Should the fourth installment live up to its promise, that promise being the casting of Christian Bale as John Connor, the Terminator franchise will be on the way to being the one of the best and most consistent action/adventure franchises since Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan lived in sin as Tarzan and Jane way back when such things were frowned on. And if director McG and his screenwriters are able to tell their story honoring the mythology of what came before without tripping over the inherent logic issues involved with time travel, well then, they’ve already bested “Melorose Kirk-Can-Drive? Trek.”
Of course, should Ewoks arrive to aid John Connor, all bets are off.
My love for “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” (2003) puts me in the minority, I know, but you have to embrace how different the three installments are from each other to truly appreciate it. “Terminator” (1984) is a brilliant piece of storytelling, but also a gloriously 80’s action film from soundtrack to clothes to hairstyles to mandatory gratuitous sex scene. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” on the other hand, is arty and existential, with mind-blowing, big budget action scenes. But let’s just admit out loud that a certain viewing mood is required in order to avoid using the word “overlong.” Finally, the third chapter shakes off everything that made two so special, but not necessarily in a bad way. The action scenes are still outstanding, but the plot is simpler and had the casting of John Connor been stronger, people might have warmed up more towards the Governor of California’s final starring role.
What “Terminator 3” deserves enormous credit for is honoring the time logic and mythology that came before. In that respect, screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris wrote an ingenious script that hit with a huge surprise at the end that not only pulled the whole story together but the whole franchise, brilliantly setting up 4 – and the good news is that these guys are back for 4.
Telling a compelling, exciting story while respecting what came before is crucial to the survival of the series. The moment we feel the filmmakers cheated, it’s over. Oh, we may still drop our ten bucks like the lemmings we can sometimes be, but we won’t respect ourselves for it, and this act of paying for movies you know you’ll hate is known as George Lucas of the Caribbean Syndrome.
Until “Terminator Salvation” hits May 21st, if you’re hungry for a timeline franchise that never dropped the ball, check out the original five “Planet of the Apes” films. 1, 3 and 4, are just damn fine films, 2 is salvaged by James Franciscus, and 5 is admittedly weak though entertaining in a TV movie kind of way, but taken as a whole the way the series moves around in time telling different pieces of a larger, over-arching story is amazingly innovative storytelling.
Here’s hoping we can say the same after May 21.
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