A Review of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

"I'll get you, Megatron! With my mighty and trusty GUN." *Bang* *Megatron dies* *Roll end credits*
♫ Whaaaaaaaat I've doooooooone, I'll faaace myseeelf... to cross out what IIIIII've beeeeeeecome ♫

Happy Friday. I hope you all enjoyed my Transformers review last week. It truly is still a good movie to pop in every now and then and relive the excitement and action from seeing it in theaters, plus to see all the wonderful characters, stellar Transformer voice performances, and to take a thrill ride with the exciting chase for the AllSpark on both sides as the Autobots and Decepticons invade Earth for their own respective causes. Truly it was "Their War. Our World." as the tagline suggested.

"Hello, agent? Yes. If you receive a script for
Transformers 3... please shred it immediately."

...but that was the fun of 2007. Now it's 2009. I was no longer in going into my Freshman year in high school, but now Junior. I was a little older, and a little wiser. While I was showing tremendous growth and yes, at the time, even a little potential, I regret to inform you that the Transformers franchise was not. At the time, we all knew Transformers was going to get at least one sequel and I was hanging on to every new image and every new trailer the internet would throw at me and let me watch. Well... the day finally came that summer and... Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a gigantic mess. It felt like Michael Bay got carried away, overhyped himself and created something otherworldly stupid, lame, and plain ridiculous. For a sequel to Transformers, it's okay on it's best day, but otherwise it's just an overhyped, overbudgeted, colossal misstep in carrying the story forward. What the hell happened, I hear you cry out from your computer or smartphone? Well... do what Michael Bay did not and put on your thinking cap; let's dig in.

The movie opens in 17,000 B.C. with another Optimus Prime narration. The Primes (the highest ruling Cybertronians) gather their energy, Energon, from sun harvesters, machines that consume stars to harness their energy. The Primes have a sacred rule to never deplete a star that sustains life. One Prime violates this rule by building a sun harvester on Earth, for which he was defeated by the other six Primes, and becomes "the Fallen" (Tony Todd), the original Decepticon. Flash forward to 2009, two years after the battle of Mission City, the Autobots and the humans have formed N.E.S.T. (Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty), a classified international joint task force to eliminate the remaining Decepticons. Two of them, Sideways (non-speaking) and Demolishor (Calvin Wimmer), are defeated in Shanghai, but the latter declares "the Fallen shall rise again." before being killed. Meanwhile, the Decepticon Soundwave (Frank Welker) hacks a military satellite. The Decepticons steal the last known piece of the AllSpark shard from a U.S Navy base in Diego Garcia and use it to resurrect Megatron (Hugo Weaving) while killing one of their own to provide parts for his damaged body. The Fallen sends Megatron and his second-in-command, Starscream (Charlie Adler), to capture Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) alive and kill Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), the leader of the Autobots.

I could make a joke about these two but... nah I
feel like they, in and of themselves, are jokes enough.

Sam, now a college student, has been seeing Cybertronian symbols since holding a smaller AllSpark shard... why he didn't get blasted with the ability to see these symbols after handling the AllSpark in the first film, of course, goes unexplained; Megatron believes the symbols will lead the Decepticons to a new Energon source. The shard brings many of the kitchen appliances to life, which attempt to kill Sam and his parents but Bumblebee rescues them. Sam gives the shard to his girlfriend Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), who later captures the Decepticon Wheelie (Tom Kenny) as he attempts to steal it. After being attacked by Alice (Isabel Lucas), a Terminator... I mean... "Decepticon Pretender" posing as a college student, Sam, his roommate Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) and Mikaela are captured by the Decepticon Grindor (Frank Welker) before the Autobots save them. Megatron then kills Optimus... yep, kills Optimus... after Optimus takes on three or four other bleedin' Decepticons.. so he's OP but he still had to die I guess? Lol anyway, this was all while he defends Sam. Afterwards, the Decepticons launch devastating attacks around the world, while Megatron and Soundwave hijack Earth's telecommunications systems, which allows the Fallen to send a message to the humans, demanding that Sam be handed over to him.

Sam, Mikaela, and Leo then find alien expert and former Sector Seven agent, Seymour Simmons (John Turturro), who reveals the Transformers visited Earth eons ago and the most ancient, known as Seekers, remained hidden on Earth. With help from Wheelie, they track down an elderly Decepticon turned Autobot Seeker named Jetfire at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. They use their shard to revive Jetfire (Mark Ryan), who teleports the group to Egypt. Along with Jetfire, Wheelie sides with the Autobots, and Jetfire sends them to locate the Matrix of Leadership, the sun harvester's key, which could also be used to revive Optimus. Transformers fans know the Matrix of Leadership as an artifact of great power, traditionally carried by the leader of the Autobots... here it's a "sun harvester key", which begs the question "If it's the sun harvester key, what does Leadership have to do with it?" I think they were just hoping for some name recognition to score points with disappointed fans. Many of whom at this point no doubt have already walked out of the theater.

"Sam, my little buddy."
"Optimus, quit calling me that--"
"You look like an ant from up here!"

The group finds the Matrix, whom the Primes sacrificed themselves to hide, in Aqaba, but it disintegrates into dust. Meanwhile, N.E.S.T. forces and the Autobots land near the Giza pyramid complex and are attacked by the Decepticons. The Constructicons combine to form Devastator... which I'm not going to lie is a pretty fucking epic shot... who reveals the sun harvester hidden inside a pyramid before he is destroyed. How about that Egypt? The Great Pyramids don't house the tombs of your fallen leaders from ancient history... they house a made-up sentient toy's superweapon! JOKES ON YOU! Anywho, a majority of the Decepticons are annihilated, mostly with multiple airstrikes from the Navy and the U.S Air Force, but Megatron manages to kill Sam. Many people who were over Shia LaBeouf's schtick already probably cheered at this point. The Primes speak to Sam in... I don't know, limbo I guess... saying that the Matrix must be earned, not found, and that he has the right to bear it by sacrificing himself for Optimus. They resurrect Sam and grant him the Matrix, which he uses to resurrect Optimus. The Fallen steals the Matrix from a weakened Optimus and uses it to activate the sun harvester. After a wounded Jetfire sacrifices himself to allow his parts to be used for additional power and flight, Optimus destroys the harvester and kills the Fallen. Heavily damaged and distraught by his master's death, Megatron retreats with Starscream, proclaiming ye olde 80s villaine catchphrase "This isn't over". The Autobots and their allies then return to the United States, and Sam and Leo return to college... and we never see Mikaela again because she's dated Sam for basically a year and nearly died about five times.

