Day 108: Terminator 2: Judgment Day + Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines (June, 25)

It was a really good choice watching to the three first instalments on the Terminator franchise in a short amount of time. Many details, references, curiosities were possible to identify this way. I'm not usually aware of the nerdy trivia, unfortunately, and that way I could identify references and details in the three movies that I wasn't able to remember  until doing this. 

Another thought: I was also very aware of how the third movie has nothing to do with the first two. 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day, produced seven years after the first one, was an expected and never disappointing sequel. Many of our questions are answered, the action is really good, Schwarzenegger was not just a weirdly muscled guy anymore, and the CGI technologies allowed more daring scenes and a scarier Terminator. It is cool, interesting, funny, melancholy and a sequence up to the original. 

The production story here is long and interesting too, it is worth to check out the trivia about it. 

I was surprise with some scenes that I had no remembrance, until the end, when I found out that I was actually seeing a remastered and extended version. The Kyle Reese's cameo, absent from the theatrical  version, was an amazing bonus. I couldn't believe that I had forgot that, but at the final credits I understood that I had not. Thanks God I'm not that old. 

Terminator 2 Judgment Day. Directed by James Cameron. With: Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong. Writers: James Cameron,
William Wisher Jr. US/France, 1991, 153 min. (extended version), Dolby
RS (and many other sound technologies that, listed, make a book by itself),
Color (DVD). 

PS: Crazy credits on Terminator 2. Nintendo I get, but "now read the bantam book?" Ok.

Another surprise during the final credits was the presence of a song out of the original score, something not too usual at the time. It was You Could Be Mine, by Guns N' Roses. I have to read more about soundtracks over this period, because things were changing in regards of songs at movies. 

At the end of Jurassic World, Mari, Gus and me were talking about the new Terminator movie. Gus asked me about the instalment in which the Terminator was a woman. I couldn't answer or even remember about that, and while watching Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines, I understood why.

For some reason, I haven't seen it until this day. It is odd, considering that I was a big Terminator fan. However, at the end, I was able to see why I had passed straight by it: this movie has nothing to do with its prequels and the what made Terminator a huge success.

We can sneer at James Cameron and his rantings about being the king of the world, but his absence was felt here. The whole atmosphere is off, the production is awful, lesser than its older counterpart (and we're talking about 12 years of technological movie innovations). 

The jokes about the terminator in the previous film were moot here. Silly, actually. Even Clare Danes was nonsense. It is not  unbearable, I could enjoy it, if in some way I could made myself forget what it was about. 

According to the trivia about Terminator 2, the scene at the bar had many curiosities. The funny one was that a woman entered the bar without realizing it was a movie set. In front of an almost naked Schwarzenegger, she asked out loud what was that. His answer: laddie's night. This episode probably inspired the scene where Schwarzenegger's Terminator looks out for clothes in the third movie, one of the few jokes that was interesting - and not for itself per se, but for its background. 

Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines. Directed by Jonathan Mostow. With:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clare Danes, Nick Stahl. Writers: Gale Anne Hurd
et al. from the characters created by James Cameron. US/Germany/UK,
2003, 109 min., DTS/Dolby Digital/SDDS, Color (DVD).

PS: I've referred above to two odd circumstances at the filming of the bar scene, according to Terminator 2 trivia on imdb.com. The other one is rather tragic: " In the audio commentary, James Cameron says that not only was the biker bar scene filmed across the street from where LSPD officers beat up Rodney King, but that they were filming the night of the beating." So close and so far. 

PPS: Introducing Sense8 to Mari, I've watched the first four episodes again :)