Judgment Day

Today, April 21st 2011, is the latest date in the series of postponed dates for the Judgement Day from the Terminator franchise. Judgment day is the day when Skynet, the supercomputer system comes to realize about its own existence and launches a nuclear attack on humanity, ending up controlling them with robots.

Nothing has happened yet. I think Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger have managed to avert/postpone this eventuality. But honestly, till when?

The Terminator Series

When I watched Terminator Salvation, I realized what I had missed by not watching the first three installments of this wonderful movie franchise. Many of my friends have insisted that The Terminator, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2) are movies that defined the genre of sci-fi movie-making. I, had somehow managed to evade these classics.



Not anymore! I watched the two James Cameron-directed classic Terminator of movies and Terminator: Rise of the Machines last week. And I must say, they are movies that I should have watched a long long time back. But there are a few points on which I differ from the usual public opinion about the Terminator franchise.

I'm giving The Terminator (T1) 4.5*, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2) 4*, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (T3) 3*.

• First of all, Terminator is the best movie of the lot. The action and the concept gets predictable as the franchise wears on.
• Some people believe that alterations of the timeline and future by time travel-related complications in movies/television were first showcased in Terminator. That’s obviously not true. At the very least, X-men (in comics) and Planet of the Apes in movies have had it before Terminator. The one is X-men is so much more plausible and acceptable and without plot holes.
• Terminator Salvation isn’t such a bad movie. Conceptually, it is better than T3 at the very least. The idea of a Cyberdyne reverse reverse-engineered (sic) android played by Sam Worthington is brilliant.

After watching the series, I have some puzzling timeline-related questions.

• In Terminator, it is claimed that the time-traveling machine has been destroyed. How come Terminators are sent back in time for the second and third installments?
• Also, in Terminator, it’s mentioned that nothing other than living tissue can be sent through the machine. The Terminators are far from just living tissue. In fact the model T-X is pure metal alloy? So how does that work?

This is why I still love my flawless time-travel storylines from X-men!