That is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Yeeeesh, what a mess. It tries to capture the tone and essence of the first film, but this is an example of a director, or scriptwriter, or both believing their hype too much after the first film did pretty well. That's the thing; it wasn't like the first movie was a groundbreaking piece of cinema, but it was pretty darn good still. That alone made them think they were Messiahs of transforming robots and decided to get really really cringe with this one. I mean, what went wrong?

"Oy let me tell you micro human blokes about
this thing called MySpace..."
"Oh man, Jetfire isn't aware of Facebook yet."

First off, the aesthetic for this movie looks like it took a giant back-step. Everything about this movie feels "orange", you know what I mean? The same way Batman Forever is green? This movie is orange. Every shot feels like it was filmed in an orange/brown filter, and everybody has a very, very bad spray tan. Plus they all look greasy, like what happened? Did the art department try to make the live actors into cartoons too? Not to mention, everybody's acting is so ridiculously over the top. I guess Sam's okay, and Mikaela just Megan Foxes her way through it, but everybody else is basically a cartoon. So... yes to my earlier question. Leo is a nut, Simmons literally shows his jockstrapped buttcheeks on screen, Sam's mother has a ridiculous pot incident on Sam's college campus; it's all nuts... like a circus... and don't even get me started on Mudflap and Skids. I even glossed over them in the synopsis. Voiced by Reno Wilson and Tom Kenny, respectively, these are two of the most overacted and highly racial characters I've ever seen, and they don't really belong in a Transformers movie. Yeah a couple of their exchanges make me laugh, and they are funny; but they're so out of place and so are not okay to portray in such a manner. I'll admit.

Plus the Bay-formers plot holes are back in full force for this one. I.E... why didn't Sam use the shard of the AllSpark he still had to bring Optimus back to life. It fixed Bumblee's legs between movies, or HELL, something did! So why couldn't they use it to resurrect Optimus, they wouldn't even need the Sun Harvester of Leadership, or whatever. Also, in the middle of the movie (roughly) Megatron tells Starscream that it is "time for the Decepticons to let the world know of their presence." To that point, Transformers have destroyed a rather large chunk of a major metropolitan city in America, a large section of Shanghai, have had battles in four other continents, rampaged across a major college campus, destroyed a forest, and stomped around the Witwickys' backyard multiple times. There is no conceivable, possible, metaphysical way that the human race does not know of the existence of the Transformers at this point. Like we're stupid, right? Just look at TikTok trends. We are stupid as a race... but even we are not that stupid.

"Hurry Mikaela, run!"
"Hang on, Sam! I have to
adjust my top!"

How about Simmons being severed from all government work, but yet being able to single-handedly steal seventy-five years worth of classified files and information from Sector 7 when it was shut down?? Well actually maybe not a goof, we've seen Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton get away with similar feats ... but perhaps the single biggest goof is in basic math. When the Decepticons go underwater to revive Megatron, the Navy states that five "objects" went under water. If one of the Decepticons was killed to bring Megatron back to life, six "objects" could not have come out of the water: Let me break it down. Ravage spits out the Doctor Robot (we're up to six), one gets stripped into parts (we're back to five), Megatron gets reactivated (Back to six) and Ravage swallows the Doctor to head back to the surface... bringing us back to five. Yet Navy dude states that five became six. Somebody got held back in simple-math, didn't they?

No, I do not care for, nor do I really recommend Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I was so hoping for a stellar sequel to the first film that would explore more of the established Transformers lore from the 80's. The Matrix, Energon; instead we get this Jersey Shore meets Transformers mish-mash of annoyingly cluttered writing that even kids don't really find engaging... smothered with so many plot and logic holes, it makes Swiss cheese jealous. It's dumb, it's obnoxious, it makes no sense, it's inept, it's loud, it's cartoonish, it's dumb, it's contradicting, it's silly, it's overacted, it's dumb... am I repeating myself? Get used to it. It's what these movies do. Tally ho and onward to the next no-doubt brain-tickling entry in the Transformers motion picture franchise, I suppose. Yippee for us.

A Review of "Transformers" (2007)

"I am Optimus Prime, and I send this blog post to any bored toilet dweller taking refuge from their
jobs and daily lives. We are here... we are waiting..."
♫ Whaaaaaaaat I've doooooooone, I'll faaace myseeelf... to cross out what IIIIII've beeeeeeecome ♫

Happy Friday. Well, we finished ripping apart the last of the Terminator films. We're officially all caught up there. What is next for us? Well... I had a discussion with friends recently, and I deduced that there's another series of films near-and-dear to me... well, one entry is... that I'd love to tear apart. Coming to us from Japan in the early 80's and enduring to this day, it's the Transformers!

I know this is basically how Megan Fox was supposed
to get her sex appeal in... but does anyone care about what
is happening to Bumblebee right now?!

Transformers started as a line of toys in the early 1980s that was then adapted into a animated series called The Transformers. It told the story of a civil war for a race of transforming (go figure) robots from the planet Cybertron. The side that stands for good, known as the "Autobots", fight to preserve peace against the warring, power-hungry bad robots, so-named the "Decepticons". While most of the Autobots transform into cars and trucks, the Decepticons transform into all manner of things like planes, dragons; even a gun. Like many things I grew up with decades after it was relevant, it became a staple of 80s pop culture and is a cornerstone for the decade. In the middle of the series, after season two, there was a motion picture that was released for the series called The Transformers: The Movie. We're going to skip this one for now, but I got a hunch in the future, we'll return to it. No what we're here to talk about today is with the first major motion picture, live-action, that was released in 2007. Coming to us during our most formative years; getting bullied in Jr. High School, getting bullied on MySpace, bullying people who read Twilight if you thought you were too macho for it even though you really weren't; ahhh, what a time to be alive.

