Like a giant bowl of sugar cereal, the Terminator franchise is deeply flawed yet also a complete delight. Each of these movies has their issues: the original has almost no plot, the T2 is saddled with human awkwardness generator Eddie Furlong, the T3 suffers from a profound lack of Linda Hamilton and Terminator: Salvation is far too dour for its own good. And yet, I love them. I love them all. (Okay, Salvation really tests the limits of my affection.) So while, yes, the marketing for the upcoming Terminator: Genisys has been complete dogshit, I still find myself excited at the prospect of more time travelling killer cyborg adventures. Because while the series has been in freefall for over a decade, at its core this is a franchise whose very premise allows it to be completely stripped down and reinvented at any given moment. I will always hold out hope that Terminator will be awesome.
In the lead up to the release of Terminator: Genisys, we'll be revisiting all four of the previous films week by week starting this week with James Cameron's original B-movie masterpiece. In truth, this is the movie with which I am probably the least familiar, as I did not see it in its entirety until much later in life and, before last week, I think I'd only seen it once all the way through. Why this wasn't in constant rotation on TV when I was a kid, I will never know. But it's good to revisit these things periodically, to give yourself the chance to marvel at Stan Winston's mindblowing work creating practical Terminator effects or to remind yourself that yes, that IS Bill Paxton playing a street punk with blue spiky hair.
I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks of podcasting. I'm particularly excited for the chance to extol the virtues of T3: Rise Of The Machines, which is sneakily kind of wonderful. As always, be sure to subscribe on iTunes or SoundCloud!
Next Week: Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Jurassic World
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