Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:55 pm

Buttmonkey wrote:
Okay, first, Julian, T2 was beyond awesome.

Yes, it was an outstanding movie and did something that these new special effects movies can't seem to accomplish ~ balance.

T2 had tremendous special effects, but took a back seat to the story and acting and only surfaced at the right times.

And Linda Hamilton was a tour de force - taking her role as a puffy haired disco girl (in T1) to an ass kicking warrior who rocked the movie and the viewers. Every single person in the packed theater cheered her on when I saw it the first time.

So good acting, story, action and special effects made it a great film. Hmm, might have to watch it again this weekend.

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Julian Grimm · Post by **Julian Grimm** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:35 pm

I didn't see that. I saw a Disneyfied Terminator that could have been good if they had the body count of the first one. It just missed something to me.
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Plaag · Post by **Plaag** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:25 pm

Show last night was awesome. Learning more and more about the Terminator 'universe' as it were is fun to watch. Almost wish they would also run another series - one during the war, but that maybe better portrayed on HBO if so.

ShaneG.

Harry Joy · Post by **Harry Joy** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:13 am

I tried watching Jericho tonight for the first time. First time I've sat down for a television show since the last episode of Heroes. And Heroes was the first show I've bothered to watch since the first season of Lost.

All it served was to show me, once again, how completely out of touch I am with the accepted tastes of today's America. That was supposed to be post-apocalyptic? Felt a lot more like Knot's Landing, with tanks.

Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:18 am

Harry Joy wrote:
I tried watching Jericho tonight for the first time. First time I've sat down for a television show since the last episode of Heroes. And Heroes was the first show I've bothered to watch since the first season of Lost.

All it served was to show me, once again, how completely out of touch I am with the accepted tastes of today's America. That was supposed to be post-apocalyptic? Felt a lot more like Knot's Landing, with tanks.

Heh, Harry methinks I'm more out of touch. I've never heard of any of those shows!
Anyway, tune in to Terminator: SC Chronicles and let us know what you think!
[Prior to watching the Bionic Women, I can't remember any new show that I liked and watch regularly since whichever premiered last . . Frasier, Seinfeld or Friends!]

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Harry Joy · Post by **Harry Joy** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:21 am

Rhuvein wrote:
Anyway, tune in to Terminator: SC Chronicles and let us know what you think!

Before I do, I'll need a question answered:

Is Sarah Conner a psycho she-devil with a short trigger and a bad haircut? 'Cause then I might watch.

Then I'll need another question answered:

When is it on? Hope it's not cable. I don't "do" cable.

Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:44 am

Harry Joy wrote:
Is Sarah Conner a psycho she-devil with a short trigger and a bad haircut? 'Cause then I might watch.

Haha, well not quite like Linda Hamilton's Sarah in T2. But this Sarah has mellowed somewhat but is still cold and calculating while looking hot and . .

Oh and her hair is luxurious!!
It's on Monday nights at 8 central on Fox. And you can view some (maybe all) of the earlier episodes on their website.

Oh and the robot sent to protect John Connor . . . another HOT babe. Nice to be the actor playing John - hot mutha, hot robot bodyguard.

Chromartie and the T8s - not too hot, but very menacing and bizarrely funny and scary!!

[I'll be back - next week]
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Bowbe · Post by **Bowbe** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:15 am

Been liking the T:SCC

I dont even mind the blank stares of the moon faced twitchie from that pile of horse manure flecked with lame faux shakespearean/wild west prose glorified by pseudo intellectual emotards called Firefly/Serenity.

Bad news for they who yammer for a retread of that "program"... 6,000 screaming fans, each waving a copy of the RPG in hand do NOT a successful Neilson ratings "smash hit" make. Not even 100,000 of them. Likely not even 2,000,000 of them.

Better than Star Wars?

Serenity's All Time Domestic Gross Rank: 1885

All of the star wars films are in the top 30---including 2 prequals with 3 films in the top 10 all time.

As for the "rentals will bring it back"... sure roughly 3 million sold +rentals. (that breaks out to a 3 way split of 30 million between Fox, Whedon's production company, and the Tax Man) 10 million plus 4 million=14 million...+ whatever the rentals netted...Not exactly box office or rental gold. (I'm assuming an avg of $20 per unit with retailer taking half the profits per unit as is pretty standard). Had he and fox both earned around 50 million on units of DVD... you betcha Firefly would be back on the air or sequals would be getting made.

