Didn't George Lucas' Star Wars prequels prove that complex sci-fi plots don't need to be completed?
The Wachowski brothers might agree after their two disastrous Matrix finales. Hollywood is definitely in an originality dry spell. That's how another franchise in need of termination gives us Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and now Terminator Salvation.
It's 2018 and John Connor is a grown-up, prophet and soldier. The war against the machines is raging. Humans, with their backs against the proverbial wall, have found "the" weapon that will end the conflict and shut down the machines.
Marcus Wright signed the rights to his body away just before being executed at a U.S. prison in 2003. He wakes up in the future unable to understand how he got there. Marcus hooks up with Kyle Reese, Connor's soon-to-be best friend. He's the guy who travels into the past, fights the original film's machine and gets Connor's mom pregnant and fathers Connor who is the savior of the world.
Yes, it's muddy but past, present and future are inexorably linked and very important to Terminator plots. Wright's connection to the machines has Connor in a conundrum and is the film's focal point.
I'm not exaggerating. It really does seem like there's at least one explosion per scene. Every other scene for sure. Some scenes have dozens. Delete the dynamite detonations and the arsonist-inspiring fire accompanying them and the CGI motorcycle and snake machine fight scenes, the uninspiring air battle scenes, the computer-created helicopter crashes, and the franchise's stock human looking machines out to kill real humans and you have a 10-minute movie.
Like his two Batman movies, Christian Bale, doing John Connor, has little to do but act as the story's fulcrum. Most of the plot emphasis is on charismatic newcomer Sam Worthington's Marcus Wright who is seeking personal salvation. It saves the character but not the film.
Not to worry. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who puts in a computer-created appearance -- put it best in the first film when he said: "I'll be back."
T-5 is already in pre-production. Unfortunately.
Night at the Museum: Battle of Smithsonian
Ben Stiller's character Larry Daley has bagged the security guard career and is now a TV infomercial millionaire inventor. He's miserable and misses his old job. If only Stiller in real life would take a hint and miss whatever career he had before acting and go back to it.
Stiller just isn't funny.
The sequel has the New York Museum selling all of its artifacts to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. Characters and all will be stored in crates in its archives. At the Smithsonian the tablet that brings them all to life at night also conjures up a power hungry ancient Egyptian prince played by Hank Azaria and the effervescent Amy Adams doing aviator Amelia Earhart.
Daley, Amelia and the original characters have to unite to defeat the prince.
Unlike their original film, Reno 911 writers Thomas Lennon, who is a terrific comedian and supporting actor, and Robert Ben Garant get their sequel off to a funny start. The introduction of Azaria's Kahmanrah will crack you up and the charming Adams is disarming.
They also do some skilled and original comedy in a famed photograph.
But like Night at the Museum, once everyone is in place and the conflict is set up, the comedy is as dusty as the items from antiquity stored in the depths of the Smithsonian.
