For whatever reason, I enjoyed the newest Terminator movie. I went on a very hot day, and I paid $5 to get in, and I guess all I really wanted was some big explosions and some cool/scary machines (and some ice cold movie theater air conditioning).
But it's a pretty terrible movie. It doesn't make any sense. Here's one example. Spoiler alert. You know that scene in every movie, in which we think the hero is dead, and then someone administers CPR and even though he's been dead for twenty minutes, he perks right up? In T4, the hero in this scene is a human-cyborg hybrid* and a CG Arnold Schwarzenegger has some trouble killing him, until he realizes that his weakness is (you'd never guess...) his
human heart, at which point the terminator reaches into his chest and crushes his heart with his bare hands. John Connor subsequently administers CPR to his completely crushed heart and he comes back. Cut to scene in desert, where we learn that Connor's heart is bad. He's going to die, we find out from his wife (who between T3 and T4 has changed from Claire Danes's sassy veterinarian, to Bryce Dallas Howard's, apparently, Greatest Heart Surgeon in the History of the World). He can be saved, but only by a heart transplant. Dramatically, the human-cyborg hybrid (who's
heart was just crushed by a terminator, remember?) offers his heart. Everyone is very moved.
One more thing: How and why is it that Terminator ladies have gone from
ordinary to
amazing to
senseless and
spunky to quite literally
barefoot and pregnant in the course of these four movies? Sure, B Howard's Mrs. Connor is a magically skilled physician, but she's also a simpering whiner throughout most of the movie. I might have forgotten, but I don't think she even holds a gun. (I mean, not that holding a gun is the only measure of toughness. Um.)
* Note: But aren't they all human-cyborg hybrids? With the human skin that gets them through the time travel and so forth?
I really thought Parents was going to be about cannibalism, but mostly it was just about how a kid feels when his parents have sex. There's probably a lot I could say about the weird relationship between pre-adolescents and their parents, but I feel Liz Lemon said it best:
