The Bret Michaels of Terminator Films

Official Movie PosterYou know like, “every rose has its thorns” or “man, I didn’t age well but I still look better than Vince Neil.” Kinda like Terminator Salvation feels a lot like the disappointment from Revenge of the Sith and a lot less like Alien Versus Predator. Hey, I’m trying to find somewhere nice to start because Henry covered the beatdown.

Spoilers fall like rain below.

****

Okay, this film isn’t good, but I could taste the hint of a decent film beneath some of the mistakes. The problem arises from how lazy the mistakes were. I contend that if they had taken the time to fix just six mistakes, T4 had more than enough in it to live up to the first two films. That said, lazy filmmaking is the difference between Terminator and Krull.

So, six points that would have made this film work for me:

Is that Michael Ironside out acting your A-list lead?

I’ve loved Michael Ironside since V, and it was great seeing him reunite with CGI Schwarzenegger for the first time since Total Recall. That said, holy cow how badly did Bale have to mail in his scenes to get out acted by a C-list baddie from the 80s? I understand that this film seemed to be more about Marcus, but Connor hasn’t been so secondary in a film since appearing as an embryo in the original Terminator. Seriously, his best emoting came from Linda Hamilton’s voice tapes. How hard would it have been to find an actor who cared enough to try?

Can we find something smaller than a metal beam to stab John Connor with?

Not sure what else to say here. Even in Hollywood, if you’re human and stabbed by a full-sized beam of metal, that’s it. Game Over. Would it have been so hard to have stabbed him with a piece of metal mangled into a pointy tip instead? Really?

I’d like a side of subtlety with my power of the human heart analogy, please.

This analogy fits the series, but we don’t need it served up with actual dialog. The Terminator has a heart. That’s enough right there. We get it. Please stop.

Doesn’t a war movie need casualties?

Can you name a war movie where none of the leads die? Sure, we presume Marcus does, but we don’t see it. Michael Ironside doesn’t count because we aren’t supposed to care about him. I mean he’s only the leader of resistance. In the end, for all the chatter, this isn’t a war movie because there are no casualties that bring it home.

To really make this point, consider that such light-weight fare as Independence Day killed the president’s wife, the hillbilly pilot, and Houston. Salvation didn’t even have the conviction to singe Blair’s hair in a rocket launcher explosion.

Is there a reason Kyle’s still alive? Beyond the fact that you can’t let him die, I mean.

Why even have Skynet find him? Let him stay hidden. Because once Skynet finds Kyle and doesn’t put a bullet in his brain we’re suddenly in 70s bond villain territory.

Maybe we should avoid allowing our homage list to take us into Airplane! territory

Henry covered this well, and I did love some of the film’s references. Fighting the top half of a terminator, Guns and Roses playing, and even the harvesters worked a hundred times better in this movie than in War of the Worlds, but these things pile up quick. Pick a couple and let it go. I mean why do you need a Newt character when you’ve eliminated the tradition of a strong female role from the movie? At the point where people think your electric eels are an homage to The Princess Bride, you might as well have Shatner replace Michael Ironside.

You think Ironside’ll appear in the new V series? You can bet I’d post about that.

Anyway, if you fix those elements, you have a decent enough film going on here. Chekhov keeps the imitation train going from Star Trek with a dead on Kyle Reese impersonation. The Marcus character seems a natural evolution of the humanization of the terminator concept (so long as you stop “beating” us over the head with his Wizard of Oz-like heart metaphor). And the idea that we have to go back to the future to get some good ole fashioned T-800 action warmed my heart–which beats with the inimitable strength of my irreplaceable humanity, just so you know.

I didn’t hate this film like I thought I would. I loved parts of it: Connor listening to the tapes, CGI Arnie throwing down, the GnR reference, and Michael Ironside. But that just made all the fixable mistakes so much more painful, especially given just how lazy they felt. I wouldn’t mind another film, I just hope a little bit more heart goes into it.

More architecture geekery

As a kid, my favorite toy in the world was Legos, or more properly LEGO.  From my very first space set I got for Christmas in 1980 (the Beta 1 Command Base) I was totally hooked, and LEGO dominated my wish lists for birthday and Christmas for years to follow.  In college, my love for LEGO was reignited when I encountered the limited release Islander sets; as an anthropology major, these fascinated me on a more “professional” level, never mind that they weren’t exactly academic.  Unlike my old Space sets which are all jumbled in a bag back at my parents’ house (my nephews love me for this), I still have my Islander sets in their original boxes.  They go with me whenever I move, making my girlfriend roll her eyes when she sees them.

Cafe Corner

But that’s another matter, back to the issue at hand.  I still like LEGO, and the Star Wars and Indy sets have convinced me to put a few more dollars into LEGO’s pocket.  But for the past few years, I’ve been lusting after a far bigger prize: the fancy town street sets that include the Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, and Market Street.  These things are awesome, and I keep telling myself I need to plunk down the cash (as an architectural historian and LEGO fan) but something keeps holding me back.

Now, however, I have learned of something so cool that it may finally push me into dropping hundreds of dollars into buying architecture LEGOs.  LEGO has teamed up with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to bring scale models of some of his famous buildings to LEGO fans everywhere, and I can’t tell you how awesome this is.  Even if they are smallish (not exactly minifig scale), they are undeniably cool for architecture geeks like me.  No word yet on price or release dates, but I can’t wait.  Falling Water will be mine at last!  Christmas, almost 30 years later, will once again ring with the glory of LEGO!

Terminate this: Salvation and McSuck

You know, as a card-carrying pinko-commie-hippie-liberal, I’m all for recycling.  Green planet and all that.

Which must mean that McG is Al Gore’s BFF, because I will be damned if I can think of a sci-fi movie he DIDN’T rip off in putting together Terminator: Salvation. Continue reading →

*Sigh*

I work hard to prove to people that geeks are just folks with different ideas of fun.  I make sure to temper any geekery with the awareness that there are non-geeks around, and include them in conversations.  I try not to use words with more than 3 syllables in every day conversation (unless I’m trying to remind people that I am, in fact, fairly competent and bright).  I do a fairly good job.  Heck, people at my work don’t think I’m the geekiest guy on the floor (that honor is reserved for our resident WoW pimp, who has asked *everyone* on the floor to play).

So it is with great anger that I find things like this:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=56643

Hot Chicks, the RPG.  It’s full of computer generated boobs and babes, apparently.  And its mere existence makes my life about 7.43% more difficult.

I live in Wisconsin.  It’s a bit different out here – they still talk about Star Trek like the only people that watch it are basement dwelling 30 year olds. When they mention video games, they do the hyuk-hyuk laugh.  But generally, it’s not bad.  Cause they’ve never seen Hot Chicks.

Of course, when I first moved here, I was reminded of something.  The guys on this blog (I don’t really know the girl) are, for the most part, cool guys.  Socially adjusted to some degree or another, cool with who they are, able to live a normal life.  So I’ve kind of forgotten what’s out there in geek land.  When I moved to WI, my wife and family didn’t come.  So I set out to find like minded folks to kill two months with.  I hit meetup.com and found RPG groups, and board gamers.  I found a weekly gaming party, and started going.  And I found, very quickly, that the board gamers were far more like me, even though I’d rather be playing RPGs.  Out here, the geeks are still isolated, and segregated.  They talk about the “norms” the “mundanes” or the “straights.”  They wear their geekiness as a badge, because it unites them. Most of them work minimum wage jobs in a factory, or a furniture store, or retail.
And it’s weird.  Because I don’t consider those “my people” any more.  And I wonder if they ever were.  And yet, when it came to gaming, I could out geek any of them.  I could quote chapter and verse of rules.  I taught them how to use AoOs.  They had some geeky people, but I had *breadth* on them.

