He'll Be Back: Terminator 3 Book Reviews

A few weeks ago, I posted a review of three books that were published under the Terminator Salvation title, books that I read as a way satiating my need for new Terminator stuff. In the time since then, I was itching for more stories about bloodthirsty, belligerent 'bots from the future, so I decided to pick up copies of two books that were released under the Terminator 3 title: Terminator Dreams and Terminator Hunt, both by Aaron Allston. Since both the Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation books are set in similar narrative timelines--both feature Kate Brewster as a primary character, and both place Judgment Day in 2003--it was interesting to compare the differences and similarities between how both sets of books view the future war with Skynet. Read on for my review of Allston's books and how they relate to the Terminator Salvation books.

Both Terminator Dreams and Terminator Hunt take place in 2029, after John Connor and his team of Resistance fighters sent Kyle Reese and two Terminator units, a T-800 and T-850, back to the past to protect John and his mother Sarah before Judgment Day. While Connor and his wife Kate play major roles in both books, each book has its own main character. In Terminator Dreams, the main character is Daniel Avila, a middle-aged, amnesic Resistance fighter who discovers that he has a Billy Pilgrim-esque ability to communicate with his younger self in the past, when he was one of the head programmers who worked on Skynet for Cyber Research Systems (CRS) in the years immediately leading up to Judgment Day. In Terminator Hunt, the main character is Paul Keeley, another Resistance fighter who is rescued from a research facility built by Skynet to train a T-X unit for a mission that could mean the end of both John Connor and the Resistance.

Terminator Dreams takes a very unique approach to the time travel stories that are common to the Terminator franchise. Because Daniel can't physically travel to the past, the narrative shifts back and forth between 2003 and 2029, alternating between how Connor and his team plan to use the older Daniel's ability to aid the Resistance and how the young Daniel's life is slowly torn apart as he realizes that his strange dreams are warnings from the future that his life's work will condemn the human race to near extinction. Connor's discussions with his senior staff are particularly intriguing, since this is the first Terminator story I've read where Connor has already told his subordinates about his true relationship to Kyle Reese and Skynet and how this information has become part of the Resistance's strategy now that Skynet is capable of time travel.

For as different as the time travel story is in Terminator Dreams in comparison to other Terminator time travel stories, it still has a bittersweet poignancy to it that bears some similarity to the story of Kyle and Sarah in the first Terminator movie. While this book doesn't detail how Miles Dyson's work at Cyberdyne was transferred to CRS, it does feature a new pre-Judgment Day Terminator model nicknamed Scowl. Scowl is a prototype of the successor model to the tank-like T-1 units seen in Terminator 3; it is shaped like the T-1, except that it is small enough to fit inside of a van and it has two arms in place of two .50-caliber miniguns.

The T-1 Series

Terminator Hunt takes place shortly after Terminator Dreams, and it involves Skynet's experiments with humans as part of its efforts to build better infiltrators--particularly T-X units. Paul's situation in Terminator Dreams is somewhat similar to Marcus Wright's in Terminator Salvation, in that he has become an outcast of sorts because of how he was compromised by Skynet. This story also bears some similarities to--as well as some intriguing divergences from--the human test subjects in the Terminator Salvation: Trial By Fire book. Terminator Hunt mostly follows Paul's path back to being a trusted member of the Resistance as he uses the knowledge he gained while under Skynet’s control to help Connor and his team with their latest mission, but it also sheds more light on the T-X series of Terminator and its place in the future war.

The T-1000 series is mentioned a few times throughout Terminator Hunt, but it never makes an appearance. Then again, given how obviously lethal the T-1000 and T-X series are and how few Resistance soldiers survive close encounters with them, Allston portrays the soldiers as regarding these models with an almost larger-than-life fear and talking about them in hushed tones. Terminator Hunt includes the character of Glitch, a T-850 unit that was reprogrammed by the Resistance. While Glitch doesn't utter any catch phrase lines such as "Hasta la vista, baby" during the course of the book, his inclusion in the narrative provides an interesting--and sometimes humorous--example of how Resistance teams utilize and interact with reprogrammed Terminator in the field. T-600s also make cameo appearances in this book, as do Terminators that Allston refers to as "assault robots". The assault robots somewhat match the description of the T-900 units from Atari's Terminator 3 games, but I could see why Allston would not be allowed to name them as such due to copyright restrictions.

