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The Terminator Series

I recently got around to re-watching the Terminator movies. The Terminator movies are important to me. They defined my childhood a lot. The first Terminator movie that I saw was the Terminator 2. For order purposes, I will start with the first part. I noticed a lot of neat things in the DVD on TV commentaries. For being a movie of the 80s, it was pretty good. Like we all know, the first movie focused on Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese.

I thought it was pretty silly the fashion of the 80s. Seriously, the glitter jacket of the terminator was pretty silly. Plus, the hairdos were pretty ugly. When the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, first got out of the time machine, I remember he ran into some bad kids. In the 80s, it was considered to be naughty to break into an observatory and look at the stars at night. I remember there was a guy who had tire tracks on his face and had green hair.

Seriously, people were pretty weird in the 80s. Another thing I liked was the techno music of the movie. The first 2 Terminator films had great musicality. The ones that followed were just bam, bam, and kaboom! Its such a pity what happened to Orion. That company failed, yet they gave birth to the Terminator. That point aside. The first movie had Arnold Schwarzenegger at the prime of his youth. He was in great physical shape. What I liked best was how tight his behind looked.

Man, he was quite the handsome devil. Interesting enough, the darkness that covered his junk in the early scenes of the first movie was not well done. The DVD guy commented on the fact that we could see his manliness. Another thing interesting about the Terminator of the first part was his dummies. Like 100 different machines help create the effect of the Terminator. The first special effect was the Terminator performing surgery on himself. That looked quite realistic.

Another interesting gig was when he took his own eye out. When he was looking at himself in the mirror with robot eye, that was played by the machine. When he putted on the glasses it went back to the Governator. The DVD commentator person was more into the last phase of the Terminator. Even today, it is impossible to make a robot that can stand on his legs. For this reason, all robots are glorified car wheels.

In the final sequence at the factory, they juxtaposed the super advanced machine of the future with the 80s machines. To show that the terminator was really advanced they made great emphasis on his legs. To make him believable, they had to create the effect of a machine walking on his two legs. The creators went a step further. They made the robot terminator go up the stairs. The Terminator is the only known robot that can go up the stairs. That is the impossible of all our modern day robots.

For the Robot, the DVD guys said that they wanted to make the terminator robot believable. In those days, all robots were made with hydraulics. Heck, even today we still use hydraulics. The problem is that scientist gave up too quickly on making true robots. Frankly, I think we will have better luck with giant robots. Well, back to the terminator movie. I will now discuss Sarah Conner of the first movie. She lived with her pal Ginger and her pet iguana.

I thought it was cute her Jetsons T-shirt. That is how people imagined that the future was going to be like. The terminator was designed to burst that wonderful dream bubble. Another thing I liked was their answering machine. It said "that machines need love too". Its funny cause the terminator killed Ginger, and then the answering machine went off. I love Sarah Conner's character development. In one night, she became the mother of the future.

Now, lets discuss Kyle Reese. He is quite the depressing counterpart of the terminator. He is like the futuristic war veteran. I felt bad for him for most of the movie. I found it interesting the product placement they did with Reese. First, from all the shoes in the store, he choose Nike. Plus. When he got arrested, the police said, " Hey , You in the Cadillac". They made certain that the viewer knew that Reese was ridding a Cadillac. Poor Reese's world is really scary.

One last thing I wanted to mention was the NRA. The terminator got all the latest guns from a gun shop. That NRA shop had some serious assault riffles. You know, the guns "ideal for home defense". That is the usual argument for packing heat. Like in the movie, most times the home defense arsenal are used to commit mass murder. Its scary that the Terminator was able to get so many guns from one guy. I liked the way Arnold Schwarzenegger pronounced the name of the guns. He really did not need to try hard to sound like a machine. The DVD guys wondered how a guy with so few lines cause such a strong effect.

The second movie was made keeping the first movie in mind. They took care to keep ambiguous who was the good terminator. Plus, the liquid guy was made rather skinny looking. That way the viewers would be reminded of Kyle Reese. Plus, it did not look as if the liquid terminator had slain the police officer. As for Arnold Schwarzenegger, his first entrance into the present was as violent as in the first movie.

