How should I put this?

A movie critic, maybe it was Roger Ebert, warned against reviewing the movie one would have made with the material available. That is to say, the filmmaker made the movie they made, not the movie the critic would have made, and that's what should be reviewed.

That said, I've a long list of movies which I claim blow a brilliant premise on what amounts to cliché.

Take Jurassic Park, for one.

The premise, or the idea, is rather new and original: recreating extinct species using advanced biosciences and old fossils. The cliché is: this is a suspense monster movie. Jaws on land with more monsters. As a subset it's a warning against hubris, very much like Frankenstein, RUR, and many other earlier works.

Much the same can be said for Species, Alien (and the sequels and prequels, with ever more elaborate settings and/or monsters) and others. On a similar vein, works like Event Horizon or Sphere take an interesting SF premise, space and/or time travel in extreme conditions, and turn it into a horror movie.

By now you should deduce I loathe the monster movie and horror genres. They're every nit as bad as fantasy.

So let's turn to another one: A.I.

This takes us back to the early days of SF when robots were seen either as monstrous threats (too many examples, the classic being RUR, the best known is Terminator) itching to take over the world and wipe out humanity, or metaphors for oppressed peoples. A.I. would fall in the latter category, rather blatantly so. Jude Law utters a line in which he says humans made the "mecha" "Too smart, too good and too many."

The focus should have been on the family which dumps David in the woods.

Since I mentioned Terminator, that, too, should be a wasted premise. After all, it takes an interesting situation, namely war across time, and turns into an action movie, with plenty of shooting, car chases, explosions and work for many stunt doubles. I mean, wouldn't Skynet simply send back an army of terminators and kill John Connor? Or at least three of the relentless Cyborgs to back each other up? It's not as though screwing up with time is a major concern, in fact it's the goal. In the second movie the good guys prevent Skynet with one simple, poignant act. Which gets undone by the third movie with the explanation that, well, I guess the studio wanted another movie.

Anyway, no, it's not wasted. I can think of many ways to explain sending one cyborg at a time. But even without it, granting the basic premise, what ensues is completely logical. In the first movie we have two characters that will not give up. The terminator because it can't, and Kyle Reese because the fate of humanity rides with him. When they go at it, the movie follows naturally. Much of the movie is a contrast between the machine and the man, too. Starting with Reese doubled up in pain, shivering with cold when he materializes in the present, vs the terminator striding nonchalantly like a statue would after experiencing the same event.

Using the first movie's villain as the second movie's hero was a nice twist, but it degrades the values being fought over. The good terminator cannot more give up protecting John than the evil terminator can give up killing John. so of course this good terminator has to bond with the child he's sent to protect.

Now, near the end the evil cyborg catches Sarah Connor, but instead of killing her tries to use her to lure John, which is a logical inconsistency: why bother, since he could take her form and voice and lure John himself? But that aside, we see the terminator using a human to achieve his purpose. I have to ask, did the good cyborg also bond with John as a means to get him to consent to being protected?

Conversely, some movies get a premise buzz that is completely contrary to the actual movie. For example, Back to the Future, was often described as "boy has to travel to the past to ensure his parents will meet." I guess this fitted in more easily than "boy accidentally travels back to the past and screws up his parents' relationship before it starts."

Given the buzz for the movie, I nearly missed it. I went very reluctantly to see it, and I was impressed with how it handled time travel, complete with changes to the timeline at the end (though much was glossed over). It's one of my favorite movies, along with the sequels. A reboot must not be too far away...

BTW, Doc Brown and Marty gather at the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall for the test of the time machine. The first thing Marty does in the past is run over a small pine tree in the farm where he appears. When he returns to the present, the Mall is called Lone Pine Mall.

Great Scott!

Quote: Nareed

BTW, Doc Brown and Marty gather at the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall for the test of the time machine. The first thing Marty does in the past is run over a small pine tree in the farm where he appears. When he returns to the present, the Mall is called Lone Pine Mall.

There's a lot of stuff like that in the Back To The Future series.




On the subject of AI, check out the recent movie, Ex Machina. The basic plot is to give a robot the Turing test.

The movie itself is a little like Sixth Sense in that it's captivating, but moves along kinda slowly, then theres a twist at the end (it wouldn't be a Hollywood movie without one, right?). But it leaves you thinking, "Holy crap! I gotta see it again..."

Is the upcoming Terminator movie supposed to be a sequel, prequel, remake or reboot?

Quote: Nareed

Is the upcoming Terminator movie supposed to be a sequel, prequel, remake or reboot?

It's a retread. Not very good according to reviews.