's expense - "Talk to the hand!" - and you have a performance that wades into full-on parody.

Elsewhere, Edward Furlong's vandal John Connor has mutated into a trembling loser played by Nick Stahl. Stahl's Connor is a messianic bum, taken to crashing motorcycles and day-labouring after T2's theatrical ending robbed him of his ambition. Stahl burns screentime furrowing his brow and looking confused. There's zero sense he's capable of leading anything. Indeed as soon as the Terminator shows up he instantly abdicates any sense of command. Much more convincing as an impending Techno-Caesar is Claire Danes's Kate Brewster, a revision role perhaps originally written to be Sarah Connor.

Although by no means as capable as Linda Hamilton, Brewster does occasionally ask questions and take the initiative, something the dumbfounded Connor never quite manages. The suggestion here seems to be that Connor is the cuckolded sap pushed front-and-centre by his Brewster wife to be the male poster image for her own military ambitions. Cameron's films posited Connor as a scarred and cold Übermensch, forged by an abusive upbringing to be the shitkicker Christ that topples the machines. T3's sole shot of Future Connor is a scruffy old Stahl limply leading a victory chant whilst wearing oversized fatigues and a worried expression. Fuck that guy.

The weak linking continues with Kristanna Loken's irritable TX, a female shaped terminator programmed with the need to writhe in ecstasy whenever she tastes her target's blood. An early emphasis on the TX being aware of the uses a sexualised identity can afford her does raise the intermittently interesting idea that she might try and seduce her quarry. In the end though, all this cat housing amounts to nothing. Incredibly, the idea of a mechanised honeytrap was better explored in Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, at least there Bay was able to conjure a terrifying sense of destructive, sexual otherness. In T3 any such posturing is ultimately revealed to be cynical titillation.

Unfortunately the TX wasn't conceived to be interesting, she exists solely to turn up late and harass our heroes forward. There's an overwhelming sense that very little imagination is being flexed on her behalf. Her basic physiology is founded on a solid metal core, so immediately she's less interesting / invincible than the T-1000. Cameron's Terminator films also afforded their villains scenes of detective work and incidental murder. Threat was close and constantly stressed. A few brief assassinations aside, T3 only manages to burp up a sequence were TX idly sets some trees on fire after getting her ineffectual plasma weapon junked. She's vapour. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines simply doesn't give a shit. It knows you'll watch it out of some dimwitted allegiance to past glories. Why should it even try? It's a sequel designed entirely to be just another instalment in an unending multi-media franchise.

Tech Noir Terminator

NECA finally get their shit together long enough to issue a scale Schwarzenegger dressed in The Terminator's junkie punker threads. Doll accessories include switchable mitts, a .45 long slide with laser sighting, and an Uzi 9 millimetre.

Elektroniczny Morderca

Polish poster for the 1987 release of James Cameron's The Terminator. Designed by Jakub Erol. Doesn't take much of a linguist to work out that the film's riding with the handle Electronic Murderer, a wonderfully blunt bit of cobble poetics. Extra points for being in-text too. Instead of the studio posed tech-noir incongruity our ads enjoyed, here we have an image of Schwarzenegger as he appeared in the film: haggered, with a singed hairpiece, spilling psychedelic automation bubbles from his camouflaged robo-eyes.

Terminator: Optimistic

Terminator: Salvation gets a lengthy trailer. Viewable here. Even in this abbreviated form, it's interesting to note the long takes of action rather than quick-burst epilepsy edits. Maybe McG has it in him after all? Christian Bale is exactly as good as he always is, his John Connor a massive step-up from the coddled, impotent non-entity of T3. Also rather exciting that this moment montage would have us believe SkyNet routinely has malformed proto-Terminators sling on T2 anti-kill iconography to tear through panicking prisoners. T-600! More like that! Series echoes continue with a confused pacifist Terminator stumbling through Reese lines - perhaps hoping to further blur the lines between aggressor / protector. Elsewhere, Bale's adventures tap into that other great wasteland masterpiece Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - hulking cobble-cab hightailing from rapid seeker hunter killer bikes. Dead against crowbarring in an impossibly clean love interest though. Who cares? Is it Hollywood law? Mind you, given her delicate condition, she's probably just one for third act heart strings. Ouch!