One believed that the T-1 was the bad guy until he defended John Conner. What I liked best about the start of the first part was the Bad to the Bone, song. Man, this movie had the best soundtrack of all Terminator movies. I thought it was cute when they reintroduced Sarah Conner. In the insane asylum, she was already the mother of the future.

Oh! The criminal psychologist of the first part, was Sarah Connor's psychiatrist in the second part. Yeah, a lot had happened since the first part. In this movie, the big deal about the terminator was transformation abilities. The T-1000 was able to turn to anything he touched. I thought it was cute the early skynet computers. They were pretty rudimentary.

Miles Tyson was also pretty interesting. The scene when Sarah tried to kill him was pretty cute. She saw herself as the Terminator. She was going to kill him for something he was going to do. You know, the motorcycle sequence was pretty peachy. The DVD guy mentioned a few errors. In one scene, the T-1000 had knocked down the mirror. However, the truck had the mirror still on, in the next scene.

Thinking about it, Tyson was the last black guy to die in a Terminator movie. Usually, in the 80s and 90s movie, a black guy would die. Usually, it was a very successful black guy that got killed. The first one was the chief of the Los Angeles Police Force. Thinking about it, that is not a very good position to hold. The LAPD is know for its corruption. Heck, they even had enough arsenal to stand up to the terminator... and lose with grace. As for Tyson, he was the one who laid the foundation for skynet using the microchip of the for Terminator. Its a real bummer...

What I liked best was the nuke scene. You know, Sarah Conner's reoccurring nightmare. In her dream, she saw herself as if she had never met the terminator. She was happy, playing with her little boy in the park. Her current self was trying to warn them about the impending attack. There the DVD guys showed us how they destroyed a perfectly good model of a city.

You know, for a while, I thought that there was only going to be only two terminator movies. The way the second part ended, it seemed as if the future was changed. After all, destroying skynet was not part of the script. In the third part, the Terminator returns. You know, I watched the theater version of the Terminator 3. I also got around to watching the TV version. Originally, John Conner was a bump. However, in the TV version they had the kid working as a construction worker.

At this point in Arnold Schwarzenegger's career, he was no longer a handsome devil. The Terminator's " I am an obsolete model" also refers to the actor as well. He was simply there in the third part and fourth for emotional purposes. As a matter of fact, he had a stunt double for his physical body. It was a real bummer. In the third movie, the psychologist of the first two parts showed up. He told John's little girlfriend of his kidnap experience. He said how he hallucinated. He was frightened to death when he saw the Terminator once again. Speaking of which, I loved the coolness with the Coffin and the machine gun. I felt bad for hearing that Sarah Conner died. Its a good thing that Sarah Conner did not live long enough to see the world destroyed.

The theme of this movie was pretty depressing. In the first movies, it was all about there not being any fate. In the third movie, the Terminator tried to show John Conner that some things were inevitable. Skynet's rise was delayed, but not stopped. The last machine sent via the time machine carried with her the true skynet program. Via the chick terminator, Skynet got online. Thus, things finally went full circle.

I liked how the last Terminator chick had advanced weapons. I guess skynet finally perfected a machine that could carry weapons across time and space. You know, I liked how technology advanced via the terminator movies. In the first movie, the big deal was hydraulics. In the second, it was polymorphic ions, controlled by electrical charges from a main ship. (i.e. a blob). The last movie featured a feminist combined with nanomachines. Here the terminator of terminators was a chick. It was meant to make girls feel good. I thought it was pretty stupid. It encouraged violence against psycho, blonde little Hitlers girls. Truly, the chick android reminded me of the Gestapo. The last movie featured an android.

For a while, skynet relied on cyborgs, or machines made to look like men. The latest terminator was a human made into a machine. I thought it was pretty cute how the generals questioned John Conner's prophecy. I thought it was adorable how they imagined they had created a virus to destroy the skynet machines. However, things are not ever so easy. In the fourth Terminator movie, they also feature Kyle Reese. Now, he was a young teenage boy.

