E.R. Torre's Blog, page 48

Blade Runner (1982) Day’s Here…!

Back in 1982 Blade Runner, a film directed by Ridley Scott (Alien) and featuring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, was released… and pretty much flopped.

The years, however, were kind to this film, and it became viewed as something of a cinematic classic. The film famously opened with this…

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Yeah, the far flung (at that time, anyway!) future of November 2019. A little later in the film, we found the exact date in November of 2019 when the film was taking place…

Box Office Problems, Redux

A few days back (you can read it here) I wrote about how difficult it was to predict the success and failure of released films. In that case, my focus was on the Box Office disappointments Terminator: Dark Fate and Doctor Sleep, two films which I personally figured -and I’m quite certain the studios also figured- would do far better than they did.

I noted that screenwriter William Goldman’s famous quote of Nobody Knows Nothing with regard to how well a film will do applied in these cases.

But there are occasions where things work out almost exactly as one suspects they will.

Over the last week, three movies were released, Ford v Ferrari, Charlie’s Angels, and The Good Liar.

Based on their trailers alone, I suspected Ford v Ferrari would do well. The film looked strong and confident in its story. The two leads, Matt Damon and Christian Bale, looked like they were having a ball playing testosterone fueled gear heads.

And so it was, Ford v Ferrari took the pole position (ouch) at the box office, earning a strong $31 million or so in its first week of release.

On the other hand, Charlie’s Angels and The Good Liar didn’t fare quite as well.

Charlie’s Angels, the second movie reboot of the venerable 1970’s TV series, had what I thought were very weak commercials/trailers that, frankly, didn’t sell me all that well on the product. The inverse of what I saw in Ford v Ferrari appeared to be the case here, a trailer that seemed hesitant, lacked confidence in their product, and, worst of all, was a mish-mash of action cliches without giving us any strong sense of a plot.

The studios -not total fools- were already thinking the film wouldn’t do all that well and predicted a box office take at less than $15 million, already a rather low prediction, and the film’s paltry under $9 million take was even worse than expected.

And I’m not terribly surprised.

Moving to The Good Liar, a film that features Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in a tale that is pretty hidden in the film’s trailer -though one understands it involves scammers taking advantage of each other- I was also not terribly surprised the film didn’t do all that well. However, given its low budget, I suspect the studios aren’t sweating the end results. The film will likely make up its investment.

Ah well!

Mustang Mach E Redux

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Oscar Wilde

Yesterday I posted a longish analysis of the new Mustang Mach E, Ford’s first big foray into the electric automobile market, and how that vehicle, to my eyes, appears to be a very direct imitation of Tesla’s upcoming Model Y, from the stats to the visuals. (If you care to, you can read the full thing here)

Also yesterday, the Mach E was formally presented and Electrek.com, one of the larger/well-known websites that focus on the EV revolution, had a representative there. Seth Weintraub offers the following fascinating article regarding what he saw…

Great Artists Steal: Why Ford’s Mustang Mach E was inspired by Tesla in all the right ways

The upshot of what Mr. Weintraub writes is encapsulated by Oscar Wilde’s famous quote as well as the title to his article: Yeah, Ford pretty much copied Tesla’s vehicles -particularly the upcoming Model Y- but, you know what? They created a pretty damn nice EV!

What does Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla, have to say about this? From the same website, Fred Lambert notes…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is “excited” for Ford Mustang Mach E, says should encourage other automakers

Within that same article and if you scroll down to the comments section, “Merv99” gives a very sanguine analysis of the whole thing:

Validation of EVs by other automakers is important. Tesla doesn’t want 70% of 2% of the market. It’s much better to have 40% of 90% of the market.

This is a very important thing to note: As much as I personally love EVs and feel they are very much the future of cars, as much as I personally feel ICE vehicles are a thing of the past, even if they don’t know it yet, they still take up an overwhelmingly LARGE percent of the market and will likely do so for a while longer.

