Hollywood Screws With My Childhood

I can understand Hollywood's desire for sequels.  The groundwork has already been laid by creating a universe, establishing characters and defining the underlying themes.  If the original made a lot of money and the studio profited, then why not?  The audience would often like to see some of their favorite characters in another conflict to overcome and further develop the character and the universe in the process.  It's win-win as long as it's done well.

It's the reboots that I can't stand.  They are attempts to recast, redefine and change the storyline to appeal to a newer generation of movie goers, often with a political purpose.  Hollywood discovered that slapping the label of a successful franchise on a package full of bull dung will still earn them millions of dollars.  They're right, but it resembles more of a scorched earth tactic than the "evolution" or "send up" that producers claim it is.  Hence, I kiss some of my cherished childhood memories good bye.

Note:  At this point, I'm suppose to issue a "spoiler warning" because there are some idiots in the world that don't realize that you might be giving away plot points in an article that talks about movies.  Consider yourself warned.  Also, consider staying home on election day...and avoid breathing.

The Terminator

Genisys is the fifth installment of a very successful franchise.  Most people will say that Judgement Day was the best, but I really think the first Terminator was the masterpiece.  All the movies feature the rise of a super computer that becomes self-aware called Skynet who decides that mankind needs to be Terminated.  A desperate struggle between the machines and the remnants of humanity in the future prompts both man and machine to travel back in time in attempts to alter the past for their benefit.

Unfortunately, with Salvation we learned the hard way that unless you have Arnold Schwarzenegger cast in the titular role, the franchise flops.  Arnold is still in good shape but he's starting to show his age, which makes his casting as the terminator model T-800 a little bit odd.  The script attempts to get around this fact by sending the T-800 further back into the past to save Sarah Connor from termination when she was a child and raising her.  The T-800 is robotic, but his organic components will age normally and give him the older look that we see in the present day.

"I still got this!"

Time travel is always a little tricky to deal with in science fiction.  It can create too many paradoxes and contradictions but I think the Terminator handled them very well for the most part.  "No fate but what we make" and "the future is not set" were major themes that ran through the first Terminator and Judgement Day and I found them to be encouraging and motivational.  This theme was abandoned in Rise of the Machines, but it was replaced with a more interesting one; the emergence of a temporal war fought across time between man and machine where they either try to keep Skynet from being created or facilitate it's emergence through it's vulnerable, embryonic stages. This theme was further explored in the television series, The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  It was clever, I remember thinking.  Conceivably, the war between humanity and Skynet may never end leading to many more sequels and spinoffs.  This is how they should have continued with it.

Unfortunately, the producers and writers for Genisys ditched such a promising development.  It wasn't entirely their fault.  The Sarah Connor Chronicles had suffered from a writer's strike, bad casting, and a bad time slot (just ask Firefly).  Summer Glau as the terminator/protector, Cameron, was pretty good, but John and Sarah Connor were miscast.  So the writers for Genisys might not have seen the theme as being a workable formula. 

They went with a reboot that changed the timeline entirely!  And they still have casting problems!  Sorry but Jai Courtney is no Kyle Reese; not even close.  Emilia Clarke seems to have done well in Game of Thrones but she can't hold a candle to Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor.

The producers also decided to make Genisys a PG-13 installment while the ones before it were rated R.  I assume they wanted to appeal to a broader audience but this is unfortunate.  Without the blood and gore and language that gives Terminator an R rating, it looses a lot of it's suspense and intensity.

Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger is suppose to die/get destroyed. That's the rule! He was the villain in the first Terminator but in Judgement Day and Rise of the Machines he gives us hope that an AI can learn compassion, evolve beyond it's programming and be self-sacrificing and give humanity another chance.  In all fairness, he attempts to do this but through a deus ex machina, he's saved.  Now he's an upgraded T-800/T-1000 hybrid ready for another adventure.  Reese is still alive too, by the way.

(Sigh) This is no longer the Terminator that I grew up with and I have a feeling it's going to get a lot worse.

Star Trek

Now that the Gene Roddenberry and his wife have been dead for a while, the studios had another franchise with it's own well-established universe and loyal fan base to malign for cash and prizes. Some idiot thought that adding more CGI, casting younger and hotter actors out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, and rewriting the canon would somehow make Star Trek appealing enough to a younger fan base who wouldn't appreciate the more cerebral subjects that the original vision of the Star Trek universe entailed.

Who needs talent when you look like this?

The reboot is maybe a little better than that week old newspaper lining the bottom of your bird cage.  The Star Trek universe is also on a completely new and reinvented timeline so forget all that cannon that you learned covering everything from the original series that aired in the 1960's to Star Trek Enterprise that wrapped up its series finale in 2005.  That's a good forty years of rich history down the drain.

If you don't think that's a big deal, then you really haven't met a Trekkie before.  The Star Trek canon has effectively been written in stone according to these people and studio greed smashed it and tried to glue it back together with a few pieces missing and tell everybody it's just as good.  Now I'm picturing Star Trek conventions in chaos as everybody has to qualify what friggin' timeline they're talking about.  You've potentially created a schism so wide that Trekkies will long for the simple times where the worst thing they had to worry about were people trying to convince others about whether James Kirk or Jean Luc Picard is the best captain.