T-900 Conceptual Art

Allston is a very talented writer and even though his style of writing is lighter and breezier than the styles that Timothy Zahn and Greg Cox used in their Terminator Salvation books, his stories feature fleshed-out characters, compelling and well-paced plots, and detailed examinations of the ruined world that serves as the backdrop for humanity's fight for survival. One of the most noteworthy features of Allston's books is that he provides the reader with detailed glimpses into the thought processes of Terminator units and Skynet itself. Allston clearly knows how computers work, and he effectively applies that knowledge to his dramatic portrayals of machines that are self-aware and capable of high levels of cognition but are still machines just the same. In Terminator Dreams, it's revealed that Skynet's plan against humanity did not arise from a split-second decision but was orchestrated over a much longer period of time. Reading how Skynet carefully analyzes human behavior, predicting how humans respond to particular stimulus it provides and how it uses this information to plan future actions, answers quite a few questions about how Skynet views the world around it and what kind of enemy humanity is fighting against after Judgment Day.

The timeline present in the Terminator 3 books is largely compatible with the timeline in the Terminator Salvation books. The only two notable inconsistencies are that the Terminator 3 books make no mention of a military hierarchy commanding the Resistance before Connor's rise to power, and the ages of Connor and Kate's children in the books contradict the year of Kate's first pregnancy in the Terminator Salvation timeline. (Oddly, even though Allston's books mention that Connor and Kate have three children, only one--Kyla, a 17-year-old expert sniper--appears in the books.) Blair Williams and Barnes, two of Connor's most trusted allies in the Terminator Salvation timeline, are not present in Allston's books. Then again, given how brutal and drawn out the conflict is with Skynet, it's not unreasonable to assume that Connor's closet friends and subordinates from one year would be dead by the next.

The T-X Endoskeleton

In spite of these differences, I would encourage Terminator fans to read these books according to their narrative chronologies, reading Cox and Zahn's books first and the Allston's. I make this recommendation because given how disorganized the Terminator franchise is in terms of who owns the rights to which characters and plots, these five books represent the closest thing to a (mostly) consistent, ongoing story of the future war that emphasizes how the war has changed from 2018 to 2029. Such a continuity makes it easier for fans to appreciate just how grueling this post-nuclear, three-decade-long conflict can be, as opposed to just seeing it in brief flashbacks. For example, the Resistance still has some air fighting capabilities in 2018, with the usage of carefully maintained helicopters and Warthog jets. By 2029, the Resistance has lost almost all of its air craft, and has begun to transition from refurbishing ancient military vehicles and weapons to producing new weapons of their own and seizing Skynet's plasma-based weaponry. Overall, the Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation books give the future war an extra sense of history and dramatic depth, something that none of the other Terminator movies, TV shows, books and comics have been able to do.

In closing, I highly recommend Aaron Allston's Terminator 3 books, both of which are great additions to the reading list of any Terminator fan. It should also be noted that I picked up hardback editions of both books through Amazon at a great price--less than $10 per book, not including shipping and handling costs--so go get your copies now while supplies last.

Trailer Thursday!

So once again we find ourselves at another trailer Thursday. This week we're featuring another fan made trailer. This one a Batman 3 trailer that, frankly, looks freaking awesome! For your viewing enjoyment we present "The Batman Complex".

Super Deformed Godzilla and His Chibi Kaiju Buddies

Of the many things that I don't understand about Japanese pop culture, the appeal of super deformed (or "chibi") merchandise baffles me more than most. The way I see it, if I'm going to spend some money on a miniature replica of a character design that I admire, I want it to be as scale accurate as possible. Thus, to distort well-designed monsters, robots and superheroes by giving them tiny, squat bodies, stubby limbs and oversized heads makes absolutely no sense. I can't just blame the Japanese for this, though. Given the popularity of bobblehead dolls here in the U.S., dolls that would qualify as being super deformed, we're just as much to blame for the popularity of ill-scaled merchandise.

However, I will make exceptions in cases where no other merchandise for a particular character is available. Case in point: Godzilla during the mid-80s. During that time, I was itching to get my hands on a replica of Japan's King of the Monsters but no versions of him were anywhere to be found here in the states. The last one I had seen was a jumbo Godzilla action figure that was part of the Shogun Warriors toy line, which ended in 1980.