But, with the release of the Mustang Mach E, I’m hoping people who hesitate trying a Tesla will give the Mach E a try and realize like I have these EVs are indeed the future. Perhaps then the wave of negativity coming from so many people -including those who financially benefit from the ICE status quo- will break.

EVs are very much the next generation of cars.

Hopefully and in time, they will take up a larger and larger share of the market.

Mustang Mach E

For those interested in such things, later today Ford will officially unveil their first big entry into the electric car market, the Mustang Mach E.

While today is the day the car will be officially unveiled, a few days back someone at Ford accidentally uploaded the full car specs/prices to their website. The information was quickly taken off, but not before several car websites saved the information. Over at jalopnik.com, Bradley Brownwell offered pretty much all the screenshots to the since deleted (though I suspect by tonight will be up again) site:

2021 Ford Mustang Mach E: Here’s the Car, Price, and 0-60 Times Before You’re Supposed To See It

What does the car look like? Here you go…

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And here we have the interior…

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As you may know, if you’re been reading my ramblings for a while, I’m not only a BIG proponent of electric vehicles, I have a Tesla Model 3 and absolutely love the damn thing to death. I’ve been driving since roughly 1981-2 or so and in that time I’ve driven good, bad, and terrible cars, all gas powered, but the Tesla has really captured my imagination.

I quite certain I will never buy another gas powered car and, further, I’m also quite certain the era of the ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles is at its end… even if it may take a few years before the EVs supplant them.

That’s how much I love my Tesla. That’s how much I feel the car is several steps above any ICE vehicle.

Having said that, I’m a strong proponent of other car manufacturers getting into the EV game. It’s ultimately better for the environment and these cars have so many advantages over ICE cars its not even funny (I’ll leave you to look into that, if you care to!). The only disadvantages I would site with EV cars vs. ICE is a) range on a “full” charge vs ICE vehicles and b) the charging is slower.

However, both disadvantages are rapidly being eliminated. Tesla’s Superchargers manage to recharge my Model 3 in roughly 30 minutes. After driving 2 1/2 hours or so, though, that’s hardly terrible. One can use the time for a bathroom break and/or to get some snacks/food. Further, this is using the 2nd Generation Supercharger. The 3rd Generation supposedly will charge up even quicker. The range, too, is becoming less a factor. My Model 3 on a 100% charge can do 310 miles or so. The new Model S can do 377. The New Model X can go 325.

But returning to the Mustang and as I said above, I’m a BIG proponent of the other car makers making their EVs. Competition is a good thing for consumers and I absolutely want to see Tesla pushed to make even better EVs, just as I want to see the other car makers do the same.

The big question, now that the specs for the Mustang Mach E have been leaked, is how does it compare to the Teslas? Specifically, how does it compare to the upcoming Model Y, which Ford clearly is targeting with this vehicle (I’ll get to that in a second).

Glad you asked!

Over at electrek.com, Fred Lambert offers the following…

Tesla Model Y vs. Ford Mach E Specs Comparison

For those who don’t care to read all the nitty-gritty, the bottom line is this: The Ford Mach E specs are quite comparable to the upcoming Tesla Y, though one should be just a little weary about the ultimate Model Y specs. Until that vehicle is actually released, there may be some changes, perhaps in price and/or range.

Still, if we compare one to the other, then they are remarkably similar vehicles.

In fact, I would go so far as to say… Ford is essentially copying the Model Y, aren’t they? I mean, the specs are so damn similar. And as for the look of each vehicle… I mean, come on! The Mustang Mach E looks like a Tesla Model Y twin, only with certain Mustang “looks” added on.

I’m not the only one to see that. Over at autoevolution.com, Andrei Nedelea notes the same…

Photo Comparison: Ford Mustang Mach E Looks Eerily Similar To Tesla Model Y

At the risk of giving away everything from the article, I’ll post the three photo comparisons they offer there, just to give you an idea of how similar these vehicles look…

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You have the Mustang on top and the Tesla Model Y, in blue, on the bottom. Very similar lines, no?

