The recent success of Science-Fiction films like Star Trek, District 9, Watchmen, Terminator: Salvation, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, to name the biggest Sci-Fi releases, seems to indicate that Hollywood is gravitating more toward this genre now that it is getting some serious consideration by Hollywood execs.  True, there have been numerous science-fiction and space opera movies that have gained critical or commercial success, such as the Aliens movies that made Sigourney Weaver the standard in female on-screen bad-assery, or the original Star Wars trilogy, basically a Western in Space, that caught the popular imagination.

Tell me that's not awesome, and I'll tell you that you have no joy in your life.

However, for the most part, when you look at Science Fiction movies, so many good films never really got the attention they deserved (although that can be said for movies of any genre), either because of test audiences who missed the point of the film, prompting studios to change the ending, often for the worse, (such as the 2007 remake, I Am Legend, and the theatrical release of Blade Runner), or because of studio power plays (does Superman II ring a bell?  The campy one?).  Lately Hollywood seems to be putting out more big-budget sci-fi films, and for this, I am glad.

And, thankfully, without superman throwing logo-lasers.

Science Fiction is a genre that needs to be handled with care.  It’s not your summer buddy comedy where you can liberally pepper the script with dick-jokes and call it a day, nor is it a sappy Notebook-esque love-fest you go to when you’ve pissed off your girlfriend somehow.  It’s a genre that was almost made for the big screen.  As much as there are famous Sci-Fi novels that have changed literature forever, Science Fiction is as much about the aesthetics and ethics of technology and advancement as it is about awesome metaphors.  A good writer can tell you that the machines from The Matrix have enslaved humans for use as an energy source, but actually seeing that makes the world the story describes much more disturbing.

Let me just wake up and stare in horror at the enslavement of humanity.

This sci-fi trend has been coming on slowly, from the release of The Matrix in 1999, and continuing onwards with big science fiction films that have the added bonus of having a point as well as being really cool to look at.  Others in this vein include Children of Men and V for Vendetta, the latter of which was adapted from the eponymous graphic novel by acclaimed comics writer and whiner, Alan Moore.  The problem, so far, is that as awesome a movie like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is to watch, due to the large amount of explosions and fighting robots contained in the movie, there is little appeal past that.  No thematic exploration of things like ethics and freedom, the sorts of things that most science-fiction books and television shows make it their business to look into.

Explosions everywhere, as well as philosophical themes. Good job, Japan!

The good thing is if Hollywood decides to get even more buddy-buddy with the sci-fi genre then they’ve got a lot of material they can adapt to the big screen.  Things that could be amazing visually and thematically, the latter being something that Hollywood desperately needs to add to its summer blockbusters.  It’s true there are things that animation can do that live-action and CGI just can’t (as Japanese films Ghost in the Shell and Akira prove) but that doesn’t mean the genre is limiting in any way.  There are lots of material that would probably be awesome to see as a movie, things as diverse as video games (the Halo games, or Battletech, AKA Mechwarrior, both of which have excellent narratives), novels (A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan, Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz), and television shows (possibly an adaptation of Japan’s Gundam titles, which, like Battletech, explore the political and personal effects of war).

These things should be in EVERY movie, from now on.

On the whole, if you like science-fiction, and you like movies, you should definitely be optimistic (I sure am), especially with movies like Surrogates and Avatar, both of which are to be released later this year, coming out.  We can only hope that this trend of good sci-fi movies continues for a long time.  Also, if you’ve heard of Battletech/Mechwarrior and have wanted to see it immortalised in film, a school of CGI artists have gotten together and created a trailer and a short film.  The acting is a bit over the top, but they’re onto something, those guys.  Here’s the trailer, and here’s the short itself.

For all of the bad press that Terminator Salvation has been getting, there is at least the fact that after the goofy T3 it had nowhere to go but up. There have been a lot of complaints that the movie was nothing but action set pieces, special effects, chases and explosions, and that the story and characterization are left in the post-apocalyptic dust.

In other words, it’s a Terminator movie, right? Did anyone really go into this thing looking for Oscar-bait performances? We’ve all been dreaming of another T2 for nearly 20 years now, but by this point my biggest hope was that Christian Bale would save the beleaguered franchise from the goofy obscurity to which it was headed the way he did for the Batman series, and I think he did it. He gives a subdued and thoroughly emotionless performance as the grown up John Connor and a lot of people have complained about that, but what else should he have done?

