The asylum in Terminator is so goddamn well done. I think it is possibly the Girl Bossiest of Girl Boss scenes ever, because it shows that, despite all her dedication to training, she is still at a physical disadvantage with the guards and has to be both vicious and cunning to escape. Then when she finally sees Arnold again, she collapses in terror. That is some amazing world and character building.
Nowadays, I feel like she would just one-punch all the guards, maybe lift one up over her head and throw him at another last guard, finally kicking Arnold in the nuts before deciding running away was a wiser tactical decision.
The stakes are always so much higher when the things that can be realistic are realistic.
It was what made the John Wick movies so good too. Sure, it’s unrealistic that there’s this man who can single-handedly take on hundreds of other trained killers and only suffer minor injuries. But, they made sure that each moment in each fight itself is as realistic as possible. Keanu Reeves trained hard on weapon handling so that everything he does looks like it’s being done by a weapons expert.
I’d love to see a gritty, realistic action movie where silencers weren’t silent, bullets didn’t make people fly backwards, fighting was visibly exhausting, punches and kicks don’t make “slap” or “crack” sounds, women were at a clear disadvantage to men, weight class really matters, handguns were hard to aim well, people had adrenaline crashes, a concussion was a serious event…
And, while we’re at it, I wish people in the movies would wash the blood off. Far too often someone gets injured and spends the rest of the movie with their face caked with blood. Even if you don’t care how you look, having blood on your skin is itchy and uncomfortable.
In “Aleins”, he even does both “generes”. You have Vasquez as the stereotypical action hero badass marine woman, who has adopted a “man’s” role. But you also have Ripley, who is a badass action hero, but is entirely feminine.
Her “Get away from her, you bitch!” line is so iconic because it’s the action climax of the film in which she’s being her most badass, but also being entirely feminine. She’s a mother battling grief over the death of her child whose maternal instincts are fueling her to protect the remaining people she loves, and it driver her to take on a monster.
I remember as a child (probably 2 or 4) having a crazed bull charge me in a field, and my otherwise timid, traditionally-obedient WASP mother ran between the charging longhorn and me, stood her ground, and stared it down while shouting at it. The bull veered off and stayed clear of me from then on.
Now that you mention it, the fight choreography in T2 really is something that helps the story feel more grounded. Connor vs T1000 is certainly a good example, but the T800 vs T1000 fights are all the right kinds of klunky vs fluid, respectively. There are probably other subtle examples in this film.
Not only is there the contrast, but there’s development. You can see them using their initial strategies and adapting over time. I swear on the grave of my murdered father: I love it when fights develop character!
The depth of the implications of that moment though… the horror, the reality of it all, the scale of it… all encapsulated in that one confirmation, a terminator. So we didn’t stop it again yet. >:,-I What a gut punch, like seeing the whole world destroyed in an instant.
That’s a really good point. I bet a lot of that has to do with the original being a slasher flick rather than an action blockbuster. There’s some residual final-girl, “just because I survived doesn’t mean I’m not terrified,” energy to her character.
One of the joys of being unemployed is that I can make my day’s plans from random lemmy convos. Today: Terminator and Terminator 2.
Edit: Also Cameron wants the audience to be afraid of Arniebot and not Mercurybot, it also gives the character an arc to travel with regards to Arniebot. The reveal of Arnold as the Good Guy in T2 is really masterfully done, perhaps lost on audiences who grew up with it.
Yeah, I think people go into the movies today knowing that Arnie is the “good terminator”. But, when the movie came out he was the bad guy, and there was no reason to think that the liquid metal one was the bad guy…
Robert Patrick did an amazing job of appearing to have emotions, making him seem like the good guy, only to make it clear over time that he was only mimicking emotions to blend in and accomplish his mission.
Too bad even Robert Patrick’s amazing performance can’t quite overcome him being a cop. What was once credible disguise for being a good guy has become a dead give-away for being a bastard.
But it’s still fun to watch because even if we know, the characters don’t, and they act like they don’t and it’s filmed from their emotional perspective.
The disguise was really just about being human. The cop disguise was because it was a cop who had first discovered him after the time travel, and it was a useful disguise. It worked because we knew that Arnie was the terminator, and this guy looked like a regular human. He came through the time portal “nude”, looking like a human. Until then, the only terminators we’d seen were either obviously robots, or were these massive T-800s that, even when naked, don’t really look like normal humans.
In those early scenes before we know that the T-1000 is evil and the T-800 is good, the T-1000 plausibly acts like a human sent back in time trying to locate John Connor before the T-800 does. We don’t know that he’s a terminator, but we do know he’s not a cop – we saw him steal the cop’s uniform, gun and car. When he talks to the foster parents in disguise, he shows emotion, something that the T-800 model doesn’t really do.
The only person we know to actually be a cop up until that point in the movie is the dude who goes out to investigate an “electrical disturbance” before having a run-in with the T-1000.