Next up, a rear-view of both vehicles…

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Once again, very similar lines, no? Look especially at the shapes of the windows and the lines on the side. I mean… it’s almost identical, isn’t it?

Here’s a third one, the interior of each car:

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Again, incredibly similar interiors, no? Use of pad-like screens to show everything but note too the Tesla offers controls on the steering wheel as does the Mustang.

One thing not listed, which I also think is interesting, is that the Mustang has a glass roof…

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For those who don’t know, the Teslas all have similar glass roofs…

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So, yeah, to be quite clear, the Ford Mach E looks like a carbon copy of the Tesla Model Y, both in terms of stats and looks.

I don’t mind, honestly, that they so boldly have decided to match/rip-off the Tesla Y. In the case of the emerging market for EVs, perhaps this is a ultimately a wise move and from there Ford can figure things out for themselves, hopefully improving their vehicle and making progress in creating new features unique to their cars versus those in the Tesla.

Having said that, at this point what makes the Mustang more desirable than a Model Y are the tax rebates you can get from the car. This is not an insignificant amount, some $7000 plus you get off the car. Tesla has reached their limits for this rebate while Ford is just starting.

Having said that, there are also some big things you should also consider if you are debating getting a Model Y vs. a Ford Mustang Mach E.

First and foremost: The Supercharger network Tesla offers is a tremendous advantage, especially if you intend to make long distance trips. When I bought my Model 3, I frankly didn’t even consider this but now that I have the car and I have made long term trips, I realize how incredibly lucky I was to stumble into this.

The fact of the matter is that Tesla has thought through the EV market quite well -it is their only product- and they realized they not only needed to provide EVs with long range but also that they needed to provide Superchargers along the way for their vehicles to get charged up quickly and trips resumed as fast as possible.

Not that I have an intention of doing so, but at this point in time I can travel to almost all parts of the country using the Supercharger networks along the way. The Tesla navigation system in your car will also help you tremendously in this respect. You put in your long range destination and it will tell you where to go charge your car along the way and how long you need to charge it for! It will tell you the range/charge left and makes the whole trip that much easier.

For the Mustang Mach E and all other electric vehicles, you have apps available to tell you where chargers you can use are (NOTE: No vehicle other than a Tesla can use the Tesla Supercharger) but, at this point in time, their reliability isn’t 100% and the rate of charge varies. In other words, you can find a charger near you, get there, and find it isn’t working. Or perhaps there is a line of people waiting to get charged (with the Tesla Supercharges, your on-board navigator will tell you how many chargers are taken/available and will direct you to another if the primary one is offline!).

So there’s that. The other big thing Tesla has that others don’t: The Autopilot function. I know its a controversial thing and many view it very suspiciously and, yes, it isn’t full self-driving (FSD), but for my money it is a tremendous help in long range/highway driving and seems to get better with each software update…

Which brings us to advantage #3 Tesla has: The over the air updates of software. I don’t know if the Mustang Mach E will offer software updates like Tesla does but at this point the Tesla updates are regular things and, with each update, your Tesla will become a better and better car.

The latest update, for example, just came over and with it and while using the regenerative braking with full stop, I’ve found I barely ever use my brakes anymore. The car will slow then come to a complete stop on its own, using the regenerative braking to add a little charge to the battery, and you barely use the brake pads anymore, which obviously increases their life tremendously.

Other than the price (and $7000 rebate) what other advantage(s) does the Mustang Mach E have over Tesla?

Well, that’s easy: Ford is a very big, established brand and they have dealerships and repairs countrywide. If your Mustang Mach E needs some service/parts, I suspect it will be far easier and quicker to get them versus the Tesla. Also, it may be easier to go to a Ford dealership and get a test drive versus a Tesla, assuming you live in a smaller city which has no Tesla dealership. Where I live, I have both a nearby “dealership” where they show off the vehicles and allow you a test drive. Further, I live some half hour away from a big distribution/service center so I can drop off my car if/when I need to.

