Ep. 10: Terminator Salvation / Eastwood Fest Part 2 – Letters from Iwo Jima / Flags of Our Fathers
Josh and Evan pass judgment on McG’s Terminator Salvation, and commemorate Memorial Day with Part Two of their Eastwood Fest, including discussions of Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers.
Music: Arcade Fire, “Rebellion (Lies)”; Johnny Cash, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”
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Terminator has jumped the shark. T4 was a mockery of the series, and paled in comparison to even T3. That was one of the most forgettable action films I have seen in a long time.
And perhaps I’m being too literal, but how much more badass do the Terminators and Skynet need to become in order to kill John Connor? They have an army full of gigantic Terminators with shoulder-mounted lasers, humongous flying transports, and seemingly the capacity to produce an army of the humanoid Terminators. So they set a 15-year plan into course in order to lure Connor into their base, and when he takes their bait and enters Skynet, they have one Terminator waiting for him? One? Why weren’t there 20? And why didn’t they have guns?
ryan w said this on May 26th, 2009 at 2:47 am
I agree. This movie made the least sense of the three. Why not just send a Terminator back in time to 1984 again and make sure it completes its mission? Skynet already knows how it plays out. Why are the robots harvesting so many humans in this movie? They want humans DEAD, not in prison. Has Skynet, the world’s smartest computer, never heard of biological warfare? If killing Kyle Reese was such a priority, why didn’t ANY of the robots who had a clear shot at him just kill him? Why bother capturing him? Why send a Terminator into his prison cell and then elaborately strap him to an operating table? Just put a bullet in his head and call it done!
I didn’t even understand that elaborate John Connor-trapping conspiracy. Nor did I understand how the nuclear explosion at the beginning of the film produced an electromagnetic pulse, while the one at the end did not. I dislike this movie the more I actually think about it.
Evan said this on May 26th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Suspension of disbelief… duh!
pdxfilmcast said this on May 26th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Nice music choice with Johnny Cash!
That scene in Letters from Iwo Jima when the two American soldiers killed the POWs just because they didn’t feel like dealing with them also was burned into my brain after seeing it. It was one of the most shocking instances of inhumanity I’ve ever seen in a war movie and while other movies may have briefly explored that topic, I think this is the most up-close view I’ve seen of it.
I saw Flags of our Fathers while I was interning in DC and taking tour groups to the Iwo Jima memorial, so I knew the story of the statue before I saw the film. We would always drive the bus around the memorial a couple times, slowly, while telling the story of the 6 soldiers, so that the kids could see the flag rise up.
Since you guys don’t know much about WWII, allow me to explain. Iwo Jima was a really important island because it had 2 airfields that the US could use on their way to Japan. If the Japanese had kept control of it, they could have used the airstrips to bomb US planes as they flew over. This was part of a bigger Allied plan to basically starve the Japanese out by destroying their merchant fleet so that they couldn’t bring in food from other countries. After all was said and done, it took a month for the Americans to capture the island, losing almost 7,000 men while Japan only had 212 out of the original 22,000 left.
Katie said this on May 31st, 2009 at 4:10 pm