The asylum in Terminator is so goddamn well done. I think it is possibly the Girl Bossiest of Girl Boss scenes ever, because it shows that, despite all her dedication to training, she is still at a physical disadvantage with the guards and has to be both vicious and cunning to escape. Then when she finally sees Arnold again, she collapses in terror. That is some amazing world and character building.
Nowadays, I feel like she would just one-punch all the guards, maybe lift one up over her head and throw him at another last guard, finally kicking Arnold in the nuts before deciding running away was a wiser tactical decision.
The stakes are always so much higher when the things that can be realistic are realistic.
It was what made the John Wick movies so good too. Sure, it’s unrealistic that there’s this man who can single-handedly take on hundreds of other trained killers and only suffer minor injuries. But, they made sure that each moment in each fight itself is as realistic as possible. Keanu Reeves trained hard on weapon handling so that everything he does looks like it’s being done by a weapons expert.
I’d love to see a gritty, realistic action movie where silencers weren’t silent, bullets didn’t make people fly backwards, fighting was visibly exhausting, punches and kicks don’t make “slap” or “crack” sounds, women were at a clear disadvantage to men, weight class really matters, handguns were hard to aim well, people had adrenaline crashes, a concussion was a serious event…
And, while we’re at it, I wish people in the movies would wash the blood off. Far too often someone gets injured and spends the rest of the movie with their face caked with blood. Even if you don’t care how you look, having blood on your skin is itchy and uncomfortable.
Cameron knows how to do a heroine.
In “Aleins”, he even does both “generes”. You have Vasquez as the stereotypical action hero badass marine woman, who has adopted a “man’s” role. But you also have Ripley, who is a badass action hero, but is entirely feminine.
Her “Get away from her, you bitch!” line is so iconic because it’s the action climax of the film in which she’s being her most badass, but also being entirely feminine. She’s a mother battling grief over the death of her child whose maternal instincts are fueling her to protect the remaining people she loves, and it driver her to take on a monster.
I remember as a child (probably 2 or 4) having a crazed bull charge me in a field, and my otherwise timid, traditionally-obedient WASP mother ran between the charging longhorn and me, stood her ground, and stared it down while shouting at it. The bull veered off and stayed clear of me from then on.
That was my mother’s action hero moment.
It’s ironic that the first two things you put in quotation marks are the first two things you spell wrong.
My thumbs are dumber than the rest of me. And I’m pretty dumb.
Now that you mention it, the fight choreography in T2 really is something that helps the story feel more grounded. Connor vs T1000 is certainly a good example, but the T800 vs T1000 fights are all the right kinds of klunky vs fluid, respectively. There are probably other subtle examples in this film.
Not only is there the contrast, but there’s development. You can see them using their initial strategies and adapting over time. I swear on the grave of my murdered father: I love it when fights develop character!
The depth of the implications of that moment though… the horror, the reality of it all, the scale of it… all encapsulated in that one confirmation, a terminator. So we didn’t stop it again yet. >:,-I What a gut punch, like seeing the whole world destroyed in an instant.
“Mom! Mom! Wait! He’s here to help!”
Sure.
That’s a really good point. I bet a lot of that has to do with the original being a slasher flick rather than an action blockbuster. There’s some residual final-girl, “just because I survived doesn’t mean I’m not terrified,” energy to her character.
One of the joys of being unemployed is that I can make my day’s plans from random lemmy convos. Today: Terminator and Terminator 2.
Edit: Also Cameron wants the audience to be afraid of Arniebot and not Mercurybot, it also gives the character an arc to travel with regards to Arniebot. The reveal of Arnold as the Good Guy in T2 is really masterfully done, perhaps lost on audiences who grew up with it.
Yeah, I think people go into the movies today knowing that Arnie is the “good terminator”. But, when the movie came out he was the bad guy, and there was no reason to think that the liquid metal one was the bad guy…
Robert Patrick did an amazing job of appearing to have emotions, making him seem like the good guy, only to make it clear over time that he was only mimicking emotions to blend in and accomplish his mission.
Too bad even Robert Patrick’s amazing performance can’t quite overcome him being a cop. What was once credible disguise for being a good guy has become a dead give-away for being a bastard.
But it’s still fun to watch because even if we know, the characters don’t, and they act like they don’t and it’s filmed from their emotional perspective.
The disguise was really just about being human. The cop disguise was because it was a cop who had first discovered him after the time travel, and it was a useful disguise. It worked because we knew that Arnie was the terminator, and this guy looked like a regular human. He came through the time portal “nude”, looking like a human. Until then, the only terminators we’d seen were either obviously robots, or were these massive T-800s that, even when naked, don’t really look like normal humans.
In those early scenes before we know that the T-1000 is evil and the T-800 is good, the T-1000 plausibly acts like a human sent back in time trying to locate John Connor before the T-800 does. We don’t know that he’s a terminator, but we do know he’s not a cop – we saw him steal the cop’s uniform, gun and car. When he talks to the foster parents in disguise, he shows emotion, something that the T-800 model doesn’t really do.
The only person we know to actually be a cop up until that point in the movie is the dude who goes out to investigate an “electrical disturbance” before having a run-in with the T-1000.
ACAB motherfuckers!