In the end, I truly hope the Mustang does well. I hope the Teslas continue to do well. And I hope more and more people realize that those ICE vehicles have quite literally become vestiges of the past.

UPDATE:

Found this picture online of the Mustang Mach E’s “Frunk”. For those who don’t know what the heck a frunk is, its a front trunk. Since EVs don’t have engines like the ICE vehicles, they have room to have trunks in both the front and back.

Anyway, here’s the Mustang’s frunk…

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And here you have the Tesla’s frunk…

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More similarities, no?

My lucky day…

So I’ve got this friend who plays scratch-off lottery pretty constantly.

For shits and grins, I’ve given him some $10 every week/two weeks and played a single scratch-off ticket as well.

Today, this happened…

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Incredibly, I hit with every one of the winning numbers, though each individual prize was pretty small -alternating between $5 and $10- for a total of $100. I gave my friend $20 for getting me the ticket so my grand total winnings wound up being $80.

I suspect that amount just about covered all the previous losses for the past two months!

Still, never have seen anything like this before and thought I’d share my good luck!

Maybe by seeing this ticket, some of my luck might rub off…!

Box office Problems…

I’ve mentioned it before -many times!- but it bears repeating. It’s the lovely quote by prestigious screenwriter/writer William Goldman concerning making films, and their chances of becoming box office successes:

Nobody knows anything… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.

I point this quote out because we’ve had, IMHO, two prime examples which demonstrate the wisdom of this quote.

I refer to the box office performances of Terminator: Dark Fate and the just released Doctor Sleep.

Terminator: Dark Fate (let’s refer to it as TDF from here on) looked to me like it would be a success well before its release.

I mean, come on! You had James Cameron back to the Terminator universe, not as a director but providing the story and producing the film, his first involvement in this universe since Terminator 2. You had hot director Tim Miller (Deadpool) behind the camera. You had the Arnold Schwarzenneger and Linda Hamilton. The film gets released and, over on rottentomatoes.com, winds up with a very strong 71% positive among critics and another very strong 84% positive among audiences.

Things were certainly looking good.

What could possibly go wrong?

Welp…

Rebecca Rubin at variety.com notes the following:

Terminator: Dark Fate stalls overseas with $29 million

According to the article, the movie has made approximately $200 million so far, counting both the U.S. and worldwide residuals. However, to “break even” the film needed to make around $450 million, which means -again according to the above article- Paramount stands to lose around $100 million from this film.

Ouch.

Scroll back up, my friends, and re-read that wonderful quote from William Goldman. Can you at least begin to understand why I feel it is so on the mark?

TDF had so much going for it, yet when it was finally released, audiences essentially didn’t care to go see it.

Why?

I suppose in part it could be because of fatigue with the Terminator brand. Even in my review of the film (you can read it here) I noted the weak box office and stated:

If I could go back in time, maybe I’d convince the makers of those (Terminator) sequels to lay off and, by the time TDF shows up, people might be more willing/eager to give it a shot.

It is also possible that, plain and simply, Arnold Schwarzenneger simply no longer holds the box office appeal he used to have. Maybe seeing an older Linda Hamilton was also a turn off. Let’s face it: The big box office hits often involve the young and pretty. Or maybe the story presented simply wasn’t “good enough” to justify seeing the film again. In other words, maybe the movie had few/no repeat customers, another ingredient necessary for box office success.

Who knows.

Nobody knows anything.

Regardless, the studios gambled on what I personally would have thought was a sure thing and, ultimately, it looks like that gamble won’t pay off. In time I suspect the film will make its money, especially through home video, but for now the film is a loser.

Which brings us to example “B”: Doctor Sleep.

Released just this past Friday, here was another film I would have thought would do quite well.

