Terminator: Resistance – For Fans It’s Become The True ‘Terminator 3’

Image May 14, 2021 Manic Exorcism Leave a comment

It’s not uncommon for franchisees to lose their way from the initial lore that made them legendary in the first place. Sometimes a filmmaker is just lucky and catches lightning in a bottle. If he manages to catch it again with a follow-up movie then he’s just a legend at that point.

James Cameron did so with Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The same cannot be said for the movies that followed in his steps though.

Sometimes it’s just not possible to capitalize on the success of an original concept. And any attempts to do so fall by the wayside.

Case in point ask any horror fan which is the best Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and they’ll point back to Tobe Hooper’s very first film. To my knowledge there have been 7 movies to follow TCM and, though, admittedly, some are fun to watch and entertaining, none of them come close to the original’s raw style and horrific grit.

It’s not easy to build upon success like that without just (exhaustively) repeating the formula rather than adding to it, allowing it to grow without it getting weird.

It’s also not uncommon for fans to find and latch onto mediums – outside of movies – as true successors to the legends they grew up loving.

One more example before moving on – HELLRAISER.

Hellraiser has suffered through enough sequels. Many of them were never intended to be Hellraiser films in the first place, but in order to keep the franchise’s license – and, not to mention, for the studio to sell really shitty horror movies – they shamelessly slapped the infamous Hellraiser title and a Roman numeral at the end of it to inferior projects and put Doug Bradley back in the makeup to appear as Pinhead in one or two scenes.

Most Clive Barker fans know these aren’t true Hellraiser films. They don’t match the lore Barker established.

But then in 2011, BOOM comics released Clive Barker’s Hellraiser that followed the story of little Kirsty Cotton as she seeks out to complete her hellish journey with the Lament Configuration and the insidious Order of the Gash. This comic book run is sensational and a must-read for fans of the first two films. Much like how Halloween (2018) works for Laurie Strode these comics work for Kirsty and goes into some amazing and unexpected places but feel so genuine and authentic that many fans – myself included – consider these to be the lost sequel we all deserved.

The comics are so well done that even Clive Barker himself calls them the true Hellraiser III.

Sometimes we find better continuity outside of the films.

In today’s case, it’s in a video game.

image via Teyon and Reef Entertainment: Terminator Resistance

Released back in 2019, Terminator Resistance sadly passed under the radar and was not well-liked by critics. But slowly it’s been finding a rampant fan base of late, and, like the nuclear flood of Judgment Day, I’ve been swept up in the pure metal and might this game has to offer.

There have been some noteworthy Terminator games in the past. Pretty sure some of your guys fed plenty of quarters to that beloved Terminator 2 arcade cabinet. How could we not play that thing for hours? Our first mission was set in the dystopian warscape where man fights machines to the death.

Damn that was cool! That’s the thing that I always remember most from that game. But to be fair, Terminator, though built for great games, doesn’t have the best record for good games. I think that could be why TR passed by all of our notice.

And if it weren’t for me being such a fan of Civvie 11 over on YouTube I may have never played this game and missed out. Civvie gave it a good review and I immediately went out to get it. And right now it’s available on Steam, Xbox, and PSN. For $40 it’s not a bad way to spend your weekend.

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way and answer the most important question. Is the game good? Yes. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but holy shit it is very good. It’s a shame it wasn’t given a bigger budget or more time to work out a few animation bugs or included a more open world base to walk around in. These are minor gripes, and at times it feels like it’s a Terminator game set in Fallout. I swear I kept getting Skyrim vibes while playing it though.

What makes this game great though is the intense nostalgic morphine jolt you’ll get pumping down your retro feels while playing this game. This is a project built upon love and admiration for the first two Terminator movies.

The game menu starts playing the classic Terminator theme, and yeah, ok, that feels good. But soon as you choose to start playing you are thrown directly into the nightmare scape of that violent new world where machine armies cross abandoned cities to terminate all human existence. You are part of the resistance and fight for John Connor!