Like many small towns across the country, the town I was living in at the time had its own annual festival. Like most annual festivals in small towns, it brought in a large number of vendors who sold merchandise of varying degrees of quality. So, I'm sure you can imagine how my eyes almost popped out of my head when one of the vendors was peddling tiny Godzillas, like the one pictured above. Read on for more details and pictures of the pint-sized kaiju that somehow showed up in my middle-of-nowhere town as nameless knockoffs.

From what I can recall, the display box that contained the tiny Godzillas didn't even have the name "Godzilla" on it but I could tell who the little green guy really was. Better still was that these tiny Godzillas were also being sold with five other kaiju from Toho Studios:

Anguirus

Gigan

King Caesar

King Kong (Toho Studios Version)

Mechagodzilla

Please note that these pictures aren't completely accurate. Mechagodzilla was originally made out of brown plastic with white eyes, so I painted him silver with red eyes to make him more movie accurate. Also note that this is the only example of action figure customization you will ever see from my customization- and model-kit-assembly-impaired hands.

Sure, they were cheap toys for $1 per figure and were barely over an inch in height, but I couldn't get my hands on them fast enough. (Considering that I didn't have to buy and consume six consecutive Happy Meals to collect the complete line of these toys, I'd say that $1 was a bargain.) Each monster had moveable arms and a rubber wheel on the bottom. When you revved them up, they would roll across flat surfaces while sparks would shoot out of their mouths. Unfortunately, there were no other Toho kaiju figures included in the bunch: no Hedorah, no King Ghidorah, no Megalon, no Mothra, no Rodan.

So, in an era and location where Godzilla figures were hard to come by, the ultra-cheap super deformed versions had to satiate my kaiju cravings until something better came along. They looked good on my book shelf, and I even used them as game pieces for a kaiju-themed board game that I created. I suppose the moral of the story here is that thanks to the loose enforcement of international copyright laws, kaiju collectibles can pop up in even the most unlikeliest of times and places.

What If He Wasn't The Batman?

Ever wonder what would have happened if Bruce Wayne had been interrupted in his thought processes by something besides a bat? What kind of hero would he have turned out to be?

In 1974, we were treated to a two-page answer with some pretty cool results. Unfortunately, the color isn't the best in some of these alternates, but see what you think. Click on the picture to see the full size page.

 

 

So looking at this we see a few interesting options. The Scorpion is, of course, a Spider-Man villain. The Stingray became a Marvel hero in the 70's. The Owl was cool because Batman's evil counterpart from Earth 3 was Owlman. The last two...well, I guess you can say Iron Man was the last one. Shooting Star might have been original enough.

Of that group, I'd have to give The Owl the biggest chance of being a star. What do you think?

Vizio LED 3D: Getting My Geek On in High-Definition

When I started writing this blog, I made it a point to keep this blog fresh by providing new content at least more than once per week. Unfortunately, I've been falling behind lately due to a new love in my life. For the last few days, my wife and I have been in a state of near-religious bliss as we devote hours of worship to our new secular, electronic idol: the Vizio 47-inch TruLED LCD 3D HDTV.

I'll be the first to admit that as horror/sci-fi geeks go, I'm pretty late to hop on the high-def bandwagon. Yet this was the first time in a while that we've had the money to get something like this, and it was worth the wait. Everything we've watched on this Vizio TV is absolutely gorgeous, from TV shows to movies to even high-def Wii video game footage we now get through the component cable we bought for the game system. We recently watched the Criterion release of the classic mystery film Green for Danger (1946) and it felt like we were in a movie theater. It's taken an act of sheer will to keep myself from locking myself in my house and treating myself to a mega-marathon viewing of all the Star Wars, Alien, Predator, Terminator, Pixar and Hayao Miyazaki films that I own. Best of all, because it's an LED TV, I get a great picture quality without the large electric bill that comes with the non-LED high-def TVs. Shameless self-indulgence, thy name is Vizio LED.