The movie is based on a Stephen King novel, the sequel to one of his most famous works and movie adaptations, The Shining. The director, Mike Flanagan, was a director on the rise known for his work in horror. He won plenty of accolades for his The Haunting of Hill House mini-series. He earned both Stephen King and the Stanley Kubrick (director of The Shining) estate’s thumbs up for his attempts to merge both movie and books.

The movie’s trailers, I thought, were intriguing. The idea of seeing what happened to the main character of Danny Torrence some forty years after the events of The Shining was to me very appealing. Hell, I don’t read Stephen King novels but I admit I was tempted to get that one!

Then, like TDF, the movie is released and gets wonderful ratings on rottentomatoes.com. As of today, the film has a 74% positive rating from critics and an incredibly strong 90% positive among audiences.

Only, it too underperformed.

Anthony D’Alessandro at deadline.com writes:

Doctor Sleep to lose $20+ million for Warner Brothers

The movie opened much softer than expected, earning some $14.2 million and coming in second to the wartime drama Midway. According to the above article, if Doctor Sleep manages to make some $100 million at the box office in its run, it will still nonetheless lose that $20 million. If it makes even lower than that…

Unlike TDF, I wound up not liking Doctor Sleep (you can read my review here). Having said that, I nonetheless really expected audiences to flock to the film the first week, yet that clearly didn’t happen.

Perhaps it was because the film was inexplicably released just after Halloween. Seriously, what’s up with that? You have a horror film you’re going to release and you don’t take advantage of the one holiday associated with all things that go bump in the night?!

Perhaps it was the fact that, despite many viewing The Shining -movie and book- as a classic, it is an older work and they simply weren’t that interested in revisiting something that old. Perhaps the cast simply wasn’t strong enough to elicit interest.

Who knows.

Nobody knows anything.

And so it goes.

Doctor Sleep (2019) A (Right On Time!) Review

Way, waaaaaaaaay back 1980, my father took thirteen or fourteen year old me to the just released horror film The Shining.

Yeah, I know. Excellent parenting, no?

Back then, I had little awareness of director Stanley Kubrick and his films. For that matter, I knew very little about author Stephen King, though I likely knew by that point the film was based on one of his novels.

We sat through the film and I was really embarrassed to be sitting next to my father when the completely nude woman in the bathtub appeared and what famously followed.

But other than that, I found the film a chore.

I really didn’t like it much at all and, when we left the theater, I suspect my father didn’t either (Now that I think about it, I should ask him…!).

Then, something really curious happened. The Shining showed up on TV here and there and I’d catch some minutes of it, then a few more, then still more.

And I’ll be damn if that film didn’t grow on me. I’m dense, I guess, but after a while I got it. I became a big fan of the movie and, in time, of director Stanley Kubrick, and today consider the movie one of my all time favorite horror features.

Ever.

Those who know even a little about the movie and Stephen King likely know that Mr. King was not too fond of the film. In fact, he famously stated he was unhappy with the changes made to his novel. Some have speculated it was because Mr. King viewed the novel more personally than any other (the main character is a writer struggling with alcoholism while Mr. King famously also struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction).

Fans of Mr. King’s novels have been vocal in defending the novel and many consider it a far better work than the movie. I haven’t read the novel and can’t comment on that.

Mr. King was clearly bothered enough about the movie version that years later and in 1997 he personally produced a TV mini-series which was more faithful to the novel.

The mini-series, IMHO, sucked. I thought it was dull and in the end was completely lost in the shadow of its more famous movie version.

A few years later and in 2013, Mr. King would release a sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. As with most King novels, it did well and, given the success of recent Stephen King movie adaptations (in particular It), it isn’t terribly surprising a film version was made. It was released last Friday and I got to see it a few hours ago…

…and I must say, I’m befuddled.

The film, directed by Mike Flanagan (The House on Haunted Hill) is well made. The acting is generally quite good.