Why Michael Don’t Publish Fiction

boba-me1

Deep Thoughts by Boba Trice

I realized late tonight that April was the 5th anniversary of the one short story I ever sold for cash. Frankly, there’s been few stories I’ve sold for even magazine copies, let alone for a real honest to goodness check. Much of my lack of fiction publishing is honestly a straight up lack of trying and commitment. I tend to assume my analytical style lends itself to nonfiction, and I’ve had plenty of success in those venues. While I’ve never had the romantic attachment to nonfiction that I have for creative storytelling, I’ve always been easily seduced into writing what gets me recognition over what I love. When a talent comes naturally and generates quick praise, too easily we can think of it as our fated partner and grow to love the ease of the gift more than the gift itself. To some degree that’s true for me and nonfiction, though I do love many apsects of my research. It’s just a different kind of love. Nonfiction is a safe, reliable love. Fiction offers anything but that.

Sometime this year, my first chapter in an academic book will go to the presses at McFarland. It likely won’t sell much, but it’ll almost certainly be my most read piece of writing to-date beyond a few articles in Dragon Magazine and the Daily Texan. And the ScreenBurn blog.  I tend to forget the ScreenBurn blog because it was mostly silly fun.

Of course, Grammy was silly fun as well. I wrote the first draft in three hours and spent about a two weeks editing it, with few significant changes before submitting the story to Anotherealm.  It was later published, and I’ve spent the last five years tinkering with it every time I got frustrated with whatever story festered within my brain at that moment. Grammy became a safety blanket for me. I could pluck at its story and characters while working, going back to school, and writing everything under the sun except fiction. So long as I had Grammy, I could feel okay about writing only one or two stories a year. Not that I would ever complete most of them–let alone send them out. When I wanted to feel rewarded for writing fiction, I’d workshop Grammy or send it out to some minor contest in a revised fashion: Grammy the novel, Grammy the play, Grammy the flamethrower! Hell, the Writers’ League of Texas actually gave me an award for this heroin of the mind back in 2006.

And while this behavior has undoubtedly inhibited my growth as a storyteller and writer of fiction, the same choices nurtured a handful of successes in game writing and many in scholarship by feeding my passion for storytelling just enough to allow my productivity to flow elsewhere. In an admittedly convoluted way, my addiction to Grammy earned me a Fulbright every bit as much as it stagnated my creative growth.

Now I’ve started writing a bit more fiction this summer. Thanks in no small part to a flash fiction contest I did at the end of last year that forced me to finish several stories, no matter how small. I’ve even returned to a novel inspired by Grammy where the first order of business was stripping out all the elements based on the old Grammy short story. I doubt Grammy’s dead since I have to get through a ton of research articles this year. Still, maybe after five years I’ve found a way to nurture that creative side with a bit more productivity reserved just for it.

We’ll see.

Time wasters.

So I’m sitting here at work with nothing to do and probably nothing to do for the rest of the day. It’s got me wondering. What do all of you do to waste time in those down periods at the office? I want to hear about stuff you do at work that sort of looks like you’re working if your boss wanders by and glances at your monitor with no real interest.

Currently, I’m in an IRC channel, checking three forums for activities, surfing CNN.com, reading Twitter, skimming through the DailyKos, and compulsively updating my Recommended Products list on Amazon, and thinking up backstory for the Bounty Hunter character I’m gonna play in an upcoming Star Wars Saga game.

Please, reply to this with your list. Give me one more thing to read so I’m distracted from this almost overpowering urge to set my office on fire and run out the door smelling of gasoline and cackling madly.

Set phasers on “closeted”

No, this place will not be all Trek all the time, but on the off chance you’ve not seen this video, I figure it’s as good a way as any to cap the Trek talk.  The music is “Closer” by NIN, so NSFW lyrics.  Keep your headphones handy and enjoy.

Trek the Third: The Search for More Trek

Gaming Together: My Uncle Ken, Cousin Wes, Me, and Dad
Gaming Together: My Uncle Ken, Cousin Wes, Me, and Dad

Okay, I may well be the closest to an actual Trekkie/Trekker on this blog. Like all aspects of my life that involve geekery, this one comes pretty much directly from my father. Let’s be honest, much of what we call preference likely exists as little more than random acts of osmosis from the fragmented habits of our parents.

RPGs? My parents started playing them when I was four. I be knighted my first character with the name of Bert and my sister Ernie. My mother promptly tried to kill us with a purple worm at 1st level. Those who have played in any game of mine might consider this insightful.