We haven't gotten the 3D glasses for this TV yet, so I can't comment on how good its 3D picture quality is. Nevertheless, I'm particularly excited about having an XVT model of the Vizio 3D TVs because of its compatibility with the Sensio 3D format. Sensio has been in the 3D home video market long before the high-def craze caught on and as far as I know, they're the only company that has shown any interest in releasing high-def home video versions of 3D movie classics such as Creature from the Black Lagoon, House of Wax and It Came From Outer Space. They've already released the official full-color home video 3D versions of Spy Kids 3D: Game Over and Jaws 3D, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they will release next for the die-hard 3D crowd.

The Wonderfully Weird Worlds of Remedios Varo

If you live in the Washington DC area and have a love for the various artistic styles from the 20th century, you might want to stop by the Mexican Cultural Institute sometime between now and June 18th. The Institute is holding an exhibit entitled "Beyond the Labyrinth: Latin American Art and the FEMSA Collection". While the exhibition will include the works of many great Latin American artists, artists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Fernando Botero, I particularly wanted to draw your attention to one of the featured artists: surrealist painter Remedios Varo (1908-1963).

I first saw Varo's paintings when the National Museum of Women in the Arts held an exhibit devoted to her back in 2000 entitled "The Magic of Remedios Varo". As Varo's work is described in the exhibit's press release:

"In her meticulous paintings rendered in jewel-like tones, worlds overlap to create a reality apart: a chair back mysteriously opens to reveal human faces, hands reach through walls, and tabletops peel back to expose living roots. Varo wanted to know how and why the universe functioned, and looked to dreams, astrology, and science for inspiration, and to visual and literary sources for themes. She set up hypotheses and explored them in paint, opening the door to new ways of envisioning nature and the self."

Varo's paintings are spellbinding portrayals of dark, mind-bending ruminations on the nature of existence, and I highly recommend her work for anyone who has an appreciation of visual representations of the fanciful, the otherworldly, and the horrific. Go to the Remedios Varo site to learn more about this remarkable artist. Click below to see a gallery of some of Varo’s paintings.

Scream 4 Review: Revenge of the Remake

After writing my previous retrospective of the original Scream trilogy, I had to see Scream 4 on opening weekend so I could determine if it fit with the other three films. Thankfully, it does and it does so very well. Scream is one of the smartest movie franchises out there, and Scream 4 maintains that level of quality. Continue reading for my complete, largely spoiler-free review, although I'll warn you that it's hard to discuss the subtexts and themes of Scream 4 without making at least some references (albeit oblique references) to the ending. The short version of the review is that even though Scream 4 is not without its problems, it's a great addition to the Scream franchise and is a must-see if you enjoyed--and understood--the original trilogy in its entirety. Furthermore, the killer in Scream 4 is a worthy successor to both the previous Ghostface killers and to the late Maureen Prescott herself. Read on ...

In Scream 4, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returns to Woodsboro as part of her promotion of a self-help book that she wrote in the aftermath of the previous waves of Ghostface killings. As she arrives, a new killer wearing the Ghostface costume begins another Woodsboro killing spree with the intent of "remaking" the original. The subject of horror remakes permeates Scream 4, both in its plot structure and in its satirical jabs.

In terms of themes and narrative trajectory, Scream 4 is a very direct continuation of Scream 3. Scream 3 focused on the production of the second sequel of the slasher-franchise-within-the-slasher-franchise Stab, Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro; in contrast, Scream 4 actually returns to Woodsboro, the first time Woodsboro has been seen since the first Scream movie. Scream 3 was about remaking Woodsboro inside a Hollywood studio for the sake of continuing a movie franchise, while Scream 4 is about returning to Woodsboro to "remake" a movie franchise. There is also a subtheme of cinematic (mis)direction that echoes the motives and methods of Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), Scream 3’s Ghostface. Curiously, in spite of this obvious connection, neither Bridger nor the other Ghostface killers other than Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and Stuart "Stu" Macher (Matthew Lillard) are mentioned during Scream 4.

Another theme that's prevalent in Scream 4--one that runs parallel to the theme of remakes--is that of role reversal. Most notable is the role reversal between Sidney and Gale Weathers-Riley (Courteney Cox). Sidney and Gale have always been two sides of the same figurative coin throughout the Scream movies, and in Scream 4 their roles have almost completely reversed from what they were in the beginning. Sidney was the resident of Woodsboro and Gale was the celebrity outsider in Scream while in Scream 4, Gale has claimed Woodsboro as her home and Sidney has become the celebrity outsider. There are other role reversals at work throughout this sequel, but you'll have to see them for yourself.