A bigger question is McG, who is not only responsible for little more than all the glory of the Charlie’s Angels movies, but has also reduced his full name, Joseph McGinty Nichol, to the first three letters of his middle name. Maybe he wants to be known as the only guy in Hollywood whose name is just a handful of letters with no vowels.  Or maybe he hates his family. At any rate, it’s obvious he’s in over his head here, but as is the case with summer blockbusters these days, the entertainment value is through the roof even if it’s not exactly an educational experience.

Obviously, at this point in the series, the biggest hurdle that the movie needs to overcome is to have enough story to justify its existence, and while the story of this installment is going to feel pretty drowned out by the relentless explosions and action sequences, it’s there even though you have to keep remembering to look for it.

A man named Marcus Wright is sentenced to death but donates his body to the research of a SkyNet scientist (Helena Bonham Carter) who offers him a chance to right the wrongs he’s done.  The execution is carried out and when he wakes up he has been turned into the movie’s big addition to the Terminator franchise – a Terminator who doesn’t know he’s a Terminator that’s programmed with a mission to bring John Connor to SkyNet central to be killed. This situation leads to really the movie’s only opportunity for real acting, as Marcus, who thinks he is as human as anyone else in the Resistance, comes to realize what has happened to him.

He runs into a young Kyle Reese, an inexperienced but dedicated soldier holding out against the machines in war ravaged Los Angeles. Reese is performed nicely by Russian actor Anton Yelchin, although not a scrap of effort was made to find someone who looked remotely like Michael Biehn. We also have the resident asian hottie Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood, who has more o’s in her name than anyone else in Hollywood), and John Connor’s conspicuously clean and well-dressed wife Kate. She has a minimal role in the movie but Bryce Dallas Howard made out like a bandit in getting this part, since she’s pregnant with Terminator 5.

The future of L.A. gangs...

The other requirement that new Terminator movies have to fulfill is that they have to have cool new machines, and while this one does have cool new machines, it also overshoots a little, as is generally the case with any effects films that come out these days. It is a sad bit of irony about the future of movies that advances in special effects see to serve mostly to call attention to themselves. It also doesn’t help that the skyscraping machines in this movie look exactly like something out of Transformers, because if I remember correctly, Transformers kind of sucked.

But when it all comes down to it, Terminator Salvation aims to tell the next stage in the developing Terminator story, and while you can find a lot to complain about among the acting and effects, it does make a good contribution to the series as a whole and it does leave you wanting to know more, despite a definite feeling of abruptness at the end. It is a bit of an amazing feat that the movie avoids becoming cheesy or ridiculous, even during the ham-handed (but appreciated) placement of the Alice in Chains song ‘Rooster’ (“Ain’t found a way to kill me yet…”), the even more appreciated revival of the Guns N’ Roses song ‘You Could Be Mine,” which you’ll remember from T2, and my favorite, scenes late in the movie that, provided you’re up to date on your 80’s man-vs-machine movies, will have you gleefully calling out “No disassemble! NO!”

Thank you! Come again!

The Terminator story is getting more and more complicated, and with each new complication comes more story possibilities. I think they’re doing a good job of keeping the stories interesting, and I appreciate that the new movie has avoided most of the vast number of cheese pitfalls available to it. Consider, for example, the entire first scene of T3, where Arnold comes out of the gay bar wearing purple glittery star sunglasses, and you’ll know what I mean. T4 takes itself seriously but still aims to be a thrilling action sci fi movie. It’s clear now that there is no end in sight for the series, but I say if they’re making movies this good, keep ‘em coming.

4 Beans out of 5.

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Storm Drain Art [Funtasticus]

Ok, so before I get all into making fun of him for his name, I should mention that McG, the director of the forthcoming Terminator Salvation (which looks quite likely to be as much the salvation of the franchise as of mankind), may have little on his past directing resume other than the Charlie’s Angels movies, We Are Marshall, and some cool music videos (Offspring, Korn, and Sublime), but he is helming a 2011 production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and is also already talking about Terminator 5.

Terminator Salvation (which, you remember, is rumored to be the first film of a new Terminator trilogy) takes place in 2018 but McG plans to have the fourth sequel take place in the present day (2011), before the events of Salvation. If that’s not confusing enough, according to worstpreviews.com, in Terminator 5, the people of the future have “figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than one naked entity. So you’re going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be f#%king awesome.”

Their words, not mine, but I whole-heartedly agree. Generally I feel like it’s best to let movies be released before you start propagating their sequels, but in the case of the Terminators I am willing to grant an exception. Salvation is sure to be a huge hit this summer, and if all goes according to plan, it may very well turn out that Terminator 3 will go down as an embarrassing black sheep in the otherwise uniformly badass Terminator family.

Can I just make a suggestion? If, in fact, McG is already slated to take on directing duties for Terminator 5, I hope that James Cameron understands that if he comes back to the series for Terminator 6 (if there will  actually be such a thing), it will create absolute chaos at the box office. You’re sitting on a gold mine, Cameron!!

Terminator Salvation is set for wide release on May 21, 2009.

David Beckham can do no wrong in my eyes.  This is a preview of his new Motorola commercial, which has a Terminator-esque element to it.

I’m not really a Terminator fan, but if it means that I can see David Beckham shirtless every time I turn on the TV, then so be it!

Check out the steamy commercial below!

Terminator Salvation will be released into theaters in exactly two months from now, on May 21st, with Christian Bale taking over from Nick Stahl (who will not be missed!) as John Connor, and also starring Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Common and Helena Bonham Carter.

The story takes place in the year 2018, the post-apocalyptic future always spoken of in the first three movies where John Connor has now grown into the leader of the resistance against the machines, but it seems that something changed during all the time travel taking place in the preceding movies and that this is not quite the future that his mother warned him about. A mysterious character names Marcus Wright appears, his last memory of being on death row, and Connor is not sure if he is a machine sent from the future or a human rescued from the past. Together they undertake a mission into the heart of Skynet to discover the secret behind the possible destruction of all of mankind.

Here are some of the latest posters, and you can check out the trailer here.

“TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES” (Seasons 1 and 2)

Made by the creators of Terminator 3 and taking place after Terminator 2, “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” shows the Connors once again being tormented by Skynet agents from the future. They realize that the nightmarish future hasn’t been prevented even after Miles Dyson sacrificed his life and his life’s work by destroying the T-800 Model 101 Terminator in the second movie, so they continue on their efforts to prevent the founding of Skynet.

The cast is a little confusing, despite being a little too neat. There’s Cameron Phillips, a young woman with a hazy past that’s also linked to the future, Derek Reese, a Tech-Com soldier from the future (with a familiar name) whose past is connected to the Connors, and James Ellison, an FBI agent from the future assigned to capture the Connors until he has a bad experience with one of the machines himself.

Good science fiction presents an image of the future in order to comment on the present, so it’s interesting that the “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” is a story about a small group of people trying to stop the creation of a program that will bring about the end of all mankind, which starts with an alliance between the United States Military and the gigantic Cyberdyne Corporation…

Starring Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau, and Richard T. Jones

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PROM NIGHT (2008) Horror/Thriller, R, 88 mins.

The original Prom Night is a bland and unoriginal slasher film, first released in 1980 and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, who was a horror superstar at that time after her starring role in John Carpenter’s wildly successful Halloween in 1978. The 2008 Prom Night is not a sequel or a remake, it’s not even really a cash-in on a successful old movie, it’s a cash-in on a hopeful public recognition of an old horror movie, along with the hopes that no one will remember how uninteresting the original already was.

It’s a bad sign that the new one is PG-13, because it’s a slasher movie and anytime you have a slasher movie that’s PG-13, it’s because the’yre hoping to attract the junior high school crowd, and that’s just never a good thing for a scary movie to do.

The story is about a girl named Donna who, along with her friends, is pursued by a sadistic killer on her prom night. That’s about it. Maybe just watch Halloween or Carrie again…

Starring a bunch of no-name actors
Director: Nelson McCormick
Screenplay: J.S. Cardone

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MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY (2008), Romantic Comedy, PG-13, 92 mins.

Amy Adams and Francis MacDormand star in this London comedy about a penniless nanny named Miss Pettigrew who accepts a position out of desperation as a social secretary for a young woman so different from her that it’s almost amazing that this was made into a movie and not a sitcom

McDormand delivers a charming and enchanting performance, and I’ve heard that after you watch the movie you will feel as bright and clean as a newly minted penny. A strong cast and intelligent script make this a sophisticated and heartfelt comedy, and it gives a fun look at the complicated social structure of 1930s London.

Starring: Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Lee Pace, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Payne, Mark Strong, Shirley Henderson
Director: Bharat Nalluri
Screenplay: David Magee and Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel by Winifred Watson

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STREET KINGS (2008), Crime Thriller, R, 109 mins.

Keanu Reeves stars as a veteran LAPD officer struggling to deal with the death of his wife, when he is implicated in the execution of a fellow officer. In order to prove his innocence, he has to go up against the entire police ideology that he has respected and followed for his entire career, bringing into question the loyalties of everyone around him.

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans
Director: David Ayer
Screenplay: James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss

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THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES (2008), Drama/Thriller, R, 90 mins.

Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Kasischke, The Life Before Her Eyes is about a suburban wife and mother who begins the question the perfectness of her life on the 15th anniversary of the death of her best friend, who was killing in a high school shooting.

