Destroy All Podcasts DX Episode 231 - The Terminator
Hosts: AK, D'Arcy, Jeremy, Mike
This is about a superhero named Cop-Puncher, That Guy, and watching the burns channel on TV.
Click [HERE] to run over Arnold with a semi truck.
Video after the cut.
| Attachment | Size |
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| DAPDX-231.mp3 | 88.46 MB |
| Posted 2 April, 2012 - 00:21 by Destroy All Pod... |
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Comments
7 comments postedGood podcast. D'Arcy's comments are pretty funny and I agree with her, Sarah Connor should have had a baby with the terminator and then that child would have been the bridge between man and machine. A new world order would have arisen and the human/machine culture could have flourished. Plus the kid would have laser eyes, which is just awesome. They did it in that TV show V with the lizard baby, why not in terminator?
I disagree with the way your write off the story. Terminator is one of the few movies that deals with time travel in a somewhat believable way. What's cool about the movies is that they show how hard the characters try to avoid the nuclear war and the robots try to stop the rebellion and that it is those actions that lead directly to the future that they exist in. There's no vanishing arms like in back to the future. Terminator takes the stand that there is one timeline and any attempt to alter that timeline is already a part of that timeline. The fact that John Connor has to grow up knowing that at some point he has to send his friend back in time to save is mother and that his friend is also his father, is just awesome. There is some really great story telling and ideas there and it's fun to see those ideas unfold throughout the movies.
We might have seemed dismissive of the story, but I think we just didn't want to talk about it much because the story really is "The Claws from Second Variety send one back to the 1980s". It's certainly a novel idea, one that really struck a chord with SF audiences--and you're right that time travel is a big part of the "Terminator" mythos, along with the conflict between nature and free will--but it's not like this movie was the first time we'd ever seen time travel, causality loops, or intelligent machines that want to Kill All Humans. Obviously the movie brings in a lot of visual elements that weren't really part of the story--as we point out, the visual style is clearly inspired by "Blade Runner".
Incidentally, Harlan Ellison claims that the credit he received wasn't for "Demon with a Glass Hand", but instead for "Soldier", a story where a future soldier knows nothing but fighting is accidentally sent back in time and lives with a 1950s family. Which, frankly, has even less to do with "The Terminator" than "Glass Hand" does, and that isn't much.
I don't know, I mean to me it was the first movie I saw that really dealt with time travel in a cool way. And it was the first movie I'd seen where they did not allow for characters to alter their destiny. I thought you brought up a great point about them not trying to just stop the war. That's an amazing choice that Connor makes, to send back Reese to save his mom and not have Reese try to stop the war. I think it shows us that by that point in John Connor's life he had accepted his destiny and realized that what he did could never change the reality he was living in.
And I don't agree about the blade runner visual influence. If you look at Cameron's work he's an amazing artist with a strong visual sense. Cameron was an effects artist for the movie escape from New York and I think his work on that was a big influence on his ideas for filiming terminator. John Carpenters ideas for a police state run by computers and a violent manhattan filled with torchlight, flashlights, and darkness probably left a big impression on cameron visually. In Terminator the lighting is more for drama and I don't think he was trying for the noire thing blade runner was. I just think Cameron is great with effects and lighting and as you guys pointed out, the effects and dark mood work better at night. The headlights, searchlights, glowing eye in the dark, they all reinforce that idea of being hunted, of being powerless against the thing pursuing you. It is kind of cool that Cameron eventually worked with Syd Mead on Aliens.
Demon with a Glass Hand is about a robot, not a demon. That's why Ellison brought up the suit. He also said that "Soldier" was also where The Terminator got its inspiration from.
Jeremy, have you actually looked at the cast of The Terminator now? If you want, you can see recent screen grabs of Linda Hamilton naked, and Governator era Arnold Swarznegger at the beach. Michael Biehn isn't the only one who hasn't aged gracefully. It's best to remember them when they were in the Terminator movies. Actually, in his IMDB photo, he's looking like he's staying in shape!
I think that while we've had some stinkers in the Terminator series, I liked The Sarah Connor Chronicles a lot. It may have given people a headache because it played with continuity, but the creators say it is between T2 and T3. That's fine with me, because I just ignore T3 anyway.
Great podcast, but it's weird to hear you guys do so many mainstream movies lately. Not that I have a problem with it, Batman and Terminator were two of my favourite movies in my childhood
Anyway Terminator is a great example of a good director making the best out of a low budget. I heard that originally Cameron wanted to make a standard sci-fi movie set in the future, but he had to redo the story when he couldnt get a huge budget.
Low-budget movies in the 80's were just generally better than low-budget movies now. I would so much rather watch crappy practical effects rather than crappy CG.
Anyway, I'd really like to hear you guys do Sonny Chiba's magnum opus, The Streetfighter. Where the hero is only the hero because he is slighly less evil than the villans. Within the first few scenes he breaks a murderer out of prison, thows a guy out a highrise window for not paying him and sells said dead guy's sister into slavery. It is a movie where a rapist is dealt with in extreme predjudice. and finally the one of the greatest lines in bad dubbing history, "that's a pile of sukiyaki!"
I think you guys would have fun with some more asian exploitation cinema. You can watch it for free on youtube or buy it for $3 with 5 other kungfuploitaion movies since it is public domain now.
Drink when...
... you hear the word(s):
Sexism
Bladerunner
Film Noir
Zuey
PAP-RICK-A
... the following happens:
D'Arcy make a Non sequitur
Jeremy tries to get the show back on topic and fails
RobotBastard (Mike) starts talking over everyone's head
Funniest drinking game so far! Except doesn't sexism cause drinking problems already?