Terminator: Sarah Crapper Chronicles

Lookee! That's Garbage front-lady Shirley Manson. She used to be musically inclined! What's she upto these days? Why, she's playing a urinal in Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles! Essaying the role of a porcelain wee trough that part times as a lethal ILM morpho 'droid must be tiring work. Poor Shirl, no wonder she's all whimsical. Apparently programmed to hold petty office grudges, and look tiny in a popped-collar brutalist 70s business suit, Manson's wicked lazy T-1001 (what?!) is yet another reason why I will never ever suffer through this series. Seventeen years and they can't even do the colour bleed-in as seamlessly as Cameron's flick. Yikes. Get your judgemental on here.

Summer 1991 / Easter 1997

My all-time favourite teaser trailer.

Shot by the late great Stan Winston in 1990, with Ahnoldt on loan for the day from Kindergarten Cop.

I first saw this on holiday in Florida in about 1997. We'd been to the local mall, and I'd blown a big chunk of pocket money savings on a two VHS set of the extended version of Terminator 2. Prior to entering the shop, I didn't even know an article of such wonder existed. An even longer version of T2! You can imagine my joy-buzz overload meltdown. My Dad wasn't sure our PAL VCR back home would play it. I was fairly sure, having scoured the manual a few times trying to work out how to copy rental tapes, and didn't care either way. I had to have it! The above fragment of one minute magic was on the second cassette, along with two deleted scenes and a handful of documentaries. Back in those pre-DVD (Laserdisc never took off in the UK) days, this was manna from heaven for a film freak like me.

Bateman Crashes Helicopters on Terminators For Fun!

He does. He does. He does.

Take that scruffy prop!

T4! T-More? T-Bore?!

Saw the T4 trailer!

If you harbour similar desires yourself; look here.

No images have been released (that I could find), so you'll have to content yourself with one of Simon Bisley's covers for Dark Horse's Terminator: Enemy Within comic series as a header.

My findings? Looks like flashy well-lit post-apocalyptia. Feel fairly neutral on it. I'm assured that the overall screen sheen has much in common with TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Wow. Great. Thanks. It certainly looks nothing like Cameron's smoke choked neo Stalingrad.

I did enjoy the static bursts hammering out Brad Fiedel's Terminator theme, and sand blasted landscape always remind me of Mad Max 2: Road Warrior / Fist of the North Star - both nostalgia jerks born elsewhere, bubbling up to make something totally different palatable. Christian Bale assures a certain amount of quality though, I'm half-way convinced he's quite incapable of being anything less than great. In interviews he always seems to have a keen genre hat on too; not merely doling out what-you-want-to-hear plaudits, rather demonstrating passion and a research instinct. I would hope that insures a script-level integrity.

The apparently obligatory Terminator role is played by Australian actor Sam Worthington.



Personally recommended by James Cameron (fresh off a role in next years Avatar), he has that man-in-crowd quality that Cameron originally toyed with (but rejected) when plotting the 1984 original. Better Mr Worthington than a musclebound ex-wrestler or Vin Diesel eh?

My main fears (dreads, anxiety attacks) rest first on director McG, and secondly the script. McG, or Joseph McGinty Nichol to his Mum, has directed several bad films - chief among which is surely Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle - and been involved with listing filler TV drek like Pussycat Dolls Present: Search for the Next Doll. It's the resume of a middle-aged chronic masturbator. Rise to the occasion? He'll need a fucken jetpack. Script wise, all I can say is that I sincerely hope that mega spoiler that did the rounds a few months back is completely inaccurate. Otherwise, who gives a fuck? It's not brave, it's just an Alien vs Predator-esque retroactive continuity fucker. Quite apt given the modus operandi of the title characters like, but I'm not that fond of irony.

Water Terminators too eh? What a crock of shit.