Classics and pulp? While my house frequently went dark from unpaid electricity bills during childhood, when light could be found the works of Ovid, Caesar, and Plato set nestled beside works of Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Heinlein.  My parents’ collection would never bear the weight of unread vanity texts.

Board games? I cut my teeth on Axis and Allies and Blitzkrieg. My first steps into game design involved my father and I tweaking Fortress America in an attempt to make that historic mess of a simulation vaguely fair. We, as so many before us, failed.

I should get back on Trek. My father adored Kirk and company. Between the original series and Dr. Who, I likely spent more time watching television with him than just about any other activity beyond Boy Scouts. One reason for that may well have been that he worked nights and slept days, so catching late night sci-fi provided us a rare chance to do something together on a daily basis.

My first convention was a Star Trek convention in downtown Fort Worth. Dad took Sam (not the Sam of this blog), Jason, and myself. I recall buying a Red Dwarf t-shirt and not a ton more. I’m sure Dad could recite the events of that day in detail.  That’s how it goes; feel free to take a Harry Chapin break.

 

Now, I can recall numerous Channel 39 marathons of Star Trek, complete with dial-in trivia questions. I devoured the original series during these marathons. I knew everything about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Maybe in part because I’m from the rural Southwest, I always adored the angry, emotional stalwartness of McCoy’s sense of determined from the gut justice. I point this out in contrast to Henry’s comment about the secondhand nature of McCoy in the original series. In no way unrelated, I also found Urban’s portrayal the most annoying in the new flick. It felt more façade then inspired re-invention—and now that the thought has arisen within this reflection, let there be no doubt, I found J.J. Abrams new film the definition of inspired re-invention.

Really, it’s more than discovering the crew on the Enterprise anew—and Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty will always be the crew of the Enterprise to me. Some of the true art in this film comes in how the actors who are known quantities disappear. Nero might not be a great villain—there’s really no such thing as a great Trek villain—but he definitely doesn’t scream Eric Bana. And I’m still not sure I believe Ryder was Spok’s mum. Most importantly, Chris Pine and Abrams have rescued the character Kirk from the gloriously absurd satire of Shatner’s legacy. Because of this film, I have hope again that new audiences might understand why some fans take Kirk seriously. Mostly because we knew him before T.J Hooker, Airplane!, SNL, and “I’m Denny Crane.” There actually existed a time when you could view Kirk as legit, when the original crew was legit. Abrams has given that back to a lot of us—and not just those old enough to have written letters in the 60s, but a few of us who had fathers that might have written a letter or two.

I doubt a pulp franchise could ask for anything more. Abrams might not have done for Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek what Shakespeare did for Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but I bet George Lucas prays at night someone half as talented as J.J. Abrams will rescue his franchise someday. In a theatre far, far away (Yep, cheapest joke of the post). Since my son and I have a similar connection over Star Wars as Dad and I over Star Trek, I must hold out hope.

Oh, and as far as Trek canon and the new film. I defer to the wisdom of my father who stated, “the original series didn’t follow any canon from one episode to the next. Why should this film?”

No reason at all. It’s too true to the original spirit of the series to care a whit about canon over character.

Now I have to sleep so that I can get enough work done in the morning to slip out of the office by 10:15.  My son is dressing up as Neil Armstrong for school tomorrow and will give a speech about the journey from Mercury to Apollo. There’s a family legacy at stake, one with an eye toward the stars.

Architectural Squee!

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a week now, but just haven’t found the time until now.  I came across an absolutely fantastic bit of architectural porn, an architectual firm’s office (what else?) in Spain.  This isn’t just any old office, mind you.   They blended cool retro 1950s style with modern materials, and stuck the result in the middle of a forest.  It doesn’t exactly blend with the surroundings, but it minimizes its impact by sitting partly underground, like a huge pipe sunk halfway in the mud.  The result is reminiscent of some sort of space-age colony bunker sitting on a terraformed planet.  I don’t know if that’s exactly the look they were going for, but that’s what it says to me.

Actually, no.  What it really says to me is AWESOME.  Like, Rhino “let it begin!” awesome.  Click the pic for more images.

Selgas Cano Office

Selgas Cano Office