They tried to integrate Kyle Reese's stories of the first part, into the fourth part. What I liked best was the giant robot of skynet. It was pretty cool. I was thinking that the Terminator needs a final movie. The final piece of the puzzle is time travel. The last Terminator movie has to feature the time machine. It must end with Kyle Reese time traveling to the past. In doing so, the Terminator storyline goes on a full circle, completing the cycle.

Well, there you have my ideas about the Terminator. The DVD extras were pretty neat. They showed you how they came up with so many advance machines. The trick was to make the machines advance, yet believable. In any case, the Terminator movies, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, deserve 5 stars rating. Oh, and F.Y.I. there is no Terminator 5. The buzz around the internet is simply keyword hogging. If there was going to be a 5th part, then their commercials would be running night and day.

Hey, I just remember! I watched the Terminator 3D. It was a show in Disney. There they had a Terminator look alike. They had us witness the epic battle against the T-1,000,000. It was a giant liquid terminator. I thought it was pretty cool and original. Anyhow, in all the films and even in the 3D version they used the "come with me if you want to live" phrase. Another joke in those films are the weird phrases picked up by the Terminators. In the first movie, it was "I'll be back". In the second, it was "Hasta la vista, baby". In the fourth, it was "Talk to the Hand". The last terminator did not need a catch phrase because he was human... who did not know he was a robot. Pretty weird, existential crisis.

Alien Series

The Alien is a 5 stars worthy film series. Its early success gave it a lot of popularity. It has 3 sequels and 2 prequels. From these movies, I watched the first 3 movies and the ending of the 4th part. I did watch the ending of Alien vs Predator. It was not too hilarious. It gave more of an emphasis to the Predator hunters and the humans.

Recently, they made Prometheus. Its a prequel to the first movie. It chronicles the birth of the Alien race. I was going to watch it. However, a friend of mine came back from watching the film. I asked him to tell me what the movie was about. All he said was, "Its disgusting!". After hearing this negative review, I decided not to watch the Prometheus movie. For rating purposes, I read the plot of the Prometheus movie over the top. The stuffed a lot of plot and weird stupid things into one film.

For our purposes, I will focus on the first three Alien movies. Alien Resurrection, was too disgusting, gory and weird for my taste. I did like the cloning gig and the human baby Alien. I thought it was cute how he hugged Ripley. She thought Ripley was its mama. Man, what an ugly Alien baby. Anyhow, the main character in the first three movies was Ellen Ripley. In the first film, Ripley's ship stops to check a transmission sent from a mysterious planetoid.

A planetoids are small nameless planets that are not part of the main 9 planets. They are usually small and covered in ice. In that planet, they discover an alien spacecraft. Inside slept the remains of a beast. The signal was a warning to stay out. From then on, the movie gets gorier, and scarier.

I did not watch the rest of the movie. Some years passed and I watched the ending of the film. By then Ripley and her cat where the only survivors. It seems that she had escaped, however, an Alien had gotten inside the ship. I thought the beast looked pretty cool. The darkness aided to add realism to the beast. For being a 1979 film, it had pretty good graphics and special effects. The gore was pretty believable.

In the next film aka Aliens, Ripley was asked to go back to the planetoid. A colony had been founded in that place. The guy asking her to go promised that the team was going to kill all the Aliens. In that colony, Ripley discovers a little girl. She is the only survivor of the colony. She has managed to elude the Alien because of her small size. Ripley takes it upon herself to protect the little girl.

The issue is that her host had other ideas. He had devised an ingenious plan to have Ripley be infected by the Alien. With her as a host, they hoped to bring back a live baby specimen. Needless to say, this plan did not humor Ripley one bit. In this movie, Ripley manages to escape with the little girl. Now for the third movie. Here, Ripley's escape pot gets picked up by the marines.

