[James]

I've seen it twice now, and.... HOLY SHIT. Talk about a movie that's everything the matrix could never hope to be. This film destroys the entire matrix trilogy (yes, revolutions sucks -- I don't think we need to see it to know that). Just nonstop action. I do miss Cameron a little bit, because this movie just doesn't have the emotional backdrop that T2 provided. I"m not sure another Sci-Fi movie in the action category will ever unseat T2. But -- this movie does compete with the first Terminator in terms of the series. I have a problem with some of the dialogue, but the movie is so insane nobody will give a shit. And come on -- I haven't seen a movie with this balls out of an ending since Fight Club. I never thought it possible, but to me this is the best movie of the year so far. Especially with the expectations we all had. Mostow must've been laughing his ass off watching the matrix reloaded. A pathetic ripoff with never dethrone the Terminator series.

Schwarzenegger lives.
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[KarmaPD]

Hmm, I was rather underwhelmed by the whole thing, to be honest. I had a few problems with it during the movie, and the more I've thought about them, the more they've detracted from the overall quality, I think. First...

1) Way too many one-liners for Arnold. I mean, Jesus Christ, he had fewer dumb quips in End of Days (hell, or even True Lies I bet). The Terminator series isn't a comedy series, and they dipped way too far into having fun with Arnold's character. It made the exercise way too comical, especially considering how serious the ending is.

2) No palpable sense of danger. In the first two movies, you frequently had moments where it was entirely plausible that the characters were going to die, and I never had that feeling with this movie. In the first one, the scene where Arnold is looking for Sarah in the bar, or the scene at the police station. In the second one, hell, pretty much every action scene involving the T1000 is fucking tense. The action scenes is this one were good, but it was more a feeling of "wow, they sure are destroying a lot of shit" than "that terminator is fucking insane." And the TX is never as threatening as the T-101 or T1000. Hell, even that scene where they are in the hangar proves that Arnold is much more threatening than the TX.

3) The movie is way too bright. I know this takes place over a single day, and while that's fine, watching an entire terminator movie set during the middle of the day is just weird. It sort of feeds into my second complaint. It's hard to feel concerned about the characters' when they could be getting a tan if they weren't having to deal with the TX.

4) Where the hell was the Terminator music?? Waiting until the credits?? What the fuck?? See #2.

5) Way too much coincidence, and by the end of the movie, you realize that this movie completely twists around the logic of all the previous Terminator movies, rendering them pretty much irrelevant. If the big point of the first two was that you can change the future in the present, that the future isn't set, then the end of the movie makes the complete opposite argument (and even admits that). Certain events are foreordained to happen and there's nothing that you can do about it, whereas the first two were all about shaping your future reality, which is a much cooler concept.

I mean, overall it's a pretty good movie, and it's certainly a good action movie, but I can't place it anywhere near the first two movies in terms of quality. I think Cameron is a total turd, but he knows how to film an action sequence and pace a movie to really give a film depth (I mean, even the action scenes in True Lies are really tense), and I don't know if Mostow knows how to do that. If and when they make a T4, I hope they turn it over to somebody with a much darker approach to filmmaking. Hell, maybe a Fincher or someone like that, who has a much better grasp of his camera and what he wants to do with it.

But yes, the Terminator series is so infinitely better than the Matrix trilogy.

My two cents have been deposited.

[nsalwia]

hmm, i liked T3 alot, better then the first one if you ask me... but, good point steve, i still love the movie though, hehe.
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