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Etherdave's Replies
The film intended to depict a peacetime American army composed of misfits, nitwits, and incompetents, with the odd career soldier (Warren Oates, who actually served 2 years in the Marines) thrown in for contrast.
You miss the point. This is a deliberately overblown, wildly hyperbolic, insanely insane film about people who led their lives like Greek or Norse gods, or at least like the heroes those gods favoured. Incest? What of it? Consenting adults, right? 5 times?, JUST 5 times? No wonder she killed herself... she just wasn't trying! How about Samuel's heart in a messkit? Or fighting a bear? Twice! The SAME BEAR!! I'm afraid you're simply supposed to pour yourself another one of whatever you've got in your hand, sit back, and just enjoy the ride. Premise? PREMISE?? This is for lesser films. This is 'Legends Of The Fall', the most overheated film in cinematic history. In the words of Jay Gatsby, 'It's all in fun, Old Sport'!
In the absence of time-displacement apparatus, I think he did a good impression of 1984 Michael Biehn.
The series establishes many models of Terminators, some of which are designed as infiltrators, some as mere one-off assassins, and some of which are clearly 'grunt' models designed as cannon-fodder; the Terminators are clearly becoming more capable of independant thought, and may come to resent their in-designed subservience to Skynet. Cameron is clearly designed off a lighter, less rugged chassis than other models; nevertheless, she is most heavily damaged by explosives, just as the original motion picture Terminator was.
Cromartie. This is Garrett Dillahunt's masterpiece, a Terminator whose great intelligence is undermined by his slavery under Skynet. As John Henry, Dillahunt plays an innocent child... who may not be that innocent.
There are numerous references to chess and chess theory in this series. Bobby Fischer was an American chess prodigy, with an uneasy relationship with his past and ethnic heritage, so he is perfect as a cultural reference in this series, which is as much about cultural divides as it is about malevolent computers trying to exterminate the Human Race. Fischer is famous for sacrificing his Queen in order to unleash an attack on an opponent, the so-called 'Game Of The Century'; he was 13. Fischer is also famous for his Openings, which were considered unpredictable and challenging to opponents; many described his play as that of a chess computer. The series is predicated by the development of a chess-playing machine called The Turk, which may ultimately become the malevolent AI Skynet. There are two characters introduced in the series: Andy Goode, creator of The Turk, who takes the name William Wisher to hide his identity in the future, and Charles Fischer, a watch repairman who colludes with Skynet and is branded a war criminal. John Henry, a childlike AI, enjoys chess-like games, as a means of learning; he is being developed in the present day by an advanced Terminator, ostensibly as an opposite to Skynet; he may or may not have benefited from the programming of The Turk, as well as a Terminator named Cromartie. The War between Humanity and Skynet is described as a chess-match, especially as prosecuted by the Future John Connor; Connor has been trained as an adolescent to empathize with the Terminators, possibly to encourage a negotiated peace, where both intelligences may survive. William Wisher is killed by Derek Reese, who travels back in time to murder Andy Goode before Wisher can exist. Charles Fischer is executed for his crimes, after fleeing to the past to ensure the survival of his younger self. Bobby Fischer died January 17, 2008, 4 days after the airing of the first episode of 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles'. Bobby Fischer is dead.
Sorry. The present owners of the franchise have no interest in continuing the television series. Personally, I smell a reboot.
You forget Cameron was programmed and sent to John by his older self from the future. Any such activity would have been anticipated and programmed by Future John. If your 15 year old self had his own female terminator, it's likely any interaction would be based on this principle. Advantage would not enter into the equation.
I'm pretty sure Catherine Weaver / T-1001 was investigating the possibility of reproduction, and whether or not Terminators could actually raise and nurture young, not simply simulate it as a means of infiltration. I'm pretty sure her 'pet' was part of that investigation, as well as Savannah Weaver.
Chinese opera is highly stylized, emphasizing enunciation, emphasis, and order in its delivery. Listen to English oratorio and chamber music of the Jacobean era, I think you'll see many similarities. Now, according to the original novella on which this film is based, Songlian and Feipu may be the only true intellectuals in the Chen household. Maybe Meishan really is a borderline singing talent (though it seems unlikely), and this simply makes no difference in the end run, since the household thinks whatever Chen thinks. He thinks she's a diva, and that's really all that matters.
It was posted all over the Internet when the film was released, six years ago. You can watch it on YouTube.
Yes, I enjoyed it, too, not so much Ben Kingsley, because he's always great in everything he does, but I really was impressed by the performances of the younger cast, especially Theo James. I don't understand the critics' complaints about the storyline, unless, of course, they were ordered to write the criticisms; you just can't rule it out, I guess.