Listen, I get it.  You hacks in the studios wanted to make a sci fi action film.  You even had some sequels in mind so you can milk the fan base for a good decade. But instead of using your own creativity to build your own universe and timeline, and create and develop your own characters and fan base, you raided an established and beloved franchise.  The resulting pile of garbage has no resemblance to the original Star Trek universe.  Sure, you kept some of the characters names, but now they're completely different people. 

And what the hell did you do to Spock?!?!?  You took a role model that might have inspired a generation of millennials to think rationally about problems they face and turned him into a brat that throws temper tantrums every 15 minutes.

Star Wars

Episode VII, The Force Awakens was billed as a sequel to the original Star Wars trilogy, but in reality, it is a reboot of episode IV, A New Hope.

Evil planet-crushing super weapon--check
Said planet crusher destroyed by hitting an achilles-style weak spot--check
Enigmatic and masked antagonist that is strong with the dark side of the force--check
A quirky, cute and lovable droid as a main character--check
Important information concealed in said droid to be delivered to the resistance--check
Young orphaned protagonist that isn't aware of his or her strength with the force--check
Said orphan eeking out an existence on desert planet--check
Beloved older mentor of said orphan being slain with a light saber--check

...and so on.  You get the idea.

What mars this picture is Rey's (Daisy Ridley) inexplicable knowledge and skill with machines and the force.  When the film opens, we see that Rey eeks out a living by salvaging parts from busted or abandoned ships and selling them for cash.  I can believe that Rey learns through experience which types of parts would give her the most value when she sells them.  But can a person know how to build and repair machines using this information?  I'm doubting it.  In one critical scene, Rey fixes a potentially dangerous breakdown of the Millennium Falcon better than Han Solo or Chewbacca despite never being on board the ship before. Rey also possess enough knowledge and skill with the force that it can facilitate her escape from the clutches of the First Order, and confront and defeat Kylo Ren in a lightsaber dual.

Don't worry ladies, she has Grrrl Power©!

Luke Skywalker, on the other hand, barely touches a lightsaber in A New Hope and needs help from Obiwan Kenobi, Han Solo and Chewbacca to rescue Princess Leia.  He spends most of his time in Empire Strikes Back being trained by Yoda and he is still no match for Darth Vader.  Despite Luke being strong with the force, he doesn't become proficient with the force until Return of the Jedi.  Yet, Rey seems to have all this knowledge and skill because of--what? Grrrl Power©!

Then there's the casting of a black actor, John Boyega, to play Finn.  I agree with some of the critics that say this is simply pandering--casting a black actor so you can say how progressive you are for casting a black actor.  But, may I suggest that you cast one that can act before you break your arm patting yourself on the back?  Before you accuse me of reading too much into this, consider what the director, J.J. Abrams, said when directing The Force Awakens:

“I think we all have a hell of a lot to do, and I think it is insane to me that we still have to have a conversation about inclusivity. It’s shameful.  We all need to do better to represent this world. It’s something that is important to me, and is something that we’re focusing on. It’s inevitable and crazy that it’s taken so long. To imagine being someone who would see mainstream media and see themselves be underrepresented would be an incredibly hurtful thing.”

My question is, "Has this guy been asleep for the past 30 years?" There are many minorities and women in main leads, even in Star Wars. In fact, the science fiction genre is often first in exploring progressive ideas such as diversity--and did so well before Abrams came along--but it must enhance the story.  You can't be ham-fisted with it. Now, don't misunderstand me.  I'm not opposed to women or minorities playing strong leads.  But John Boyega as Finn sticks out in The Force Awakens in a way that Billy Dee Williams didn't in The Empire Strikes Back; probably because Williams was a much better actor. Samuel L. Jackson also does well as Mace Windu in the prequels. In other franchises, Avery Brooks presented well as Commander Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  I also think Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.  And I think Linda Hamilton's portrayal as Sarah Connor in the Terminator franchise is brilliant!  So audiences are well acclimated to seeing women and minorities as main leads.  JJ Abrams' casting decisions were more of a setback for women and minorities because they stick out so much in The Force Awakens.

But in the end, be careful about your grandstanding and virtue signaling when supporting cast diversity in movies.  It might be counter productive by making you look like a hypocrit.  Critics complained about the jive-talking Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace and the asian inflections of the Trade Federation as being racially insensitive.  Yet, the Empire is represented by white actors that speak with British accents and nobody bats an eyelash.



As a write this, I saw a trailer for a Ghostbusters reboot featuring all female leads.  Also, there's a press release indicating that Tom Cruise is on board with a Top Gun reboot.  I don't know any details about the script but I'm willing to bet good money that female pilots are going to feature more prominent rolls in this movie.  One of them may even die to show that women can be skilled warriors and die for their country just as well, or even better, than men.  Something tells me that this pretentious reboot fad will go on for a while.  God help us!