Music from the original movie will start playing as you duck away and hide from T-800 troops marching sardonically through the night. It looks just like how Cameron filmed the war scenes too. I had moments when I forgot I was playing a game and felt like I was part of the movies.

Yes, I said you have to hide from T-800 soldiers because, like in the movies, you start off with weapons that are not able to take one down. You are really up against an army of Terminators and your choices have consequences.

And your choices do have consequences. In your fight for the future, you can build friendships and later be responsible for their deaths or survival.

Game mechanics include crafting your own weapons, skill learning that will make you a master lock picker and/or give you the ability to remove proximity mines and then use them against the metal assholes wanting to kill you. I can’t deny how satisfying it is to set a trap and see a T-800 walk right into one of my mines and KABOOM!!!!

But you gotta be picky over which skills you want to build up first.

You can also hack turrets for some unexpected little WTF moments. Early in the game, I hacked one and it ended up taking own an HK Aerial while I was off doing my thing. I watched it shoot down one of those things and it crashes to pieces! Then I got to go loot the fuck out of its wreckage,

Who’s a good little turret? Yes, that’s right. You are.

You start off with your basic bullet-based weapons that can take down smaller machines. And you do get a pretty sweet shotgun that gets things done nicely. As you advance you start to carry more sophisticated weapons like a plasma rifle. But then you get some of the biggest and baddassiest weapons like the purple glowing plasma weapons seen in the movies.

You’ll be tasked with taking down an HK Tank and a few of those flying Hunter Killers too. Pipe grenades come in handy in a clutch and you’ll even face off against the Infiltrator, the Arnold character Kyle Reese sees in a nightmare in the first movie, the one who invades the bunker.

And that’s where this game really outdoes itself and excelled over my expectations. From the music, the lighting, the sound effects, and the overall look of everywhere you go and everything you fight. It’s all rooted in the Terminator’s lore and makes you feel entirely swallowed up in the future world Cameron introduced us to.

Story-wise you are the one who gets ahold of the CPU chip making it possible to reprogram a T-800 unit to serve as protector…you feeling T2 yet? And I couldn’t contain my stupid glee when I spoke with John Connor for the first time. But then, towards the finale of the game, you actually meet the man himself. And guess what? It’s the real Jon Connor! The guy we see at the beginning of T2 Judgment Day.

Not stupid Nick Stahl or that other moron idiot fuck from Genysis. We stand before the real Connor,

You join the fight on the frontline and punch a hole straight into the fields outside Skynet’s HQ. Gotta say standing in front of that damned pyramid felt intimidating.

Yes, time travel elements are used in the story, just like a good Terminator plot should have, but is not the main drive. At no point do you get tossed back into the ‘80s or ‘90s. You start in the war and stay there for the whole game.

And because of that, and thanks to the perfect atmosphere, music, and story it really does play as the conclusion to the first two films we didn’t realize we needed. I think deep down every fan wanted a movie based on the future war. One that would lead up to Kyle Reese being sent back in time, one that would involve the hijacking or a Terminator CPU and the T-800 protector. All of that is in this game.

SPOILERS!
The game ends with you standing with John Connor at the TDP, or ‘time machine’ if you will. Kyle has already been sent through and so has the T-800. So you end at the beginning of the events of Terminator 1 and 2, tying the knot and making you feel 100% complete lore-wise.

I’m not joking You could finish this game and then watch the first two movies back to back and feel nostalgic seamlessness.

And expect a buttload of Easter Eggs. In one mission you have to invade a medical facility where Skynet is doing some bad experiments on people. You walk into one room with a dead human subject left in the chair. And it looks exactly like Robert Patrick…the fucking T-1000!

It left me feeling dazed and awed. Like what the hell were they doing in here? Is this man THE roots of the T-1000? Their model for the next stage of Terminators? The game has moments like that everywhere though!

As a fan, I’m very satisfied with it. I’m playing through again hoping to see anything else I may have missed. If you’re a fan of the Terminator and a gamer you won’t want to miss out on this. For many of us, this is the truest sequel to Cameron’s immortal lore.