It’s an interesting analysis of how high school affects us later in life, particularly traumatic experiences. Diana, the lead character, remembers the increasing strains on the relationship between her and her best friend in the days leading up to the shooting, causing her to reexamine and doubt her marrriage and disrupt her seemingly perfect life.

The film cleverly intercuts between Diana’s unravelling married life and the approach of the fateful day in high school, and along the way a deeper mystery slowly begins to emerge.

Starring: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, Gabrielle Brennan, Brett Cullen
Director: Vadim Perelman
Screenplay: Emil Stern, based on the novel by Laura Kasischke

THE SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR (2008), Action, PG-13, probably 90 mins or so.

It’s revealing that this is a sequel to a spin-off of a successful franchise (that was itself already heading downhill). The Scorpion King 2 is like the distant third cousin of a good movie, related not even in name to something that was any good. The story is about a young kid named Mathayus who witnesses his father’s death at the hands of some king in an ancient world, Afterwards, get this, his quest for vengeance turns him into the most feared warrior of the ancient world. I’ve been pissed off before, but I guess never enough to transform me into anything. Oh well. I’ll tell you this though, my anger from watching this movie instantly transformed my copy of it into the most fearsome flying disc on my street…

Starring: Randy Couture, Michael Copon, and Simon Quarterman, and a lot of other clearly struggling actors
Director: Russell Mulcah
Written by: Stephen Sommers and Jonathan Hales

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HANNAH MONTANA/MILEY CYRUS: THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS (2008), Concert video, 90mins.

It’s revealing that Miley Cyrus needs a gimmick like 3D to get her concert video to sell. And that’s not all. The video is 74 minutes long, but the much-trumpeted 2-DISC EXTENDED EDITION includes a whopping extra 16 minutes. Wow. Surely an overwhelmingly grateful public will mob the video stores.

Miley Cyrus’s personal life is pretty popular amidst the Hollywood gossip columns, and if any of you have any interest whatsoever about her professional life (or if some of you aren’t sure if she actually has a professional life or not), this video is for you. The rest of you can just keep checking hollywire, we’ll give you the good stuff…
Starring Miley Cyrus and a bunch of struggling musicians/actors.
Director: Bruce Hendricks

Although it’s true that he hasn’t really had such a good role since The Rock in 1996, I have always had the feeling that Michael Biehn is one of Hollywood’s unsung action heroes. He starred alongside Wesley Snipes in The Art of War in 2000 (the sequel of which is released on DVD this week), but more importantly, he has been involved in a couple of the biggest action/sci fi franchises ever, The Terminator series and the best one of the Alien films.

He’s probably best known from the original Terminator in his role as Kyle Reese, the time-travelling father of John Connor (who is soon to be portrayed in a third Terminator sequel by Christian Bale), to which all succeeding roles are arguably compared. But even though Biehn formed a close working relationship with James Cameron while making The Terminator – which led to his role in Aliens and his stand-out role in The Abyss – he has clearly suffered from the after-effects of starring in a wildly successful film as a relatively unknown actor. You may have noticed that Robert Patrick, after his role as the T-1000, didn’t fare so well…

Unfortunately, even after major roles in these tremendously successful movies, Biehn remains unable to attain the international fame that many people feel he deserves. The majority of his bigger roles are as military officers or some kind of law enforcement (he’s played the role of a soldier 10 times), so the typecasting is hard to ignore, but there is something that is far more watchable about him than most other actors. When he says in The Rock, “You compromise my men in the field, and I’ll bury you out there,” man you really believe it!

Okay, now check this out. In 1994 he was cast in the role of Peter Parker/Spiderman in James Cameron’s attempt to bring Spidey to the big screen. The project was, however, abandoned because it was deemed too technically challenging for early 90s movie magic (which says something for Cameron’s vision for the movie, since he had made T2 a couple years earlier), so Cameron made True Lies instead, while Biehn, who’s last role was the remarkably convincing Ringo in Tombstone, made the instantly forgettable sci fi flick Deep Red. Oops

"I DO NOT GIVE THAT ORDER!!"

Possibly the closest that Biehn ever came to major recognition, as far as awards, was in 1989, when the studio pushed hard for him to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Abyss. Sadly, he wasn’t even nominated. That honors went to Martin Landau, Marlon Brando, Danny Aiello, and Dan Aykroyd. Denzel Washington won for his work in Glory.

All too often, Biehn seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or came within a hair’s breadth of a career-launching role but narowly missed it. He was considered, for example, for the role of Caledon Hockley in Titanic, for example, before the role went to Billy Zane.