But the film… it feels bloated and unfocused. Even worse, there are almost no big scares. In fact, I would describe the film as not all that frightening at all. Finally, when all is said and done, the movie’s main villains are… well… without getting too SPOILERY… they wind up being not all that hard to take down in the end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Doctor Sleep concerns Danny (now Dan) Torrance (Ewan McGregor), first immediately after the events of The Shining (both book and movie. Reportedly Mr. Flanagan tried to bridge the gap between the novel and Kubrick film). After he’s grown, we find that, like his father before him, Dan has become an alcoholic. During these opening scenes we also meet up with a group of oddball cultists known as The True Knot. They are led by Rose The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson, quite good) and roam the highways in their vans and motor homes hunting people who have “The Shining”, ie psychic abilities. Their victims are small children, and the group kills these children and feed off their souls.

I couldn’t help but think this group had more than a little similarity to the vampires presented in the 1987 cult classic vampire film Near Dark…

The True Knot are in trouble: They are having a harder and harder time finding new victims, that is, until Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) has visions of their latest victim which in turn alerts The True Knot of her existence.

They hunger for her. Meanwhile Abra has psychically contacted Dan Torrance and, when it appears she is in danger, the two eventually team up to deal with The True Knot.

I won’t get into too many more spoilers about the film. I will say this: The movie takes a while to get going, presenting perhaps more information than was needed in the first act (Did we need to waste so much time with the backstory of Snakebit Andi?). Eventually, when things are sorted out and the players are revealed, the movie moves a little better but, again IMHO, things never really clicked as well for me and while I wouldn’t say I was hating what I saw, neither did I feel it was as interesting as I hoped it would be and the characters in The True Knot felt like -with the exception of Rose the Hat- they belonged in a cheap comic book. And, lest you think otherwise, I love comic books!

Worse, things became rather predictable and it was pretty obvious where the movie was going and where specifically the climax would occur.

In the end, I can’t recommend Doctor Sleep, despite the fact that the film was professionally done, both behind and in front of the camera. The story itself simply wasn’t that interesting and there were few -almost no!- scares, a very surprising fact given the film is supposed to be a horror movie.

Yet I wonder… given how I originally didn’t like The Shining when I originally saw it, is it possible that in time I may wind up liking Doctor Sleep?

Sadly, I don’t think so. Too bad.

Nirvana fans…

…you should probably check out their YouTube channel (you can find it here) as they are posting alternate takes/practice rehearsals from their famous MTV Unplugged session, which featured some brilliant “acoustic” interpretations of their works, as well as the very famous take on David Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World.

Here’s a version of it…

Many, many people were first introduced to this song via Nirvana’s version, and to many of them this is THE version of the song.

It makes sense, of course. The first time you hear a rendition of a song you wind up liking a lot winds up being the version you prefer, even if it isn’t all that different from the original…

For me, the opposite was true.

When David Bowie burst out to worldwide fame with the release of Let’s Dance (album and song), I was mesmerized by his music and immediately started to look into his back catalog.

There were many songs I discovered at that time which I already knew but hadn’t linked Mr. Bowie to them. Songs like Space Oddity, Changes, The Jean Genie, Fame, Fashion, etc. etc.

But there were other songs that hadn’t reached the radio much at that point that were incredible gems.

Like Panic In Detroit…

And the incredible Lady Grinning Soul (both songs are from the album Aladdin Sane)…

There were many others (and bear in mind, we are talking about his works released up to the release of Let’s Dance).

But there was one work -you guessed it- the album The Man Who Sold The World, which really spoke to me. Unlike many Bowie works, this album had many covers because the original was so controversial. This is the cover I first saw when I first purchased the album…

The original cover, and the cover that the album now has (and which you can see in the video of the song above), is this one, which, as I stated, was quite controversial in its time, though not so much anymore…

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) a (almost right on time!) Review

I’ve spent the last few posts talking about Terminator: Dark Fate (let’s refer to it as TDF from here on out) and now, having seen the film, offer my opinion on it.

To begin: I very much recall going to the theater way, waaaaaaaay back in 1984 to see The Terminator. While viewers who watch the film today may not realize it because of the inevitable passage of time and cribbing of ideas, seeing the original film when it was originally released was a ferocious experience. It was, to my mind, the first time the action and horror genres were merged.