It was directed by Michael Bay, known for his blockbusters that play fast and loose with history and racial relations (i.e. Pearl Harbor) or with basic science and physics (i.e. Armageddon). That's right, they left the franchise's first live-action foray in the hands of the Bad Boys guy, and it is looking questionable. Does the first movie in this now popular and very high-grossing franchise get us off to a good start? Starring renowned internet meme and Indiana Jones punchline Shia LaBeouf and former hottie turned hottie-wack-a-doodle-Mrs-Machine-Gun-Kelly Megan Fox, we should be in for a treat! Let's take a step back to that special time, the year of the iPhone, 2007 and talk about Transformers!

When your parallel-parked Transformer accidentally transforms

The movie opens up with a familiar voice telling us the story of the planet Cybertron and how it was consumed by a civil war between the two Transformer factions, the Autobots led by Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) and the Decepticons led by Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), for the AllSpark, a cube-like object that is the source of all Cybertronian life. The Autobots want to find the AllSpark so they can use it to rebuild Cybertron and end the war, while the Decepticons want to use it to defeat the Autobots and conquer the universe. Typical 80s endgame for bad guys, I love it. Megatron found the AllSpark on Earth, but crash-landed in the Arctic Circle and was frozen in the ice. Captain Archibald Witwicky (W. Morgan Sheppard) and his crew of explorers stumbled upon Megatron in 1897. Captain Witwicky accidentally activates Megatron's navigational system, causing his eyeglasses to be imprinted with the coordinates of the AllSpark's location. Sector 7, a secret United States government organization, discovers the AllSpark in the Colorado River and builds the Hoover Dam around it to mask its energy emissions. The still-frozen Megatron is moved into this facility and is reverse engineered to advance human technology.

That's all well and good, but what about our human (or hopefully human-ish) protagonist that can carry us through the story, giving us someone to relate to in this world of warring robots? Well, we flash-forward from the history-lesson to the present. In the present day, the Decepticons—Blackout (doesn't speak), Scorponok (doesn't speak), Frenzy (Reno Wilson), Barricade (Jess Harnell), Starscream (Charlie Adler), Bonecrusher (Jim Wood) and Brawl (doesn't speak)—have landed on Earth and assumed the disguise of Earth vehicles. In the start of the movie, Blackout and Scorponok attack the U.S. SOCCENT military base in Qatar and try to hack into the U.S. military network to find the location of Megatron and the AllSpark. Their mission is thwarted when the base staff severs the network cable connections. While Blackout destroys the rest of the base, Scorponok chases a small group of survivors who have photographic evidence of the robots, but he is eventually repelled. During this battle, the military discovers its only effective weapons against the Transformers' armor are high-heat sabot rounds. After Blackout's failure, Frenzy infiltrates Air Force One to try again to hack into the military network, and in doing so plants a virus. He finds the map imprinted on Captain Witwicky's glasses, whose descendant, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), intends to sell on eBay. Frenzy and Barricade begin tracking Sam's location.

"Hello! I am Megatron, the city watcher! Please take care
driving... do not speed... and sir, I see you littering over
there. Please find the nearest waste receptacle
this INSTANT!"

One of the Autobots, Bumblebee, is also on Earth, disguised as a 1976 Chevrolet Camaro, and is bought by Sam while shopping for his first car. Bumblebee helps him woo his crush, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox). Bumblebee leaves at night to transmit a homing signal to the rest of the Autobots and Sam sees him in robot mode. Barricade confronts Sam and demands Archibald's spectacles, but Bumblebee rescues him and Mikaela. After Bumblebee upgrades his vehicle form by scanning a 2007 Chevrolet Camaro, which this movie was used to promote as that was a returning model at the time, they leave to rendezvous with the rest of the Autobots: Optimus Prime, Jazz (Darius McCrary), Ironhide (also Jess Harnell), and Ratchet (Robert Foxworth)—who have landed on Earth and taken the forms of Earth vehicles as well. Sam, Mikaela, and the Autobots return to Sam's home and obtain the glasses. Soon, agents from Sector 7 arrive to arrest Sam and Mikaela, and they capture Bumblebee. Which was a depressing scene, not going to lie. Also I thought it was ridiculous Optimus kind of just let Bumblebee go and lamented that Bumblebee "would die in vain if they don't accomplish their mission". I don't know, seemed out of character for the semi-truck laden leader.

Frenzy, disguised as a mobile phone, secretly accompanies the group to the Hoover Dam and releases Megatron. Locating the AllSpark, Frenzy sends an alert to the other Decepticons, allowing them to mobilize and hone in on Hoover Dam's position. Sam convinces the Sector 7 agents to release Bumblebee so that he can get the AllSpark to Optimus Prime. Frenzy's virus has shut down government communications, but a pair of hackers manage to establish a signal to the Air Force. The Autobot-human convoy goes to Mission City, Nevada to obtain a radio that will guide the Air Force and secure an extraction for the AllSpark as the Decepticons forces attack the convoy. During the ensuing battle, Brawl, Bonecrusher, Frenzy, Jazz, and Blackout are all killed, and after a harrowing one-on-one battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron, the be-all, end-all toy battle all us nerds and neckbeards have been dying to see... which to be honest, did not disappoint, Sam manages to ram the AllSpark into Megatron's chest, killing him and destroying the AllSpark all at the same time. Optimus takes a fragment of the AllSpark from Megatron's corpse but realizes that with its destruction, their home world Cybertron cannot be restored. The U.S. government decommissions Sector 7 and dumps the corpses of the defeated Decepticons into the Laurentian Abyss. Sam and Mikaela begin a relationship, and Optimus sends a signal to other surviving Autobots directing them to Earth... hopefully just Autobots right? No way Decepticons can intercept that message and make their way to Earth right? Wink wink.