So given that he’s a clearly talented and interesting actor, what is it that has prevented him from really getting the respect and recognition that he deserves? Or at least more good roles? I have a theory that it could be something as simple as name recognition…

My first car, "the bean."

Hollywire's mascot, Bean.

Bernie Mac, at the age when his mother nicknamed him "Beanie."

Can you guess the two words the nurse says when she calls Michael out of the waiting room at the doctor's office?

Then again, it could just be fate...

In any case, Michael is aware of an acute sense of having been overlooked, but seems to make the best of the situation. In an interview 5 years after The Terminator, he says, “even though I felt that some of my work was overlooked at times I know that it has made me stronger and better and it has made me work harder to get other jobs and be good in them.”

Good work, Mr. Biehn. We Michaels have to stick together…

The Terminator movies are apparently making a comeback and Christian Bale is getting in on the action. He is said to play John Connor, the son of Sarah Conner’s in the fourth Terminator film “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.” The new film is sceduled to be released summer 2009.

And for all those Terminator fan, the Fox Network has a treat in store for viewers. The Sarah Connor Chronicles, based on Sarah Connor, legendary John Connor’s mother, will premiere January thirteenth and fourteenth.

So yesterday I watched Under Siege 2 and today I watched Terminator 3 for the first time since I saw it in theaters when it was first released. I remember being hugely disappointed when I first saw it, but I noticed that I enjoyed it much more the second time around. It’s better than I thought the first time I saw it, but it should be noted that there is no arguing with the fact that, even though it does a good job of furthering the Terminator story, director Jonathan Mostow is just not taking his work seriously which has the unfortunate effect of turning the entire movie into a joke.

That becomes clear almost immediately, as the Terminator walks into a bar during ladies night and has a run-in with a gay dancer, ultimately walking out of the bar clad in leather and putting on a purple pair of glittery star-shaped sunglasses. The entire movie became one of those rare theater experiences where everyone is laughing out loud and making jokes about the movie but nonetheless enjoying it, and no one seems to mind all the talking and giggling.

It’s immediately clear that Arnold Schwarzenegger is just not the same guy he was only ten years earlier. For some reason, he seems a lot more than ten years older here than he was in Judgement Day, and to make matters worse, his English seems to have slipped. His accent is much stronger now than it was before and it affects his performance. It’s hard not to laugh out loud when he approaches Claire Dames and says, “Catherine Broo-stuh?”

Must override "don't hit a girl" directive!

In the movie’s defense, I loved the addition that it made to the Terminator story. We are given believable reasons for why there are still terminators even after the only chips were destroyed at the end of T2, and the “rise of the machines” is also well presented.

But the biggest problem with the movie is the casting. Claire Dames is good in her role of Catherine Brewster, a key element of the humans resistance against the machines, although she is just a little too recognizable. But Nick Stahl? Are you serious? From the very beginning of the movie, where he is shown as an older man in the future, Stahl is wildly miscast as John Connor.

Why didn’t they just cast Eddie Furlong again? He’s not the same kid he was back in 1992, but I can’t imagine anyone else fitting the character as well. And surely he wasn’t too busy, unless he was more interested in acting in the disappointing and instantly forgettable crime thriller 3 Blind Mice than making another Terminator film. Such a thing hardly seems possible. And the outrageously bad Jimmy and Judy was still three years in the future, so he had still yet to totally destroy his image of youth and innocence (and respectability).

"Come with me if you want to...wait a minute, what am I doing??"

The other problem is that Kristanna Loken, who is undeniably beautiful, just doesn’t understand the nature of her character, nor does director Jonathan Mostow. In the original film, Reese explained to Sarah Connor that the first Terminators had latex skin and were easy to spot, but the new ones had real organic tissue and looked exactly like normal humans. Now we get an distantly more advanced Terminator who makes every effort not to act human. Every time the Terminatrix is on screen, it’s hard not to picture Mostow just off-camera saying, “Do it again, and this time, try to act more like a machine!”

Wasn’t the whole point of the newer and better Terminators to look and act more like humans and not like machines? At any rate, it just comes off as over-acting here.

But still, like the new Indiana Jones movie, the entertainment level is high, and there are certainly some good moments, like the Terminator telling John, “Desire is irrelevant. I am a machine!”

I have a feeling that part 3 is going to be a low point in the series, and I’m not sure when it will end. I’m thrilled to know that Christian Bale will take on the role of John Connor in Terminator: Salvation, despite the recent news of how he had a little temper tantrum on set. Still, it looks like the series is heading in exciting new directions…

2.5 Beans out of 5.