Fortieth anniversary of The Terminator

It was forty years ago today, October 26th 1984, that James Cameron's science-fiction thriller (I'd also consider it horror) The Terminator was released.

Cameron was sick with food poisoning in Rome.  While convulsing in agony he had a fevered dream of a robot assassin with glowing red eyes hunting him down.  And that was the genesis of the Terminator.

This is a movie that has aged very well.  Including the design of the Terminator and the then-relatively distant future of the SkyNet-dominated 2029.  Ask a conceptual artist on a modern film to create an endoskeleton for a cyborg killing machine and it would be difficult not to envision something along the lines of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Hunter-Killer.

I first saw The Terminator in 1986.  My best friend Chad had seen it on cable TV and was really raving about how good it was.  So I was able to rent it not long after.  I thought it was amazing.  It was definitely nightmare fuel for a twelve-year-old.  Especially that shot of the metal skeleton rising out of the wreckage to continue chasing down Sarah Connor.  I was like "Can't ANYTHING stop this guy?!?"

I've got this movie on DVD.  It's been awhile since I've seen it though.  Think I'll pop it in tonight.

Read More

MAD TV presents: TERMINATOR 3: THE GREATEST ACTION STORY EVER TOLD

Y'know, the sad thing is: this sketch from Fox's MAD TV is soooooo much better than the actual Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation, combined!

I think this was first broadcast before Christmas 1998. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator is sent back in time to protect Jesus of Nazareth in... The Greatest Action Story Ever Told!

Read More

Doctor Emmett Brown has been targeted for termination!

Skynet needs more gigawatts!

How It Should Have Ended is famous across the 'Net for their perversely funny take on well-known movies. This is one of their best yet!

Read More

HILARIOUS TERMINATOR 3 deleted scene that KINDA woulda had TERMINATOR SALVATION make a lot more sense!

This was filmed, people! This was soooooo filmed!

What. The. Hell. Were. They. Thinking. ?!?

GeekTyrant posted this yesterday. It's a scene from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines that was edited out of the final film. And had this been included in the movie, I could almost see how Terminator Salvation would have been better for it, because it proves that the Terminator saga's timeline incongruities were being actively addressed. I like how it's explicitly stated that the Skynet technology originated with Cyberdyne, and the reason why all the T-800 Terminators look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and even have identical voices (as weird as that was).

But I swear: I literally fell out of my chair when the clip gets to U.S. Army Chief Master Sergeant William Candy.

Nothing I can say could possibly prepare you for this, friends and neighbors...

"OOH... it's ME!!"

Read More

If you are going to see TERMINATOR SALVATION...

Please don't.

I just got back from the midnight premiere of it. And right now I'm weighing whether or not I should take the time to write a full review of the movie.

So far as I'm concerned the Terminator story ended with Terminator 2: Judgment Day: one of the most perfect sequel movies of all time. Neither of the last two alleged installments have added anything of merit to the saga. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was pretty bad and Terminator Salvation stinks on ice. Just about everything about it is wrong, with the exception of Anton Yelchin as the young Kyle Reese and he's channeling Michael Biehn from the original The Terminator about as well as Karl Urban did DeForrest Kelley in Star Trek.

And speaking of Star Trek: if you haven't seen it yet and were planning on catching Terminator Salvation this weekend, buy a ticket for Star Trek instead. Even if it's your second or third time going to watch it.

Terminator Salvation is everything that is wrong with modern blockbusters: all about special effects to carry the story, instead of complementing the story. And a lot of it makes no sense in the context of established Terminator mythology.

Like I said, in my mind the Terminator saga was concluded with Terminator 2. I had no empathy for the characters in Terminator 3 and I care even less for them in Terminator Salvation. Absent James Cameron coming back to direct a new Terminator film, I shall never plunk down good money to see another one again.

Hell, Batman & Robin and 2008's Godzilla might have been better than Terminator Salvation, if that tells you anything...

Read More

Pentagon wants 20,000 soldiers violating Posse Comitatus (and some of them will be robots!)

Couple of items that I found in the news today, that juxtaposed together make for a rather disturbing scenario...

First, the Pentagon wants 20,000 soldiers deployed inside the United States by 2011 to complement local law enforcement agencies. A move that from what I'm reading comes perilously close to blatantly violating the Posse Comitatus Act.

And as if that isn't bad enough, the Pentagon is also working with a British scientist to create robot soldiers that will be deployed without risk of "committing war crimes".

So logically, it can be deduced that in the near future there is an outstanding possibility that robot soldiers - armed with lethal firepower - will be active on the streets of your hometown.

This blog has already discussed reasons why this might not be such a hot idea. Gotta wonder if the first robotosoldier that goes nuts and kills a pregnant woman will be deemed immune from lawsuit 'cuz it malfunctioned during the course of military duty (an argument that Bill Clinton tried to use to avoid getting sued when he was President). Hey, it worked for Lon Horiuchi didn't it? I don't see any reason why it won't be applicable to a droid, either.

Read More

U.S. robots with machine guns threaten human American soldiers

From The Register comes more evidence that giving a gun to a robot is a very, very bad idea...

US war robots in Iraq 'turned guns' on fleshy comrades
-
Kill-droid rebellion thwarted... this time

By Lewis Page
Published Friday 11th April 2008 10:10 GMT

Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.

The revelations were made by Kevin Fahey, US Army program executive officer for ground forces, at the recent RoboBusiness conference in America.

Speaking to Popular Mechanics, Fahey said there had been chilling incidents in which the SWORDS* combat bot had swivelled round and apparently attempted to train its 5.56mm M249 light machine-gun on its human comrades.

"The gun started moving when it was not intended to move," he said.

Apparently, alert American troops managed to quell the traitorous would-be droid assassins before the inevitable orgy of mechanised slaughter began. Fahey didn't say just how, but conceivably the rogue robots may have been suppressed with help from more trustworthy airborne kill machines, or perhaps prototype electropulse zap bombs.

No humans were hurt, but it seems that the struggle was sufficiently terrifying that it may be some time before American troops are ready to fight alongside robots again...

Aim here for more about this story.

Gizmodo found some photos of the military robots...

So who else thinks these things look way too much like the Hunter-Killer Tanks from future sequences of the Terminator movies?

Here's a story from this past October about another robot-operated gun that went nuts and killed nine people.

I guess nobody reads Asimov anymore, huh?

Read More

Three new Terminator movies on their way

This does not need to happen. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines did not need to happen either (although I will admit there were some pretty good sequences in that movie). For me, the Terminator story neatly tied itself up at the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But I guess Hollywood is running on fumes so far as new ideas for movies go, hence this whole new "Terminator trilogy" that will almost certainly tank at the box office.

Read More