Friday, March 07, 2008

Come With Me If You Want to Live an Alternate Life

Third week in and I already fail on my Thursday deadline. Sorry, busy day yesterday. On the plus side I've finally watched the fourth episode of Terminator.

Watching the first episode of the Sarah Connor Chronicles I had a quiet telling thought. That 'this is a better Terminator than T3'. Now I'm not a hater of Rise of the Machines, but it easily the worst of the Terminators and the female 'Terminatrix' was terrible. When news of the series broke I did think it was a mistake to ignore T3 and base itself as an alternate timeline after T2 but this seems to be working pretty well so far.

Sarah Connor Chronicles seems to get a few things right as well, the evil Terminator is a standard skeleton the same as Arnie but with a different outer shell. In fact we starting to see many different shells and it can almost be explained that the reason we saw Arnie so much was just familiarity of older John. In fact John's done really well too, instead of the bit of a wimp we had in T3 this John is shaping up into being a possible leader of what remains of Humanity.

As already stated I thought the Pilot was quality, the second was what's been throwing me as it was a bit dead and not much happened, while the third was a lot better though bizarrely Sarah comes off as the weaker one of her and John, but this was reinforced with the fourth episode in that it seems John's ready to starting fighting back now and delay Judgement Day, though the sense its inevitable is growing. Meanwhile Sarah is more about running from anything that puts John in danger and possibly stopping him from becoming the leader of humanity in the war.

As for the cast, I have no problems with it what so ever. The new John is a much better follow up to Ed Furlong than Nick Stahl ever was. Lena Headey is a good replacement for Linda Hamilton, although she's visibly less built and while there are times she doesn't quite get it right, for the most part she really is Sarah Connor. Summer Glau is great as the new Terminator on the block as well. While I occasionally get annoyed that she wasn't kept more human as she was in the pilot I can accept that she was programmed for that interaction and did have some time to adapt before meeting John in the school.

It intrigues me that the newly announced Terminator film with Christian Bale as John is saying it'll tie into Sarah Connor yet will be a sequel to Rise of the Machines. I can only assume that with it being based after Judgement Day it can take the stance that either can apply as what happened before the war and it's up to the viewer to decide which they prefer.