Once the film got going, it felt absolutely relentless, and despite what we now see as an obvious low budget and dodgy effects (again, this is the product of the passage of time), The Terminator essentially made director/writer James Cameron’s career. He would go on from this film to make the equally tense action/horror Aliens and from there Terminator 2 (which many, but not me, consider the very best Terminator film) before eventually becoming a box-office champion with Titanic and Avatar.

The Terminator franchise left James Cameron’s hands following T2, and he had no part in either Terminator 3, Terminator: Salvation, or Terminator: Genysis. Neither did he have a part in Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles TV show, which I found quite good.

Unfortunately, the Terminator films that followed T2 were not that good, IMHO. Almost all of them had good elements, but the overall works simply didn’t carry each film into “great” movie territory.

Recently, the Terminator property reverted to James Cameron and with Terminator: Dark Fate, he’s “back”, though this time with the story and production credits while (Deadpool) directs.

If you’ve read my previous postings, it is worth noting that in making TDF, it was decided to create a story that actively ignores all the Terminator works that came post-T2. So going into the film, audiences should try to wipe their minds clean of all those works and stick with the first two.

The movie begins with a rather shocking development that reminded me in many ways of the opening of Aliens 3. I don’t want to give too much away here (I will talk about it toward the end, so BEWARE SPOILERS!) but if you’ve read online anything about the film, chances are you already know what happens at the very beginning of the film…

We then move to Mexico and, specifically, car factory worker Dani Ramos (, quite good), and the arrival -natch- of two visitors from the future, Grace (, quite spectacular as an “augmented” human) and the evil Gabriel, aka REV-9 (, quite good), the robot sent to the future to take out Dani.

The story thus far isn’t all that different from all the other Terminators that came before: You have your “ordinary” person being alternately hunted and protected by two people who have come from the future. The early action set pieces are quite spectacular and Gabriel’s evil robot, while essentially still incredibly similar to Robert Patricks’ T-1000 from T2, has the added trick of being able to split into two Terminators at one time.

The opening action sequence terminates (ouch) with the arrival of Sarah Connor (, looking as grizzly as can be but dangerous and smart assed to boot). The three form an uneasy alliance which eventually takes them to you-know-who () and together the four of them form an even more uneasy alliance in trying to take on and destroy Gabriel.

Watching TDF, I realized how much better the film was compared to those that followed T2. Again, I don’t feel all those films are horrible, but clearly the people behind the making of TDF spent the extra capital in developing the relationships between the characters so that when we got to the ending, it was something of an emotional gut punch, at least to me.

TDF still falls a little below T2 (my second favorite Terminator film behind the original) yet rises IMHO far above the others and, for someone who was there when the first came out, felt it was almost a love letter to the fans of the series, even if it didn’t necessarily move out of the general Terminator comfort zone, story-wise.

Still, I liked it quite a bit and would easily recommend it to anyone interested. If you worry that these old-folks simply can’t do it in an intense action film, let me say they handle themselves quite well. I fear, however, that people are not giving this film a chance (it has been noted it underperformed despite generally good critical and audience reactions) because of the run of so-so Terminator films, including the not so-very-old Terminator: Genysis.

And that’s really too bad. If I could go back in time, maybe I’d convince the makers of those sequels to lay off and, by the time TDF shows up, people might be more willing/eager to give it a shot.

TDF is an easy recommendation for me. A film that, while not necessarily reinventing the Terminator-wheel, nonetheless respects the original two films and provides us with some genuinely good thrills and action set pieces, along with a story that is also quite good (if familiar) and some very welcome humor.

Go see it with an open mind… or at least without thinking about the last three Terminator films that followed T2.

Now then…

SPOILERS!!!!!

BEWARE!!!!

Still here?

Ok, you’ve been warned.