Because Scream 4 operates under the premise of examining and poking fun at horror movie remakes, it sets up the characters from the original movie--Sidney, Gale, and Dewey (David Arquette)--acting alongside a new set of teenage characters who are supposed to represent a Scream/Stab remake of sorts. Imagine if you will what the remakes of Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street would have been like if key characters of the original films were somehow written into the remakes as adults alongside their teenage counterparts and you sort of get the idea. (With the sequel's focus on the subject of remakes, I can't help but to grin at film critics who can't figure out whether to call Scream 4 a sequel or a remake.)

While this duality between the old/original and new/"remake" Scream characters pays off in the end, it's not without its drawbacks. The end result of such an ambitious story is a film that has so much narrative ground to cover during its slightly under 2 hour running time that it never seems to find the right mood of tension and unease one would normally expect from a slasher film. Further complicating this problem is Scream 4's opening. The previous three Scream films opened with some very shocking and inventive kill scenes, but Scream 4 instead opens with not just one but two false beginnings before the story really starts. These two false openings serve as clever parodies of the ridiculous lengths to which overlong slasher franchises (such as Friday the 13th) resort in order to keep the series going, but they water down the impact of when the real killer finally arrives to kill the first real victims.

With so much going on in Scream 4, I came away from this film feeling like certain background details are missing. For example, Sidney's aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell) makes a reference to her sister/Sidney's mom Maureen, but it's never made clear if Kate (or anyone else in Woodsboro) understands how much of a role Maureen played in inspiring the Ghostface killings. Then again, these omissions could be the result of the scenes that were deliberately cut (such as the aftermath of the first kill, as seen in the still picture below) for later inclusion in the unrated DVD release of Scream 4. For all of the jokes about horror movies, sequels and remakes there are in Scream 4, there isn't a single quip about Hollywood's recent tendency boost DVD sales by cutting footage from movies during their initial theatrical releases and then reinserting the footage later as "unrated" versions.

(Speaking of missing details, I could've sworn that I saw a bronze memorial bust of Arthur Himbry (Henry Winkler), the principal who was killed in Scream, in one of the halls in Woodsboro High School but I couldn't get a close enough look.)

Perhaps the most important consistency between the original Scream trilogy and Scream 4 is the ongoing examination of the series' true focal point, which not the self-aware deconstruction of the slasher genre but instead the media's exploitation of "true crime" stories as part of "infotainment". In fact, the killer's methods and motive in Scream 4 don't really make much sense without this theme. There's a somewhat wordy, heavy-handed speech given towards the end of the film that explicitly calls out this theme, although that speech is outdone by the final scene of the film just before the end credits roll.

Along the lines of the true crime theme in the Scream movies, I noted the relationship between the real-world serial killer Ed Gein and his cinematic counterparts in Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs in my provious essay. While there are hints of this kind of relationship existing between the "real" and "fake" Ghostfaces in the Stab franchise in Scream 2 and 3, Scream 4 really drives the point home in the relationship between older and younger citizens of Woodsboro. For those who remember and experienced the original killings, Ghostface is an all-too-real threat. On the other hand, for the current generation students in Woodsboro, Ghostface is a character from an overlong series of cheap and increasingly absurd slasher movies that have something to do with Woodsboro's ancient past.

I wish I could say more about Scream 4, but to do so would give away too much. I will say that given how this sequel ends, I really don't see how another Scream film could be made. Also, while I was writing my Scream trilogy retrospective, I mused over what an alternate version Scream 2 would be like (say, in the form of a "what if" graphic novel). This would be a Scream 2 where Billy and Stu got away with their plan in Scream and its implications: how it would affect other Scream characters (such as Billy's mom, Cotton Weary, and Roman Bridger), how Billy and Stu would interact with the Stab franchise and, most importantly, how they'd react to being stalked by a Ghostface copycat killer. While Scream 4 doesn't do this, it does in its own way sort of answer some of the questions that this alternate narrative would raise. That alone makes Scream 4 a great slasher film in its own right and a fitting epilogue to this intelligent slasher series.