In closing this really does feel like the true successor to T2, what T3 should have been. A story set in the future and that leads up to the time-traveling events of the first couple movies. A completed trilogy set in past, present, and the future. This game is a huge accomplishment and compliments the lore beautifully.

Go play it! Play it violently!!!

Editorials

The Genius Behind Cameron’s Original Terminator Films

Image May 13, 2021 Manic Exorcism 3 Comments

August 4, 1997, marked a progressive singularity in world history as humanity is introduced to the future – Skynet. Skynet, the most sophisticated military defense program designed to protect us against enemy invasions, begins to learn at a geometric rate thus making human decisions over strategic defense obsolete. In short, the machine was learning how to think.

Our faith in our protectors was misplaced.

August 29, 1997, a day marked by infamy, Skynet becomes completely self-aware and takes over. Panicking, humanity tries to pull the plug, and acting upon its own sentience Skynet fights back. Launching nukes at strategic targets thus ensuring counterattacks, the world is quickly incinerated under the neon plume of a nuclear holocaust.

This date became known as Judgment Day.

Human beings fly apart like paper in the ensuing heat and millions of lives are washed away in the rolling inferno flowing across busy city streets.

Survivors of Judgement Day rose up from the ashes to face a dire new world entirely unrecognizable from what we all once called home. Major metropolitan societies were rendered to little more than cement husks tiled with human skulls scattered about ashen streets.

And into this dystopian landscape marched armies of Skynet’s lethal soldiers, machines with one goal in mind – the eradication of all human life.

The war for humanity’s survival was on.

The Ancient Future Past

This is the background to Jim Cameron’s (Aliens, The Abyss, Avatar) colossally successful (first two) Terminator films. I’ll go on record to say Terminator 2 has one of the best opening scenes of all time. One that unexpectedly crashes into our senses like a dump truck being rammed by an express train. It sets the tone for what is nothing short of a diesel fueled adrenaline rush of tense action.

We’re shown the mundane daily activity of a crawl-and-go highway down in L.A (and oh God have I sat in that enough times in my life). Children play at a park and people wait at crosswalks. It’s so average. That’s what makes it so haunting and permanent in our subconscious. Cameron shows us ourselves, caught in traffic, going to work or going shopping, or home. Of children’s innocence and parents’ naivety. No one was on edge and no one expected the nukes to fall. We are then immediately shown the ‘current’ world, a post Judgement Day planet.

Two stark contrasts of the same locations. However, one is pre-catastrophe and the other is post holocaust.

It all happens in a biblical sense, in the twinkling of an eye, or as a thief in the night, and no one was ready to face the end. It just happens.

Giving us the parallel of both these different worlds forced to inhabit the same planet engages us and we are shown how much we have to lose. For an action film, it pushes some poignant topics we should not take lightly.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day was my favorite movie growing up. It blew my little 11 year-old mind away. It is a metal powerhouse of rioting steel blasting apart cement walls, tipping over 18-wheelers, and face ripping brawls as two future machines battle for the fate of humanity. Back then I thought it was genius! And now, so many decades later, I’m still struck (right in the jaw) by how intensely brilliant it still is. T2 just works!

The Lore of Man’s Folly

I’ve been in a real Terminator kick lately. I just watched every single movie in the franchise and without bias, I can say all the movies suck after T2: Judgment Day. Ok you may think I’m being biased but I really wanted to like all the other films.

But let’s be honest. At the end of T2 they left no room for error. They won! They completely defeated Cyberdine, and thus, Skynet, from ever having a chance of existing. Without Skynet there would be no Terminators. So how the Hell can they justify any sequels?

Well you know the message behind T2? Sarah’s “No Fate But What We Make” bit? Well fuck that, kiddies! Let’s ignore it and that’s how sequels can be made. So already they begin doing the unholy sin of fan-based cinema. They start screwing with the rules and messing with the lore.