TDF opens with a post-T2 Sarah Connors and a young John Connor (both actors were digitally de-aged) resting from the end of T2.

Then, the T-100 (a de-aged Arnold) appears and kills John Connor.

It’s a rough scene, especially given we had a full film in T2 whose whole reason for being was to keep John Connor alive. However, in the course of that film, the future was changed and Skynet was destroyed.

What TDF does, somewhat cleverly but still kinda/sorta grimly, is show us that John Connor’s death no longer matters. That the T-100 that kills him turns out to have completed its programmed mission for a future that no longer was going to come into being.

Thus, the T-100 we see later in the film is that same robot, only he spent the next 20 plus years adapting to humanity and realizing what he did was terrible.

It’s an interesting notion and one that I felt made the relationship between Sarah and he that much more intriguing but… man, what a bummer of a concept! As I said, it was not unlike Alien 3, which opened with the deaths of two very likeable characters who survived the massacre of Aliens.

Still, for me not something that ruined the film.

Your mileage, as they say, may vary!

Terminator: Dark Fate Box Office…

It’s the Monday after the release of Terminator: Dark Fate (let’s refer to it as TDF from here on, OK?), and it would appear the film underperformed and might even be, as Jason Guerrasio writes in businessinsider.com, an outright bust…

Terminator: Dark Fate is a bust at the box-office, taking in only $29 million

I’m still curious to see the film but it is something of a surprise -or maybe not?- the film underperformed. Note that the original estimates were that TDF would rake in either in the high $30 to low $40 million for the weekend. The $29 million it managed is actually quite close to the opening take Terminator: Genysis did in 2015 when it scored $27 million.

Which kinda/sorta indicates that this seems to be roughly where current audience interest lies with regard to Terminator films.

It’s a sad fact of life that time marches on and while when I was young the original Terminator and Terminator 2 did incredible business and were very much in the public eye, the years have passed and (sadly) Arnold Schwarzenneger and Linda Hamilton are much older now, which may be a great negative to the younger audiences out there.

An admission: When I first saw the trailers for TDF, my first reaction -and I’m more than willing to accept this is a sign of my own shallowness- was surprise at Linda Hamilton’s aging.

I fully accept the fact that it makes me sound shallow (like I’m somehow immune to the passage of time!), but the reality is that film has a way of “freezing” people in time if they leave the public eye.

Arnold Schwarzenneger has aged too, obviously, but he’s been in the public spotlight with other films and, in my mind, I know what he looks like these days. Linda Hamilton, on the other hand, has kept a relatively low profile since Terminator 2. Looking over , while she’s continued to work over the years, her “biggest” appearances post T2 were in the TV show Chuck (which I never watched) and a turn soon after the release of T2 in the film Dante’s Peak. Otherwise she’s appeared in relatively smaller works and often as a voice actor in animated features.

Which means that seeing her in the trailers for TDF was the first time since the 1990’s I’ve had a look at her.

So we have two older actors in what is, sadly as well, a “young person’s” genre: The action film. And, further to that, a film in a franchise which, let’s face it, has now reached its sixth theatrical film (and we’re not even counting Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles TV show).

Given that Terminator: Genysis just came out a few years back and only did so-so business, it might in retrospect be that people are a little tired of the whole Terminator franchise and what you can make on these films is roughly in/around that amount.

Having said all that, I remain interested in seeing TDF and plan to do so soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow.

Linda Hamilton may no longer be the striking, young kick-ass warrior we saw so memorably in T2, but I’m intrigued with the notion of seeing her play an older, hopefully wiser warrior, whose scars -internal and external- give her that additional edge.

In reading the reviews of the film, it seems that while a slight majority of critics and audiences reacted favorably to the film, there nonetheless are many who feel TDF is a miss. That despite the return of Linda Hamilton, the film is yet another lackluster Terminator sequel.

Potential audiences out there are wiser to critical views of films and these negative reactions may have swayed many to not bother showing up.

Regardless, I will see the film.

Let’s see how I feel about it…