The Bangor Representative reveals all to explain which films he felt were under-represented by The Simon and Jo Show. He also tells us three films that Jo and I haven't seen (Well, I haven't seen, I think Jo has seen one of them) that he highly recommends. A rare treat for anyone who knows of Graham, the Bangor Rep.
http://simonandjoshow.mypodcast.com/
Hi Simon and Graham,
ReplyDeleteIt was good to finally hear from the Banger rep, though I have to take issue with Graham for saying Terminator: Salvation is better than T3. There's no way it is.
Firstly, T3 feels like the first two. It might be a copycat in many respects, but it follows the structure and style laid down by Cameron. T4 feels like a different film altogether. It should have looked like the flashforward sequences in T1&2, but it wasn't even close. Where was the darkness? The skulls on the ground? The sense of desperation? In T4 the humans weren't on the run, they were taking the fight to the machines. Where's the danger in that? Big Mistake.
Secondly, you say T4's different because it doesn't have a happy ending. None of the previous films have classical happy endings. T3 ends with a nuclear holocaust for goodness sake.
That's all. Rant over. I love the first two Terminator films and I think the third, while obviously flawed, is deeply underrated. Watch it again, Graham.
Rhys
Only seen T2 ... and was gutted to find Terminator was on TV tonight. Sarahs a big fan of the franchise so I shall hunt it down soon enough. Any opinion on 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles'?
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen it myself, though I've heard good things. It's certainly more Terminator than Salvation, keeping the journey narrative.
ReplyDeletewell, now you see i found good reason for this and a great aspect of the movie- this is the beginning of the war, there's a LOT left to happen so it's not skulls-on-floor, blackened-skies, lasers-firing like in the T1 and T2 images because we're not there yet, that's for the sequels. i thought this aided the movie (or the idea of many) so we can see how it becomes so terrible! watch that space, i say...
ReplyDeletei would also say T3 feels like T2, but not at all T1. although i liked T2 im a much bigger fan of the first movie. as T3 followed in the path of T2, i found it simply started on the wrong foot. comedy? i dont think it belongs in terminator like it was in T3. it was becoming a parody of itself.
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points, but I'm still not convinced. T4 isn't a chase movie. The other three are. That gives them a pace and danger that T4 can't match. I agree that the original is the best, however a large part of that is due to its lean low-budget nature. That's never going to be replicated with the millions thrown at every film since.
ReplyDeleteAlso things seemed to be looking up in T4, not about to get worse. And surely the skulls came from the nuclear blast, not after. It might be OTT and less realistic but the nightmarish vision of the future was so much better in past films.
I really enjoyed this podcast I love the argumentative dynamics, "The Bangor" should be in more, rustle some feathers. Love the fact that you still thought most of the shit films were actually shit but at least you saw them. I felt like that a lot this year. I am not pre-disposed to disliking big budget Hollywood crash-bang-wallop films, it's just that this years have been crap. Apart from Avatar that is and I was more than ready to take the fight to the critics over that one, sharpening my knives to defend the honest working man who loves seeing things blow up, but it turned out many intelligent, well respected people agreed with me and many critics reluctantly admitted to quite liking it. There was one particular post on the Guardian film blog where I posted a comment disagreeing with his lambasting of Cameron's epic, expecting to have hellfire rained down upon me from all following comments, but ended up being easily in the majority.
ReplyDeleteThe Hangover was also a really good mainstream film, but Terminator Salvation as much as I wanted to like it, my disdain for that stupid Batman voice left me just pissed off - more with Christian (flip his lid) Bale than the film though. Much preferred the cyborgy character guy. Oh and the robots looked good, had a lot of weight to them, the film wasn't overly reliant on CGI, thus completely losing the impact of clunking robots - a la Transformers 2. Oh and it was much better (not hard) than T3
I should really watch the Terminator films - all of them, 1 to 4, to join in this terminator conversation.
ReplyDeleteNormally, even the big budget mainstream movies get praise when they're good. Most critics love it when Hollywood is on form, thing is, it hasn't been on form for a while and yet still has its monopoly over cinemas.