Because of that none of the films manage to capture or echo the themes and plight or even the tension of the first two movies. As a matter of fact the newest film, Terminator: Dark Fate is an insult to the victorious sacrifice of the 2nd movie.

In fact, it makes the tough decisions made in T2 obsolete. But only if you allow yourself to consider T: Dark Fate canon. And honestly, given the warped time-traveling alternate universe nexus this franchise’s timeline now suffers from it’s your pick to choose what is canon or not.

I grew up with Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, so to me, those two are the franchise. Everything else that followed is weird fan fiction that serves more like a bizarre Apocrypha to the original lore. Fun to explore and suppose may have happened, but not worthy enough to be considered canon.

What Cameron understood – and what follow-up film-makers never learned as they copied his stuff – was the imperfection of humanity and how it engages us.

Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) is not our first choice as the mother of humanity’s savior. She’s working a shitty job and lives to party all night long come every Friday. There’s not one thing about her to mark her as extraordinary.

She has no illusions of grandeur until her future comes back to the past to alter her own timeline. Her little life is thrown off course and she must now prepare to face a very terrifying future that she was not ready for.

The genius of the first movie is in what Sarah Connor is not! She’s not an action star. She’s a waitress of Big Boy (or whatdafuckever it was called) and had Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) not shown up to save her she’d been dead. She couldn’t protect herself. It was all about her vulnerability and her need to grow.

John Connor (Edward Furlong), as we’re introduced to him in T2, is a delinquent and hardly a role model. He’s a shitty punk-ass kid who is a fuck up. You know, just like we all were back in the early ‘90s. He hangs out with his best friend at an arcade and doesn’t talk or act like some kind of future savior.

It’s the sort of thing other directors would have tripped all over. They’d have made him somehow messianic and special. Yeah, I’m looking right at George Lucas. Now hear me out. George Lucas was trying to tell a very similar story when he made those Jar Jar fucktastic prequels. He turned Anakin into space Jesus.

Now imagine if Anakin had just been some guy, someone newly married to his wife, a family guy with a mean streak for flying fast and being a cocky son of a bitch who just happened to have Force sensitivity. Someone we could sit and have a beer with. Giving us a human being to follow would have made those prequels way more engaging. It would have made his fall to the Dark Side way more devastating.

You see the thing that make us love our heroes so much is the silent humanity backing them. We can relate to them and that’s how they become timeless.

You look at little John Connor and you’re not supposed to think ‘hey! that there is the future savior!’ No, you just see a kid who goes hot rodding on his motor bike and flips off his foster parents. We could get into a lot of trouble if we hung out with him in middle school and that makes him cool.

Do you think he can save himself from a Terminator? Of fucking course not!

Our heroes are completely human! In a movie about an impending war set in the future and filled with high octane action sequences so hot it burns our eye lids away the human plot is not only never lost but fucking drives the movie on to victory!

That’s something a whole lot of other big-budget sci-fi action films really screw up. Yeah, that’s right I mean you, Godzilla vs. Kong you waste of potential.

Instead of shoehorning a few unbearable characters between CGI action sets and loud explosions, Cameron lets the pacing breath while thrilling us the whole time. We have a connection with who are heroes are and truly get a sense of the danger enveloping them. Their consequences have real value to us.

I never got that feeling for anyone in the following Terminator films.

Crafting Well-Known Lore For A New World

Cameron takes the Messiah narrative and retells it as a post-modern dark sci-fi action film. And because of our heroes’ genuine humanity, even a heartless/soulless machine like the T-800 cannot help to become more humanized by association.

By essence it is secretly a story of redemption, or, of a cold machine gaining a human heart. Connor is able to redeem his T-800 guardian from its murderous programming.

One of the most endearing moments in the film is when John and the Terminator are playing high five. The two bond over fixing a truck and the same kind of machine that was sent back once to kill him before his birth, now becomes the father John never had. That’s master-class story telling and holy shit it hits us on the subconscious level.