"Kid I don't want to alarm you but you have that every-dad-ever
character actor standing right behind you."
"Wow... thanks Uncle-Bobby-B-who-everyone-who-ever-watches
this-movie-wil-simply-call Bernie Mac."

That was the first Transformers movie, from 2007. I remember seeing it that Fourth of July before heading to fireworks in my TOWN OF ORIGIN, but I was and still am all these sixteen years later rather pleased when watching this movie. You'd think because it was Michael Bay that'd be a two-hundred million dollar popcorn fart, and in many ways it looks like it, but it's still mostly a coherent, fun, and action-packed toy movie. Granted, Michael Bay himself didn't want to direct the movie initially as he thought it was nothing more than a "big, dumb, toy movie"... but what hooked him was his love for cars and military hardware. That's why we get some pretty cool alternate forms for the Transformers in this one. Instead of Bumblebee being his trademark Volkswagen Beetle, he gets turned into a kick-ass (albeit beat-up in the movie) mid 70s Camaro, and then later the 2007-08 Camaro concept car. Optimus Prime went from the flat-nosed Freightliner to the Peterbilt 379 with the long nose and bitchin' flame job. You can tell how Bay's love of cars really influenced the design of the movie.

While we all know the Transformers steal the show (you know they kind of have to, it's their movie)... the human characters, I hate to say it, are hit or miss. MOSTLY hit, I will say that. Which we can all agree is surprising for a Bay movie. Trust me, though; in the sequels that ratio of hit or miss is going to drastically swing the other way. Shia LaBeouf isn't as goofy as he'd come off in the sequels or in other movies (*cough* Indiana Jones *cough*). Megan Fox kind of just... floats around like Megan Fox would, saying Megan Fox dialogue in a Megan Fox way. Jon Voight is a badass as the Secretary of Defense John Keller. Josh Duhamel is a quippy action-hero-y kind of performance for his team of U.S. Army Rangers out of Qatar, especially with Tyrese Gibson being his sidekick... then there's John Turturro as Sector 7's Seymour Simmons, who initially arrests Sam and Mikaela but then joins them and the Autobots in the fight against the Decepticons. He overacts the hell out of this role, but I'll be lying if I said I didn't eat it up every time he was on screen. The comedy stylings of Rachael Taylor and Anthony Anderson also somehow steal the show. This movie just... somehow has a brilliant cast of supporting characters who all feed well off each other, all play an important role, and all really make great quips and keep the flow of dialogue and story going. It's really shocking how fluid they seem. Especially in a movie about sentient transforming cars and trucks that blow shit, and each other, up.

"Excuse me, which set are you guys looking for? The Hurt
Locker or Thirteen Hours?" "Uhh... Transformers?"

Speaking of the Transformers, the effects are pretty great. Knowing how much work went into animating and rendering each and every frame, with each and every piece of each and every Transformers is something not to be taken lightly. The documentaries attached to the two-disc DVD from way back when show the amount of work and time went into animating the Autobots and Decepticons. They had actual vehicles brought in, digitally scanned and rendered, and then they had to figure out which piece of which Transformer could fit where in the vehicle modes. Like "Ok an arm, that can fit here. Their leg can twist and bend, but unfold here." Radical stuff, and I find it fascinating how they did it.

However, I will say being a Bay movie means there is a lot of stuff kind of just... "glanced over" in the plot. As I opened with, Michael Bay is a guy who loves to play fast and loose with his narratives, just again, look at Armageddon. I want to review that big, sweaty turd sometime... but back to this movie... during the Freeway chase, Decepticons Bonecrusher and Barricade together are in pursuit of the Autobots. Bonecrusher pulls ahead to battle Prime, tearing up the roadway by dispatching hapless motorists. Barricade, however, disappears and does not reappear nor is he mentioned again for the rest of the film. Where did he go? Did he stop off for a burger and fries? Did he have to fake pulling over for roadside assistance during the freeway battle? What about when Frenzy has his body restored by the AllSpark by merely coming into close proximity of it while it's in its hangar at the dam. The cube is also present when Bumblebee's legs get mangled so why doesn't it magically regenerate him the same way? Just a couple of glaring omissions that stick out in my mind... but in typical Michael Bay fashion he does a real good job of distracting you with EXPLOSIONS! BOOMS! UTTER CHAOS! What about when Ironhide mistakes Sam's dog Mojo for a rodent even though right before this, Optimus Prime had explained that they searched the World Wide Web and therefore, they should know what a chihuahua is? WHO CARES?! LOOK AT US BLOW SHIT UP FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT! KA-BOOOM!!!!

"I am Ironhide! I have two big cannons that are about as
effective as BB guns, but I'm going to use them, dammit!"

All in all, to sum up; whatever stock phrase I usually use, Transformers is a pretty solid first-entry in the now very-high grossing Transformers movie franchise. The action keeps you paying attention, the story actually flows rather well (despite the above plot holes) and the characters are interesting! Something, again, you'd thought you wouldn't get in a Transformers movie, and again, considering what we get in the sequels, this movie is a total blessing. It's still the grittiest, smartest, and most down-to-Earth Transformers movie out there, and I give it a rewatch every now and then. Not even as part of a series rewatch, I'll just pop this one in and then leave it at that... and again, considering what we get in the sequels which I am definitely going to share with you in the coming weeks, you'll be able to see why this one still stands tall above the rest that follow. Give Transformers a try! It'll tickle an nostalgic 80's bone you didn't think you had and at the very least, in my opinion, entertain the heck out of you!

Shout out to "Uncle Bobby B"... my favorite character, Bernie Mac. (1957-2008).

The OTHER Terminator Movies: A Review of "Terminator: Dark Fate"

"Ok Arnold, I shot fifty-two with my Steam workshop add-ons. How many did you shoot?"
"One... I am running stock."