You might consider an alternate explanation for a film titled 'Ad Astra (to the stars)'. The film depicts the (rather spectacular) failure of the first mission TO THE STARS. The crew, which all appear to be married, or at least paired, couples (with the exception of the commander), were intended to be the first generation of a generational crew intended to die in space on the way to the stars (ever wonder why the medical bay seems so large?). The mission exploring the outer planets and near stars, was intended to select prospective destinations. The antimatter engine was intended to be a dependable power source for the unimaginable distances between stars (why would they have needed it otherwise? Wouldn't something like hydrogen fuel cells be much more practical?). The actual mission was kept secret by the program directors, known only to the commander. When the initial mission was completed and the destination planet selected, he told them. They didn't like it, and tried to turn the ship around. Mutiny. The commander, who had succeeded in completely de-conditioning himself against all he knew on Earth (knowing he would die in space on the way to another star), realised return meant his own demise, and so he put down the mutiny- but not before killing the paired crew, intended to produce, as offspring, the next generation of crew, and damaging the antimatter engine, thus destroying the mission itself. He had failed, and return to an Earth to whom he had already long since said farewell, was simply not an option. His son was sent to Mars only to flush him out, to let the 'Rescue Team' know what lay ahead of them.
'Ad Astra' is a film about failure. Failure of a mission. Failure of an understanding to what extent humans are linked to their homes, to their concept of home, and to their willingness to cling to that home, no matter what. If humans are to colonize the stars, these are the problems they must overcome, because once there, there will be no coming back.
The music is terrible, one of the most egregious examples of James Horner's bizarre autokleptomania in his soundtracks. Motifs from 'Wolfen', 'Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan', 'Glory', and 'Titanic' abound, and are repetitive, distracting, and hopelessly overblown. That silly trumpet triplet figure is played over and over and over until it becomes comic and ultimately meaningless, even as it echoes over the two snipers' final encounter like a Hornerian version of Ive's 'The Unanswered Question'. Regrettably there will likely be little change over this in the future, as Horner's publicist stated shortly after his untimely demise that writing music wasn't really what he loved- apparently that was flying airplanes.
How does it even matter? Two good ol' boys, rampaging around the county in a pickup truck, armed with shotguns, is simply a symbol of personal freedom and individuality. One might say these two are out to discover America, albeit in their own ignorant, uneducated, sociopathic way. The important thing is the sudden, awful collision of different people's concepts of personal freedom and individuality, and how it is used in the film to complete the doomed, hopeless journey of the two protagonists. It's a fitting testament to this film's screenplay that it still shocks viewers to this day.
Spector is the dweeby guy in the tan jacket and Scumbag Steve hat testing the cocaine at the airport. He is the main characters' 'connection' to the buyer, who is never seen.
They made a movie like that, dingbat. It was called 'Thelma And Louise'. And they weren't lesbians, just two working-class women fed up with the men in their lives.
Agreed. Totally silly. Where is it written that baboons will attack the Antichrist, or for that matter, that dogs will be his servants, acolytes, and protectors? If worldly lower creatures can recognize the Antichrist, why are they not constantly attacking him? If Damien is the child of Satan, was that Satan, then, inside the dog that copulated with a human woman to impregnate her with the Antichrist? So the dog was... possessed by Satan? All very silly, but eminently, thoroughly entertaining. It's clear the film was manufactured out of a series of eschatological tropes, not necessarily connected with Christianity, or Christian concepts of End Times, or Armageddon. The purpose is to create a miasma of detail, along with every creepy, gory, silly trope that can be presented within a single film, including an impaled Patrick Troughton, and David Warner's head on a sheet of glass. What about the title of the film itself, which is a misnomer: there is no omen, rather, a (fictitious) prophecy that only forms the backstory of the narrative, and really has little to do with the story itself. The film is about a switcheroo between a powerful American statesman's child and this one, and his protectors' battle with forces that oppose him on earth, even as his adoptive father slowly comes to learn his son isn't who he thinks he is. It's 1979, I suppose they could have called it 'The Changeling', or maybe that one was taken already.
Agreed. The food seems downplayed in this film. I looked for the 'Fricasee' in the buffet food, but all I saw were the institutional mashed potato rounds. The entire film was deliberately shot using wide-angle lenses, so such detail becomes very hard to discern.
The exchange between Leamas and the employment official sounds suspiciously like a 'phrase/counterphrase' meant to let the official (who is a plant) know this is the man to whom to give the library job. It looks totally set up, and Nan is the pawn dragged into the operation because of her Communist Party affiliations. So how, then, did Nan get the job, and for how long has she been a helpless tool of British Intelligence? You might ask John Le Carre just how far back this is intended to go, except he's dead. You could ask Len Deighton the same question about Harry Palmer's office romances; were they real, or simply engineered by Control to keep Harry interested/occupied? Alas, Deighton's dead also, so you get the same answer as from Le Carre. Oh well.