It’s not about the GREAT BIG ACTION FILM WHOOOOOOOO but all about the value of human life. Even the Terminator, a machine built to kill all human existence, can learns how to love and grieve. A Terminator learned this kind of compassion by hanging out with that little punk ass kid.

And by this, we sit back and accept that, yeah, John Connor is a natural-born leader. His charisma is off the charts. If he can make a Terminator human then he can lead us to victory over those who want to terminate us.

In the world we’re now living in we could use that kind of charisma. When people replace their hearts of flesh for a cold core – selfishly driven, programmed only to focus on their own needs while ignoring the plight of those around us -and when we see people becoming more and more machine like we need a revolutionary jolt of humanity.

Retro Reviews

It’s Only A Movie: The Forgotten Original Horror Doc, “Terror In The Aisles”

Image May 2, 2021 Patti PaulterGeist Leave a comment

Terror In The Aisles : Cinema Quad Poster

Many moons ago, I recollect curled up in front of our family Magnavox floor TV model and watching a collection of snippets from horror films with my Dad on a VHS rental. I couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time, however, this film of sorts we were watching stuck with me until today. As from what I can remember from said viewing was that this horror film special turned my curiosity on to a LOT of horror movies of which I may have never heard of prior; or at least not a few years down the line anyway. Movies like, The Thing, Carrie, and what I most visually remember Nighthawks– yeah I said it! And for YEARS, I (and apparently my father as well), couldn’t goddamn remember what the hell it was we watched! It was one of things that drove me crazy for about 25 years until I began blogging and journalism within the horror community and someone could answer the million dollar fuckin’ question. The film was of course, and correct me if wrong but also the FIRST of it’s kind horror complication documentary, TERROR IN THE AISLES.

Not even slightly joking. This shit drove me bat-shit crazy for half my life.

Released on October 26th, 1984, Terror in the Aisles broke the horror rules diving deep into what makes a great horror film in a mock documentary style way narrated by genre giants Donald Pleasance and Nancy Allen with snippets from landmark films. It was truly a one-of-its-own-kind experience as the setting is in a packed movie theater with the two legends seated amongst the crowd; which served as a set-up as certain members of the audience would ask questions here and there and one of the two would look dead straight into the camera and give us those answers.

The “doc” focuses on great moments in the genre history as well as leaning into sub-genres. It’s really a great commentary piece for both horror seasoned vets and newcomers to the community- even if all the horror clips date back to 1984 and prior. The films featured are pretty much the standard go-to’s; Halloween, Alien, The Exorcist and so forth with a few line-drives thrown; again, fuckin’ NIGHTHAWKS. Also, that’s totally ok because it’s a badass movie. As a young kid watching this, I DO remember asking about the films mentioned at the beginning of this article, and yes Nighthawks was number one because Sly was/is a hero of mine and I adored Rocky and Rambo as little kid. So yeah, Sly in a horror movie (kind of?), YES PLEASE.

Also, one of the scenes highlighted where Stallone is dressed in drag in order to trap the terrorist, wasn’t a sell to me but a total bonus.

TERROR IN THE AISLES is a fascinating time capsule from our generation. And certainly a fun revisit from time to time. Even if you think it’s corny or perhaps a cash grab milking the 80s’ horror money train from its’ time, you have to respect it was the FIRST. And set the bar for many of the horror docs and specials we have at pretty much, a forever disposal thanks to multiple streaming services and how huge the film community has gotten over the past 30 years.

The film was forever trapped on VHS for years up until recently SHOUT! Factory finally buckled for a glorious Blu-Ray release. However, if you want to revisit, and umm yeah I think you should, I would highly suggest purchasing the HALLOWEEN II Anniversary Blu-Ray, as TERROR IN THE AISLES is right there in the special features. May as well get a bang for your buck at a lower price am I right?

Sound off here in the comments Nostalgic Nuggets: What horror snippet from the film peaked your interests so that you had to watch that particular horror movie immediately?