Now Whedon has a hard time getting anything made anymore and gets cut from more projects than he has offers... so he is back writing for FOX whom he swore he would never work for again.

Lucas... gets to make whatever he wants, whenever he feels like it and pays the bills himself because of the FAT HUGE popularity of the Star Wars franchise. Even when he makes lamers like 90% of the prequals... he makes all his money back and much much more. Take that for a "popularity" poll and smoke it.

AS for Terminator:SCC

Its obvious that the writers/producers/actors and effects folks on the show have a lot of love for the original Terminator and T2. Ihave a friend who was belly-aching prior to the shows release that it was "just gonna suck" and laid out a half dozen good reasons why. I went into watching the first one expecting him to be right. After catching the first 3 episodes even he had to admit he was wrong.

Wasn't feeling Bionic Woman. Sorta like the alleged john cleese bit in a different thread. The author may hate americans doing horrid brit accents (but so do I) but what is with British and Aussie chicks playing americans in all the action flicks. Evidently hollywood feels that good PSF corn-fed american dames are just too soft or "weak" to pull it off. That or they work for less.

I have to say tho, anymore i tend to prefer to play some really great xbox games, write, read, or watch DVDs over anything at all on TV these days. Hell anymore I watch shows on food network vs. network programming.

I do like Chuck tho. It may not have legs, and it may be kinda predictable and silly but I dig the jabs it takes at Best Buy's Geeksquad with its "nerd herd".

Peace

Case

Plaag · Post by **Plaag** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:13 am

um, I like Firefly and um..I have a couple of those RPG books

Thanks Case, thanks
ShaneG.

Gamley · Post by **Gamley** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:11 pm

Bowbe wrote:
I dont even mind the blank stares of the moon faced twitchie from that pile of horse manure flecked with lame faux shakespearean/wild west prose glorified by pseudo intellectual emotards called Firefly/Serenity.

Bad news for they who yammer for a retread of that "program"... 6,000 screaming fans, each waving a copy of the RPG in hand do NOT a successful Neilson ratings "smash hit" make. Not even 100,000 of them. Likely not even 2,000,000 of them.

Better than Star Wars?

Serenity's All Time Domestic Gross Rank: 1885

All of the star wars films are in the top 30---including 2 prequals with 3 films in the top 10 all time.

As for the "rentals will bring it back"... sure roughly 3 million sold +rentals. (that breaks out to a 3 way split of 30 million between Fox, Whedon's production company, and the Tax Man) 10 million plus 4 million=14 million...+ whatever the rentals netted...Not exactly box office or rental gold. (I'm assuming an avg of $20 per unit with retailer taking half the profits per unit as is pretty standard). Had he and fox both earned around 50 million on units of DVD... you betcha Firefly would be back on the air or sequals would be getting made.

Now Whedon has a hard time getting anything made anymore and gets cut from more projects than he has offers... so he is back writing for FOX whom he swore he would never work for again.

Lucas... gets to make whatever he wants, whenever he feels like it and pays the bills himself because of the FAT HUGE popularity of the Star Wars franchise. Even when he makes lamers like 90% of the prequals... he makes all his money back and much much more. Take that for a "popularity" poll and smoke it.

[Snipped]

I do like Chuck tho. It may not have legs, and it may be kinda predictable and silly but I dig the jabs it takes at Best Buy's Geeksquad with its "nerd herd".

Peace

Case

First let me say nothing personal here. It is me taking a chance to rant about Star Wars fan boy posts in general.

I can not imagine what about Serenity/Firefly warranted the vitriol it got there but to each his own. How can you beat them up and then say anything good about Chuck....talk about killing your credibility. I think you sold the prequels short though. They were close to 99.99% lame.

There has not been anything resembling good about Star Wars since about a third of the way through Return of the Jedi. Thanks George for Ewoks, Jar Jar, emo Anakin, bouncing baby Yoda and killing anything that was interesting about a one time great villain...heck he even sold out his own canon creation for Vader.

I am sure Star Wars will always be bigger than most any Sci-Fi franchise. It has a few million rabid fan boys who had plastic toys and books pushed out to them by toy companies to keep them interested . Fans who had to wait forever to get a fix for a movie and now whatever they see they will run to.

Lucas has proven with 1-3 that fans want cool CGI and action more so than they want a story that is coherent or good. I would rather watch endless hours of reruns of Firefly and Serenity than anything past Empire. In the end you are right though and America proves again and again with our TV shows. movies and books. It is better to be popular than good.

So as to not completely thread jack....

The Terminator show is fairly good and seems to be getting better with each week. As they add plot lines and take it away from shoot em up CGI

it is proving to have some legs I think. I really thought that after the first episode it was a goner but with the last two episodes I find myself looking forward to seeing it the next week.

Bowbe · Post by **Bowbe** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:10 pm

Heheheh

Worry not, I'm mostly blowing holes in my friend Peter's wild pipe dreams of a Serenity Sequal/Firefly revamp on TV with my argument.

My wife digs firefly/serenity a lot. You can count our household as one of the 2-3 million owners of both the film and the ENTIRE series. Joss got my dinero and I (personally) just can't bring myself to feel good about it.

That said I sat thru the film in a state of mind numbing boredom intermingled with many instances of WTF. (Sorta like how i felt during the first 90 odd minutes of episode 2)

Here's the kicker. I dig almost all of the actors from Firefly...but I just really didn't dig the berserker chick. To be honest when I saw her in Terminator: SCC I was kind of... eh... this is going to suck. Happily, it didn't. Her stiff robotic quality of acting happens to lend itself well to being a terminator.

I'll be honest. My main thing is that I just don't dig Joss Whedon's stuff, nor do I have this insatiable love fest with everything the dude has done. I also think thats perfectly OK. I don't like Ewe Boll's horrible excuses for celluloid versions of video game flicks either. I did like Whedon's co-written script for Toy Story tho. That was pretty good. Hahaha.

I "get" that his shows are quirky and have their nuances and humor. I like that he is really "into" strong, hot, sexy girls using Grrrl power to take down the forces of evil. Thats very progressive.

I "get" that he likes to mix in lots of young hotties (both male and female) into his casting for their chemistry and quirk. I "get" that the shows he's been involved with are deemed "edgy" due to all the homosexual and bisexual innuendo, undertones. At the same time I felt that a lot of it was sorta a bandwagon effect. Mostly... for me its been kind of a "wow what a great idea, I wish these shows were better so that I can enjoy them as much as everyone else seems to."

To that end... since yeah I must be in the gamer geek/comic fan minority that just doesn't get his work, I guess I'm glad he won't be working on Wonderwoman.

As for total Star Wars Fanboy.. Meh. Growing up has meant growing out of a lot of the things I dug about Star Wars. My fave is still the worst performing of the series (Empire). I hated ewoks. I wouldn't have minded rolling a blunt with Jar Jar back in the day tho hahahah.

I used Lucas's lameness yet ability to generate huge volumes of cash as an example of how Hollywood rates success (based on bucks), and that... due to the volume of cash he has made, there must be to something about their popularity vs. the relatively minute gains of the Firefly saga.

My true fave sci fi flicks remain shows like Alien, Aliens, Original Terminator, Predator, Blade Runner and Outland and Hardwired.

Case

Omote · Post by **Omote** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm

Bowbe wrote:
I dont even mind the blank stares of the moon faced twitchie from that pile of horse manure flecked with lame faux shakespearean/wild west prose glorified by pseudo intellectual emotards called Firefly/Serenity.

That is possibly the best thing I have read on Message Boards in a long, long time! Cheers. And really, Bowbe you are so right. Not to get off track, but I never understood what the hell people like so much about that show?!

Back on topic.

-O
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gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:11 pm

Bowbe wrote:
Heheheh

Worry not, I'm mostly blowing holes in my friend Peter's wild pipe dreams of a Serenity Sequal/Firefly revamp on TV with my argument.

*snorts* Course, since a movie sequel, apparently is in the works, its not such a pipe dream.

But hey, who am I to critique anyone who prefers the mind numbing drek that passes for entertainment on TV, over something that actually took time and creativity to write. Which is probably why it was canceled by the bastion of conservatism "Faux" TV. ^_~`
And when even a million or more fans is 'not enough' for a network to keep the show going, its naught but pure greed.

Millions of fans brought Star Trek back into production after all. ^_~`
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:12 pm

I only saw the movie, and if it was like the show, I'm rather glad I never saw it. Not interested in the RPG, either. But, then, I also don't see what people love about Babylon 5, or Deep Space: Nine, or even Star Wars or Star Trek. Must be some odd fascination with science fiction. I'd put Alien and Aliens as better, but they're more horror, and that's more my thing.

gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:21 pm

serleran wrote:
Must be some odd fascination with science fiction. I'd put Alien and Aliens as better, but they're more horror, and that's more my thing.

Probably why you cant relate to the shows then. The series mentioned are mostly about hope for the future, while the various Alien movies are about naught but violence and adrenaline thrills.
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Harry Joy · Post by **Harry Joy** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:25 pm

serleran wrote:
I only saw the movie, and if it was like the show, I'm rather glad I never saw it.

The movie and the teevee show only have passing similarities. They are vastly different in tone, feel, and execution. Even the basic universe you come to know is barely alike. The movie was darker, with much less of a Western theme, and with more of a Star Wars-type evil empire thing going on.

Bowbe · Post by **Bowbe** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 10:47 pm

Actually

Joss has most recently repeated again and again that the rumor of his "big secret project" being a sequal is patently false.

Last anyone heard was that they were basing it on the the success of the HD/Blu Ray DVD special edition sales... which evidently and much to the shame of so called fans... was cracked and has been fervently downloaded free of charge on bit torrents.

Good job fans. Way to kill your own dream.

Case

gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:52 pm

Bowbe wrote:
Actually

Joss has most recently repeated again and again that the rumor of his "big secret project" being a sequal is patently false.

*smiles* Wasn't actually talking about that, since its the first I've heard of it, but ok.

What I was actually referring too, was the movement of the 'big damn trillogy' which, from what I can gather already has written scripts ready to go for two more sequels , which were written when the first was done.
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Julian Grimm · Post by **Julian Grimm** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 1:53 am

I think I'd rather see the sequels to the Chronicles of Riddik.
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slimykuotoan · Post by **slimykuotoan** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 5:39 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlzptZ9wieQ

Plaag · Post by **Plaag** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:37 pm

Axel would be a waste of ammo
ShaneG.

Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:26 am

slimykuotoan wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlzptZ9wieQ

Nice.

I miss those guys.

Hmm, wasn't Axel going to fight one of those other heavy metal clowns at one time?

My fav metal band is Def Leppard - gotta love the excellence and fortitude of their drummer. That dude is my hero.

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Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:52 am

It's on in 5 minutes . . .
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Harry Joy · Post by **Harry Joy** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:12 am

Won't be be watching, sorry to say. PBS is running a special on Kit Carson.

Julian Grimm · Post by **Julian Grimm** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:03 am

Damn good episode! I am definately looking forward to more.
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Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:11 am

The last 3 episodes are defintely well written! The writers and creators of Terminator TV took a long hard look at shows like Battlestar Galatica, Lost and the like. Terminator TV's stories are indepth and really, really work within the Terminator mythology.

And frankly, this is one of the best looking programs on TV. I can't even imagine what the budget for each epsiode is. Some of the stuff in tonight's episode looked just as good as the movies. And the best thing is, no crappy liquid metal Terminators either.

The prosthetic makeup work is some of the best I;ve ever seen on TV.

This show is getting good.

-O
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Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:12 am

Nice. I thought they might venture into the future as part of the series. Great idea of course . . . you can mine that whole 'notherverse for tons of material.

Heh, and they're heaping some more intrigue, suspense and character development into the mix.

The plot thickens, as they say . . .

Well done!!
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Julian Grimm · Post by **Julian Grimm** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:15 am

Cameron is begining to 'Freak me the hell out.'
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Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:25 am

Agreed about Cameron. I'm glad the writers saw early that the Terminator character was going to get qite boring unless they introduced some sort of backstory to her. Good job.

The preview for next week was so very... "Lost."

-O
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Tadhg · Post by **Tadhg** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:38 am

It seems they're throwing some suspicions out there about Derek Reese which are a bit freaking too. I love it. Trust no one!!
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