In the version that I saw, Ripley once again is the only survivor. She is carrying inside an Alien egg. This movie is more militaristic. There is no argument about killing the Alien. Regardless, in the end, the humans try to convince her to return to earth to have the monster remove. She chooses to die because she does not trust the humans.

The general theme in all the alien movies is that humans are stupid. They have such blind faith in their science, that they are too stupid to notice when they bit on more than they could chew. This theme is common in all Alien movies. Humans are still naive when its comes to the unknown. For all their science, for all their knowledge, there are still things that lie beyond their control. In any case, I recommend the Alien movies to all you chibis. They are 5 stars worthy science fiction horror movies.

Frankly, I think that the Alien is one of the best designed monsters. Truly, a horrible nightmare. It gets even worse, when you have to deal with its disgusting kids. Seriously, the whole getting eaten from the inside out is a pretty interesting concept. Its the sorta thing that makes one feel completely powerless. Eww... truly, the Alien creation is the work of a madman.

Predator Series

I recently watched the first Predator movie. I tried watching the second part, however I did not get it. Frankly, the first one was the best because it had Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this movie, he plays an army commando. The issue is that I always catch that movie around the middle. From what I remember, Arnold Schwarzenegger's team was stuck in south America. At a certain point, they find one of their men torn limb from limb. Oh, for some reason, they have a Hispanic chick as a prisoner. She was in a camp they had raided. They imagined that the attackers wanted to save the chick. Their opinion changes when her guard is killed off.

She could have escaped, yet she was too freaked to run away. She claimed that the forest had taken the guy. From then on, the troops try to escape from the beast. Little by little, they discover that the thing that haunts them is not human. I found it was pretty neat how the Predator never attacked the girl because she did not have a weapon. The final battle with Arnold Schwarzenegger was pretty cool. That whole mano a mano fight with the Predator beast was really cool. You know, it kinda freaked me out when the Predator beast started talking English. His laugh was pretty eerie.

The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense was a cute little scary movie that I saw years ago. It’s one of those, what a twist movies, created by M. Night Shyamalan. That director and screenwriter has a lot of 5 stars worthy movies. As for the starring actor, we have Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment. If I remember correctly, Willis played the psychologist Dr. Crowe. As for Osment he played the kid who can see dead people.

The beginning is a bit vague. Dr. Crowe and his wife are about to get out to celebrate. Inside the house, they encounter one of Dr. Crowe's old patients. He has a gun and wants to kill Dr. Crowe. He blames him for not being able to help him. He does not want to be afraid anymore. Anyhow, he shoots Crowe and then himself. Sometime passes, and then Crowe goes to see a new patient.

Relationships has gotten rather strained since then. His new patient is Cole. He too suffered from the same malady as Dr. Crowe's failed case. At first, Dr.Crowe was skeptic about Cole's hallucinations. He thought that the kid was simply seeing things and that he was hurting himself. Later he reheard some of that other kid's tapes. By raising the volume, he was able to hear the ghosts haunting him.

Since then, we see things from Cole's perceptive. Before confessing to the doctors, we did not see the ghosts. We simply saw their effects. I thought it was pretty cool the mini church that Cole had created to keep the ghosts out. They could not get inside because of the color red curtains. They seem to be afraid of that color.

I also thought the scene were Cole argued with his teacher was pretty cool. It seems that one of the ghost told him that his teacher stuttered. It was a real bummer. The birthday party scene was also pretty interesting. The kids locked him up in a closet. There Cole was attacked by a ghost. When the mother found him, the kid had scratches. She thought that it was the other kids who had hurt her boy.

I felt bad by how Cole tried to hide his ghost problem from his mom. In another scene, the ghost quickly opened all the cabinets. When her mom came back, he said he was looking for cookies. The ending of this movie was pretty interesting. Though I plan not to spoil it. I hope I said enough to pick your interest. Oh! The movie is kinda old, so don't go crazy about the graphics. Their ok... but nothing too far out there.