Happy Friday, hope everyone had a fantastic Fourth of July. I spent mine drinking beer in a pool! I already experienced fireworks that prior Saturday evening so I was set, very relaxing. You should get a pool if you ever have a chance. Forget your mortgage and student loan payments, just invest in a nice pool. It'll flip your life around one-eighty in no time, and you'll feel more fulfilled then you would paying off those pesky loans. Guaranteed.

"So... even though we're technically the same
person, should I call you 'boss'?"
"No, simply 'your royal highness' will do."

Since reviewing the final Indiana Jones film that came out, I returned and finished the Terminator series with the one I hadn't quite seen yet to close out this series of reviews. We've been able to knock out the entirety of the Terminator movies this year... with James Camer-thon leading into this follow up series, and it all comes down to this. We've seen some stellar sci-fi masterpieces, a couple so-so, part good-part bad movies, and when we last left off we had a real crap-fest on our hands with Terminator Genisys. Now, James Cameron himself, right smack-dab in the middle of directing Avatar: The Way of Water, offered to produce and develop the story of the next "attempt at a new trilogy" Terminator reboot. That's right... as Rafiki once said, "The king has returned". Would this new Terminator film finally return us to form? Would we finally get the true "James Cameron-esque" sequel we've been wanting since Terminator 2: Judgment Day?

Ehhhhhh....... I'll say this. It tried. It has some really fascinating new takes for the franchise (finally), but it still fell victim to the same tropes the not-so-good sequels fell victim to. Let's dissect this mish-mash sequel and figure out what works and doesn't! This is Terminator: Dark Fate, a movie that teaches us experimenting with new ideas is ok as long as you also dial it back and play it safe with aging action stars the Gen X'ers can get behind.

This is how your kids' friends roll up to your door
asking if they can come in and play.

The movie starts off with a "bang" (literally) in1998, three years after destroying Cyberdyne Systems. We see Sarah (digitally de-aged Linda Hamilton) and John Connor (digitally resurrected Edward Furlong... wait, wait he's not dead? Huh, could've fooled me) have retired to Livingston, Guatemala. They are suddenly ambushed by a T-800 Terminator (Brett Azar, with Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1991 likeness digitally pasted over him), one of several sent back through time by Skynet, which kills John despite Sarah's attempts to stop it.

RIGHT OFF THE BAT... This movie slaps you in the nuts. Or kicks you right in the ovaries, if you're female. Equality, pal. Uhh... so this movie means to tell us that every single solitary T-800 and T-1000 sent back in time having a movie-length back-and-forth with our heroes fails... but this one that just happens to stroll up to John in GUATEMALA somehow just smuggles a shotgun into a tiki bar and blows his body apart?! and it SUCCEEDS and JOHN CONNOR DIES?! WITHIN THE FIRST FIVE FUCKING MINUTES?!?! HOLY DOG SHIT, this movie is asking us to immediately be okay and cope with A LOT OF STUFF. James Cameron thought his bookend-ending for T2 must've been weeeeeeeak some twenty-eight years on. Like... John Connor's dead. He's been the target the last five movies, and in JC's first foray back into Terminator in almost thirty years, he just mercs John Connor. That takes some serious balls, dude. The rest of this movie better be SPECTACULAR.

Mackenzie Davis doing her best impression of Doom guy.

In 2020, an advanced Terminator, the Rev-9 (Gabriel Luna), is sent back in time to Mexico City to murder Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), while a cybernetically enhanced soldier, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), is sent from 2042 to protect her. The Rev-9, disguised as Dani's father (Enrique Arce), infiltrates the automobile assembly plant where Dani and her brother Diego (Diego Boneta) work, but is thwarted by Grace, who escapes with the siblings. The Rev-9, using its ability to split into its cybernetic endoskeleton and shape-shifting liquid metal exterior... which I'm not going to lie, I was surprised this idea wasn't done already. However, it's done here and it is pretty sweet. It pursues them, killing Diego and cornering Grace and Dani. However, Sarah Connor (properly aged Linda Hamilton) arrives and temporarily disables both forms of the entity using military-grade weaponry. How does Sarah Connor get her hands on military grade weaponry? Look, we don't ask that question. We certainly haven't in the past, and we don't now.

Dani, Grace, and Sarah retreat to a motel. Sarah reveals that she found them because in the years since John's death she has received encrypted messages detailing the locations of arriving Terminators, each ending with "For John", allowing her to destroy them before they become threats. Again, another pretty radical idea. That story idea alone could've been a worthy sequel. Grace notes that Skynet and John do not exist in her future, meaning Sarah succeeded in destroying the former after Cyberdyne went defunct. However, humanity's future is threatened by another AI called Legion, originally developed for cyberwarfare, which was built in Skynet's place... see this is fascinating, while being the Genisys style "new software in a new timeline" which is lazy, this is "a replacement software in the same timeline". It again goes the Terminator 3 route, further explaining/defining that "Judgment Day is inevitable". So even though it seems lazier, it actually satisfies me more than the whole "timeline reboot" malarkey. Anywho, when Legion became a threat to humans, an attempt was made to neutralize it with nuclear weapons, resulting in a nuclear holocaust and the AI creating a global network of machines to terminate the human survivors, who organized a resistance movement to counter Legion's onslaughts, and Dani's destiny is linked to their war against it.

"Listen you old decrepit bitch, I say where we go,
I say when we go, and I pick the ice cream parlors we
eat at! You got it?"

Grace traces the source of Sarah's messages to Laredo, Texas. Barely evading the Rev-9 and the authorities while crossing the Mexico–United States border, they arrive at their source, where they discover the same T-800 (a properly aged Arnold Schwarzenegger) that had killed John. Having fulfilled his mission and with Skynet no longer existing, the T-800 was left aimless. Over time and through his adaptability, he became self-aware, learned from humanity, and developed a conscience, taking the name "Carl" and adopting a human family. Again, another fascinating idea. Except one nerd flaw which might be nerd-explainable; In a T2 scene in the garage, that T-800 reveals that Skynet units are sent out into the battlefield with their CPUs set to "read only", to prevent this. However, then in a director's cut deleted scene, John and Sarah reset the T-800's switch to read/write so it can start learning and adapt more to humanity. This T-800 kind of just developed a conscience after killing John... I don't know, by itself I guess. I don't know, just a minor grievance I thought about.

Back to the movie: After learning how his actions affected Sarah and being able to detect the location of temporal displacements, Carl began to forewarn her of them to give her a purpose to make amends. Carl offers to join them against the Rev-9 and they prepare to destroy it, with Sarah begrudgingly agreeing to work together for Dani's sake. Anticipating the Rev-9's arrival, Carl bids his family farewell and tells them to escape. The group seek out a military-grade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generator from an acquaintance of Sarah's. Ha, I love it. The acquaintances of Sarah always have some kind of access to military hardware, but this guy just has access to a full-blown EMP weapon. You know the BIG-BAD weapon from GoldenEye? Have we talked about any of the Bond movies yet? No?! Well anyway... I find it laughable this guy has access to a full-blown EMP device. The Rev-9 catches up with them, forcing them to steal a plane to escape, though the EMP generators are destroyed in the resulting shootout. During the flight, Grace reveals that Dani will become the future founding commander of the resistance before the Rev-9 boards their airplane and temporarily subdues Carl, forcing Grace, Sarah, and Dani to parachute from the plane into a river near a hydroelectric plant, with Carl and the Rev-9 following close behind.

"Talk about 'split personality disorder', am I right?"
"Grace, now is not the time!"
"Sorry I was programmed for whining, not for humor."

Trapped, the group makes their stand inside the plant. In the ensuing battle, Carl and Grace force the Rev-9 into a spinning turbine, causing an explosion that critically damages the two Terminators and Grace. The severely damaged Rev-9 endoskeleton incapacitates Sarah, forcing Dani to confront it herself. A dying Grace tells Dani to use her power source to destroy it. Dani tries to fight the Rev-9 but is quickly overpowered. Carl reactivates himself and restrains the Rev-9, allowing Dani to stab it with Grace's power source. He then drags himself and the Rev-9 over a ledge before the power core explodes, destroying them both... just after uttering "For John" to Sarah, one last time. We then fade to sometime later, where Dani and Sarah watch a young Grace at a playground with her family, the former determined to avert Grace's death and Legion's rise, before driving off to prepare... and thus we have yet another "no fate but what we make for ourselves" cliffhanger ending before end credits.

So what did I think of Terminator: Dark Fate? Well... I think it continues the trend of playing safe very well, with bringing back Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their respective franchise roles. Unlike other franchise reboots that bring back the old timers in supporting roles these days, Arnold does a good job of not seeming tired or worn out by playing the same role. He's appropriately aged and acts as one would expect his self-aware T-800 now with a conscience should act. Linda Hamilton killed it in her comeback as Sarah Connor. This is the first time we've seen her back since Terminator 2, though she had a brief voice cameo in Salvation on John's tape recorder, and I didn't think she could get more badass than she did in Terminator 2... but this is like that minus the mental illness/trauma of fighting the events in The Terminator. I thought it was great to see her back.

"It's ok, Sarah. John will be back."
"No he won't, you literally killed him."
"Never underestimate the power of the Hollywood
reboot, Sarah. He'll be baaahhhck."

The rest of the characters did their jobs and/or seemed kind of generic. The newcomer that surprised me the most was Gabriel Luna as the Rev-9. He was a threatening and terrifying villain, on par with Robert Patrick's T-1000, and even had similarly delivered lines and interactions with human bystanders. I thought he was very well done. Now, Grace... on the other hand... I'm not sure what kind of performance Mackenzie Davis was going for, but she always seemed pouty, whiny, and on the verge of crying. Every sentence delivery just seemed like the director told her she couldn't eat ice cream at catering and she just responds like "What?" "Huh?" "Are you serious?" "You're not my dad"; shit like that. As for Natalia Reyes' character Dani Ramos? Ehhhhh... I hate to be "that guy", like I really do, but she was just... so forgettable to me. I guess she's the new John Connor now, which is fine! I have zero qualms about that, more power to her. It must just be my John Connor-conditioning of watching the original movies so many times for so long that has like, programmed me to resist any change of anybody other than the John from being the savior of humanity. Dani Ramos is an interesting enough icon, I suppose, I would hope another sequel would flesh her character out more and turn her into the T2 Sarah we know she can be.

... except we aren't getting a sequel to this follow-up either. Terminator: Dark Fate didn't satisfy anybody like Cameron and director Tim Miller thought it would. Even I thought it was a surefire hit prior to release because of everyone from Terminator and T2's involvement being back. Instead of "HOORAY!" we got a lukewarm "Eh". This movie was like a dud firecracker. You light the fuse, run back, plug your ears but gaze in anticipation, and then... nothing. Except maybe a dull pop. Cameron blamed it on himself inviting Arnold back, as then it made it "Your granddad's Terminator movie". I personally enjoyed it, a lot more than I enjoyed the root canal that was Terminator Genisys. Still, it's sad to see I am a member of a minute crowd. I thought it was serviceable, I thought it's new ideas were fascinating enough, and while I did find some moments dumb... like still clinging to the "no fate but what we make" shtick, STILL having prayer for the future even though we've been told countless times that Judgment Day is always coming no matter what... finding the new lead forgettable, and Mackenzie Davis to be a colossal dud, I still can rewatch this one. I recommend it, but I guess I'm like the only one, lol. 

A Review of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"

"Hello, I am Indiana Jones. I have an AARP membership, calcium deposits, bone spurs, metal screws and plates in all
my major joints and limbs... and I'm pre-diagnosed for Alzheimer's disease! Gear up for my next whirlwind adventure!"
...
"Hello, I am Indiana Jones--"

Happy Saturday, and happy July 2023. Yes, I know: "This isn't a Terminator: Dark Fate review!" No, it is not. I spent all week re-watching the Indiana Jones movies, the four that were already out, so I could gear up for yesterday's debut screening of the freshest title in the franchise. I ran out of time to watch Terminator: Dark Fate for the first time so I could review it. Don't worry... it is on my slate!