The Happening

The Happening is a pretty bizarre horror movie. It was made by M. Night Shyamalan. The story is about a strange thing that happened. Like such movies, the tension is paper thin. One day in New York, everyone started killing themselves. They thought it was a massive bio terrorism attack. The reason they believed this was because only new york was being affected. Basically, this toxin represses mankind's self-preservation desire. With this part suppressed, they begin to kill themselves. Anyhow, the movie focuses on a family trying to survive. They are trying to get out of the affected area. From time to time, a strange wind comes up and the people nearby start getting affected by the toxin.

Thus, the family needs to find a place away from that toxin. Along the way, they meet some odd characters. Overall, this movie shows how people react to a crisis. Some come together and help each other out. Others use the "me" against the world approach. I remembered that one guy was killed trying to get inside a hermetically sealed house. Lastly, we have hermit old hags who are just plain nuts. Overall, this movie is pretty peachy.

Jaws

The Jaws movie single handily made everyone paranoid about Great White Sharks. Thanks to that movie, The Great Whites were haunted for quite a bit. Now, its illegal to kill them. Now, whenever one sees a harmless fin by the sea, all imagine they are seeing a Great White. Its funny because great whites rarely, if ever, attack humans. Regardless, this movie was so popular that it had a few parts and other shark inspired movies based about it. It even has a ride in a Universal Studio theme park in Florida.

As for the movie, the first Jaws movie was directed by Steven Spielberg. It was based on a best selling novel written by Peter Benchley. Anyhow, the movie is about a Giant Great White shark that terrorized New England's Amity Island. In the first scene, a cute teenage girl goes swimming at night. Suddenly, the Jaws theme song resonates, as a fin begins to approach the girl. Suddenly, she gets dragged down under.

Sometime passes, and the corpse of the girl appears by the shore. The police chief, Brody, is shocked by the event. However the major asks him not to make a big deal about. After all, their town depended on tourism to survive. A report of a shark attack could totally ruin their summer. To hide the cause of death, they say the girl died in a boating accident.

As time passes, more and more people are attacked by Jaws. Eventually, they decide to do something about the shark. The rest is history. The ending was pretty peachy and dramatic. Its incredible that this movie was made in 1975. The whole drama and character dynamics of all the characters is pretty cool.

The second part with the new graphics and tech was even more gory, than the first. Its a bummer how you make a second part of such a movie. The story takes place 4 years after the first Jaws attack. Now, the town must deal with a new Great White Shark. This time the first victims were some divers near the broken boat of the first movie. You know, the place where they had the final showdown with the first Jaws.

After these first victims, Jaws killed a chick. You know, sorta to have some continuity with the first Jaws movie. Once again, this Jaws is being a bother to the residents in the Amity Island. Like before, Brody starts finding the path of destruction of the shark. Unlike the first movie, he has to deal with the skepticism of the Islanders.

They imagine him traumatized and paranoid due to his first Jaws encounters. That incident at the beach was no help at all. There he had all the beach goers evacuate at the sight of a strange shadow in the water. It turned out to be nothing, but a school of blue fishes. Nothing too far out there.

You know, I never watched Jaws 3D or Jaws 3. I did watch Jaws 4 or Jaws: The Revenge. This movie focuses on Ellen Brody. She is the wife of chief of Police, Martin Brody. Early in the film, he dies of a heart attack. His wife thinks he died out of fear of Jaws. She has a firm belief that all great whites are after her family.

I suppose her paranoia was not unfounded. In all three movies, there was a Brody involved. To make matters worse, one of her sons was recently slain by a great white. When he was slain, she goes to the Bahamas to warn her other son about it. The movie is pretty tense. Its just as horrific as the ones that proceeded it. The worst part was when Ellen Brody's Granddaughter was attacked in the beach.

The way the shark jumped her bore semblance to the manner that sharks haunt little seals. To make matters worse, there is the strange eerie psychic connection between Ellen and the shark. However, this connection just seemed to me like the ravings of a crazed lunatic. Well, that is everything worth mentioning about the Jaws movies. They certainly did a good job at demonizing the Great Whites.