"Wait a minute, what do you mean 'NASA'?
What is that? What does that do?!"

I was very much looking forward to today's review. I've been an Indiana Jones fan since I was a pre-teen. Raiders of the Lost Ark is still one of my favorite movies of all time. I can quote big chunks of it, I know the story inside and out, I can verbally detail every action beat that occurs in the movie; in fact if a total stranger put a gun to my head and said "Hey recite me the entire plot synopsis of Raiders of the Lost Ark or I'll blow your goddamn brains out", I'd get out alive, easily. THAT is how much I love that movie. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is one I love, but for different reasons. I obviously warn people that it's nothing like Raiders and while it is an action-adventure movie, it can be a little uncomfortable for people who are expecting it to be "more like Raiders". Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is a top-notch sequel and worthy of being considered on-par with Raiders, easily... and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a worthy sequel in it's own right, in my opinion. Yes it has flaws and I have some issues with the movie, but all in all, I stand by it and still argue it doesn't get as much love as it deserves.

...and that brings us to today! Taking the place of the most recent movie I've reviewed on my blog; this is my review of 2023's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny! I just am writing this now on Friday night (though I opened with "Happy Saturday"; timing, pal!) after having just come back from the viewing. I have... mixed first-time impressions of the movie. While I thought I should wait to watch it again before reviewing it, I couldn't wait. Harrison Ford's final ride, and perhaps Indiana Jones' final ride as well! I mean what more could I ask for as a big Indy fan?! Let's get the plot synopsis out of the way, and we'll discuss what I think afterwards:

"Oh man, today was a bad day to quit taking my
arthritis meds!"

As with many movies I review while they're in theaters, Spoiler material is beyond this point. Stop and get off the ride if you plan to see it. Otherwise, read on!

In 1944, during the Allied liberation of Europe in World War II, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), a fellow archaeologist from Oxford, are captured by Nazis while attempting to retrieve the Lance of Longinus. Meanwhile, astrophysicist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) informs his superiors that while the Lance in their possession is a fake, he has found half of Archimedes's Dial, which was invented by the Syracusan mathematician Archimedes and is capable of locating fissures in time. Jones escapes and boards a train full of looted antiquities, where he rescues Shaw. After determining the spear is a fake and acquiring the Dial, he and Shaw jump from the train before it derails on a bridge destroyed by Allied bombers.

In 1969, Jones is separated from his wife Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) after their son Mutt (Shia LaBeouf if you recall... don't get your hopes up; he is not in this movie) died during the Vietnam War, and is being pushed into retirement at Hunter College. He is approached at a bar by Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Basil's daughter and Jones's godchild, who is herself an archeology student and treasure hunter. Jones informs her that the Dial was split into two pieces and that her now-deceased father was driven to near-insanity while trying to unlock its secrets. Jones had promised Basil he would destroy the Dial, but he had not fulfilled his promise. They retrieve the first piece of the Dial from the college storeroom, where they are attacked by henchmen sent by Voller, who now works for NASA under a new identity and is assisted by a CIA group led by Agent Mason (Shaunette Renée Wilson). Knowing Voller's men are after her, Helena escapes with the Dial, revealing her true intention to sell it at a black market auction. Jones flees into a parade celebrating the Apollo 11 astronauts before escaping through the New York City Subway and seeking aid from his old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), now an immigrant cab driver.

"I look like Heinrich Himmler and that Major
Toht from Raiders all rolled into one... because,
uh, they too looked identical."

Jones travels to Tangier and prevents Helena from selling the first part of the Dial at an auction. Voller and his men arrive and steal the Dial, forcing Jones, Helena, and her sidekick Teddy Kumar (Ethann Isidore) to pursue them in an auto rickshaw. A gangster named Rahim (Alaa Safi), who was previously engaged to Helena, also joins the fray but is halted when his car gets stuck in a narrow alley. Voller is apprehended by Mason, who has been sent to make Voller disappear after the government disavowed him. Instead, Voller and his men kill Mason and steal her helicopter. Jones, Helena, and Teddy follow Voller to Greece, where they enlist the aid of Jones's deep-sea diver friend Renaldo (Antonio "I'm Just Glad to Be Here" Banderas) to retrieve a tablet from the Aegean Sea inscribed with instructions to the second part of the Dial. Although they obtain the tablet, Voller kills Renaldo (thanks for coming, Puss in Boots), and follows Jones's group to Sicily, where they find the second and final piece of the Dial at Archimedes's grave. Voller captures Jones, reassembles the Dial, and reveals his plan to time travel back to 1939 and kill Adolf Hitler in the hopes a better leader will rise and lead Germany to victory in the war. I wasn't sure about this part? I wasn't sure if Voller was just hoping for a new leader, or for the chance to make himself the leader? Anywho, Helena sneaks aboard Voller's plane before it takes off while Teddy pursues them in another plane where he is unknowingly accompanied by its sleeping pilot.

However, Voller fails to take continental drift into consideration, and the fissure in time instead leads them to 212 BC during the Siege of Syracuse. Jones and Helena parachute from the plane as it is shot down by projectiles fired by the warring armies below. Voller and his men die in the ensuing plane crash. Gravely injured, Jones begs Helena to leave him behind in the past, allowing him to become a part of ancient history, but Helena refuses, fearing the possibility of a catastrophic time paradox. Archimedes himself (Nasser Memarzia) arrives, having emerged from his workshop to investigate Voller's crashed plane. More thoughts on this later, ha. Archimedes returns the version of the Dial they brought from the future before Helena knocks Jones out and returns him to 1969 aboard Teddy's plane.

"No godfather Indy, these men are not Nazis.
Everybody knows swastikas are just reversed
Hindi peace symbols."

The movie ends when Jones awakens in his apartment, reuniting with Helena, Teddy, Sallah, and his grandchildren, as well as Marion, who reconciles with Jones. As the others leave for some ice cream, Jones and Marion reminisce about a past conversation before passionately kissing. The movie pans up the side of a building before finding Jones' infamous fedora hanging on a clothesline. As an eye-lid fade out occurs on the hat, signaling Jones' finale, he reaches out and snatches it from the clothesline... and the infamous John Williams "Raiders March" plays over the end credits of Indy's final adventure.

So what did I think of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny? First off, it is a worthy entry in the franchise. It was definitely much more grounded than previous entries, at least up until a certain point. I enjoyed a lot of the action bits, and there were some definite Indiana Jones-esque qualities to them. I did like a lot of the new characters: Voller was an interesting enough bad guy, NASA-hired former Nazi who worked on the Moon landing now a neo-Nazi extremist looking to undo the Reich and rewrite history as he sees fit. Though, I didn't get how he gets clobbered from a train sign at high-speed and somehow survived into 1969. If someone here knows the answer, please tell me in the comments. Phoebe Waller-Bridge did a great job as Helena. I did not expect her character to operate like she did, and it was a joy to see a twist like her being a criminal auctioneer of stolen antiquities, something her godfather Jones would detest, and does in the movie.

I did enjoy watching Harrison Ford leap from one moving car to another even at the ripe old age of seventy-nine/eighty. Was it a stunt double? Oh most likely, but Harrison Ford is used to doing all of his own stunts even to the point of Star Wars: The Force Awakens so I wouldn't have put it past them to let his wrinkly-ass try his hand some other stunts! The score was top notch as well, Williams brought it his all once again. Whimsical action-beaty music for the chases, calming strings for endearing moments; and of course, that powerhouse Raiders March that plays over every Indy movie's ending. Loved it.

Indy's kind of looking at someone here like grouchy old men
do when they hear young people say "I don't know how to
drive stick".

I thought bringing aliens/interdimensional beings into the Indy mythos in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a tad ludicrous at the time, and I didn't think it could really be topped in terms of craziness. However, this movie does seem to top it with the introduction of time travel. Yep, time travel. You read it in the synopsis above. The big endgame in this story is the neo-Nazi's desire to time-travel to 1939 and kill Adolf Hitler. Except, like I mentioned, they miscalculate like a motherfucker and end up in 212 B.C. during the Siege of Syracuse. This is a movie that showcases Nazi warplanes getting shot, or I guess "pulled" down by Roman warship harpoons. Absolute madness, and it's something you're either going to love or hate... but the big thing you're either going to love or hate, is Indy's full-on conversation with Archimedes the scientist. That's right, Indiana Jones has a full one-on-one with the legendary Syracuse Scientist himself. The whole sequence in Syracuse is where I felt the movie can get a little "love/hate" with the audiences. Like people are either going to be like "Yes this is very Indiana Jones-esque" or "This is the biggest load of shit I've ever seen". Kind of like the aliens ending, eh? Me personally... I thought it was a tad silly, but at the same time I mean I put myself in the heads of the writers and was like 'I mean where else could they have gone with it?' or 'how else could they have made it worthwhile?'.

I also need to touch upon the mysterious demise of Mutt Williams, Shia LaBeouf's character from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's said in this movie, when Helena asks Jones what he would change in the past if he could time travel, that Jones picks preventing his son from enlisting to fight in Vietnam, and when asked how he would prevent him, Jones says he would "tell him that he'll die", that "his mom wouldn't be able to get over her grief", and that it "would lead to the end of her marriage". Now, Mutt if I had to guess was maybe eighteen years old in 1957 during the vents of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so by Vietnam War time he'd be pushing thirty I would imagine. At least by the estimate of the U.S.'s involvement. It struck me as a bit "odd" that a rebellious greaser like Mutt would rebel harder in his late 20s by agreeing to enlist and fight in Vietnam against his parents' desires. I thought it was a weird way for the filmmakers to look at us and go "Okay fine, okay, see? Shia's not in this one. Relax, we killed him, okay? Just relax." Seemed hasty, tacked on, and I'm not sure if it sits well with me or not.

"Holy smokes, what is this thing?"
"It is a copy of Mein Kampf, her Voller."
"What a kampf it must've been to secure this."
"Well said, her Voller."

On top of that, I must say one of the weaker characters in the movie is Indy himself. I'm a big Indy fan, as I mentioned, and there's certain tropes you look forward to when you watch an Indiana Jones movie. Indy kicks some ass, Indy does some stunts, Indy fights a big guy, and eventually, Indy witnesses the bad guys' downfall, whether executing it himself or watching it happen from afar. This one ticked... two of those? Ha. Indy doesn't really kick some ass, he kind of just gets tossed around and witnesses the fist-fighting from across the room. He does some stunts... but not really to the wow factor of his previous adventures. There is a big guy in the movie, but Indy and he never really cross paths maybe except once or twice, and the rest of the time he just lumbers around before Teddy drowns him. Yep, the little kid does him in. Not to mention the bad guys' fate? It's really on-par with Raiders in both the best and worst ways; Indy's presence in the film is pretty much non-essential, just like Raiders. The Nazis end up failing through their own folly anyway, and Indy doesn't really do them in... they sort of die by the Romans' hands and in a fiery plane crash. So take all that as you will.

All in all, I did enjoy Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I'm not sure where it fits yet in my ranking. It's definitely nowhere near the caliber of Raiders or Crusade, it's somewhere around Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull in the tier just underneath those. I'm not sure how'd I'd rank them, but I will say this one has some great action beats, lovable characters, charming story elements, a kick-ass opening sequence, and does bring a satisfying conclusive curtain down on the franchise by the end. It does have it's usual bits that'll divide people, as I mentioned, but ultimately, I think it was very worthwhile, and I'd argue worth the delays and wait. Go check it out in theaters while you can!

Catch up on my complete Indiana Jones reviews too!

Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull