Fox TERMINATOR series: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (1 Viewer)

[Inspector Hammer!]

^^Are you guys kidding me? It's too early for April fools so i'm guessing not lol.

Oookay, to say I thought the pilot sucked would be an understatement.

This is the Terminator as envisioned and filtered through the sensabilities of a bunch of writers over at the Sci-Fi channel, lame, cheap looking and just plain cockeyed.

The first of many problems I had were the Termies themselves, I mean where did the show do it's casting, Small People R' Us? Summer Glau looks like she's 18 years old, they might as well have went the extra mile and gotten Amy Acker to play her (I love Amy Acker but she's no Terminator) and the dude who plays the other Terminator reminds me of John Wesley Shipp acting like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man with cheap looking prosthetics glued to his face and body. Actually, i've seen that type of make-up effects before...at my local Halloween shop around October lol.

Lena Headey is far too skinny to be Sarah, as someone pointed out in an earlier post Sarah needs to be more ripped and Headey far from fits the bill, plus I didn't care for her performance, either. Also, the writers seemed to have forgotten the most fundamental functions of Terminators as infiltrators and that is to blend in and remain off the grid, Glau and co. walking into a bank in broad daylight and holding up the joint isn't exactly my idea of low key lol.

I'm sorry, guys, want to be there with you (i'm shocked so many here liked it to be honest) but I hated it, the sad part is that I ate my words somewhat regarding this show wasting it's time centering on Sarah as it could work if it was pulled off better but what we got is, IMO, poorly done in almost every respect.

Ah well, it's a FOX show, so it's doomed anyway.

 

[Craig P]

When was the last time a Terminator was low-key around the Connors? It's a fair criticism, but one that extends to both of the first two movies.

(And in the specific case, Cameron's approach makes perfect sense. She's not trying to avoid police notice, because she's not planning on walking out. In fact, drawing notice works to advantage, because it brings in the other Terminator to be shot with the special advanced weapon.)

 

[Zack Gibbs]

Indeed, I don't remember the terminators ever being that covert. The T-1000 could be in more immediate situations, but ultimately he was just as straight forward as any of the other models when his goal was in sight.

Anyhoo... I read that, despite it being played on in the pilot, the series isn't going to deal with John and Terminator chicks budding romance.

Rubbish.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Summer is hot, but I hope that's not the high point of this T2 spin-off (as if T3 didn't happen-- yeah!). This new Sarah is no Linda Hamilton, that's for sure!

They need to get some feed back from James Cameron... he knew how to blend light touches with all the brooding elements.

I wonder if Cameron is supposed to be a weird "love interest" for John. She did say she was a "special" Terminator model... a new model to emulate humans better, perhaps. They did cast someone to be about the same age as John. Hmmm... an obvious, but cool angle of the two "species" becoming more than just enemies or programmed protectors to do the human's bidding. If I'm reading this correctly.

Arnold's terminator model started to learn human compassion towards the end of T2.

I wonder too if they will try to bring in new Terminators besides androids like the liquid metal T-1000 and other new inventions to spice things up.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Alright i'll give you guys that but that one quibble is so insignificant when compared to how aweful this show was lol. I forgot to mention something earlier, hearing Glau utter the words "Come with me if you want to live." made me wince a little at 1. how badly she delivered it and 2. how cliched it's become.

What model # is she supposed to be anyway? I want to say she's a TX but from what I witnessed tonight I doubt the show would have the budget to have her constantly morphing into other people. Oh wait, that's right, T3 didn't happen in this series so she's not a TX. To comment on that for a moment, I liked T3 and it bothers me that they chose to ignor it, if anything that movie is worlds better than the spectacular crapfest I watched tonight.

And the day a human falls in love with a machine and vice versa is the day the last nail in this story's coffin is hammered into place. :rolleyes

 

[Scott-S]

"19 out of 22 witnesses said the gunman had a robotic leg."

Wonder how the FBI dude explains that one to himself? And as non-subtle as the terminators are, you would think the law enforcement would have seen them by now. So I don't buy the complete lack of belief by the FBI. (how do they explain the terminator at the bank? Surely they would have footage of him at the vault door?)

Other that this, I liked it the pilot. I will give it a few weeks to see where it is going. I hope they can change things up a little as we go. Having these good guys hiding / eluding for the rest of the series would get old fast.

 

[Curtis Lotter]

What model # is she supposed to be anyway?

My wife asked the same question. I replied "She's the new T&A model." That was good for one of "those" looks.

 

[NeilO]

I thought the pilot was pretty good. The series should be quite different than the pilot, but I guess we'll see how it develops. The whole going to 2007 was a surprise to me. I was wondering how they could make it work having it set all the past. Now we have a few added conflicts thrown into the mix.

The Connors haven't seen the technological changes in the past 8 years. So, they didn't know that someone could be taking a movie on his cellphone as they appeared.

We see at the end that Sarah's ex has moved on, but presumably he saw the news report.

The FBI agent was just starting to think there was more to Sarah than his belief system could hold when she disappeared. How is he going to take her reappearance? Can he be brought onto their side?

What about the stuff left in the bank vault? Could some of that be used to start up Skynet again? Or was it all destroyed along with the terminator through the use of the gun and time shift? Are there more surprises that were left in the past for them to pick up to help in their battle?

Tonight's episode should show how the series is supposed to develop and I am looking forward to it.

Neil

 

[Andy Sheets]

That was certainly my first thought. Sarah shouldn't have wrecked that terminator in such a public place

I liked it. It had the usual "this was a movie and now it's a tv show" moments, in which you're trying to get used to seeing new actors playing the same characters, speaking the same lines and such, but that will become less of an issue as the show develops its own voice, and it was well-produced and directed. And it was really refreshing to see so much machine gun fire and exploding stuff on tv again. Maybe they can have an episode in which the heroes hook up with Airwolf or the A-Team and they blow up a few city blocks together

 

[Parker Clack]

I did have an issue with the Terminator tearing the bank vault apart and the SWAT team just standing there and not doing anything to try to stop it. What was that all about? They go through all the trouble of showing the cops driving up to the bank, all locked and loaded, in comes the T1 or is it a T2, it looks at them and then goes in and destroys the bank vault door with nothing being done to stop what it is doing. Hmm.....

I have a feeling that this show is going to have a lot of things that make you go hmmm...

 

[Josh Dial]

I don't know a polite way to state this, but from your two recent posts is this thread, is it safe to safe you will be leaving the thread altogether, rather than simply posting how much you hate this and that?

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I also thought it was misguided to say the least to leave that equipment and Termie remains behind in the vault.

I watched the pilot again just to be sure I wasn't missing something that the rest of you are obviously seeing but once again I found it bad, i'll watch one or two more eps with hopes of improvement, though.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Nope, i'll be sticking around awhile to see if it improves.

I AM allowed to say negative things about it, this isn't an appreciation thread on the show afterall.

 

[seanOhara]

I don't normally like the "petite women can beat up guys twice their weight" thing, but in this case it makes sense. She's a cyborg, so her muscle mass isn't relevant to her strength. There's no reason to think all the Terminators are built like Arnie or even Robert Patrick. And remember, Cameron originally wanted Lance Henriksen to play the Terminator.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

It isn't even about all Terminators looking like Arnold or Robert, I had no problem with Kristana Lokin in T3 because she actually looked like a mature woman (boy did she ever), Glau looks like a petite teenager and IMO that was a major mistake in casting for that role, she looks as if she would break if she were hit by a kid on a bike.

To add to that her performance just wasn't all that convincing, if her performance was good enough to add some heft to her character it might have made up for some of her lack of size but she was neither threatening in both appearance and general body language, I mean come on she ate a potato chip at one point lol.

She just doesn't make a good Terminator is what i'm getting at.

 

[seanOhara]

I'm still not seeing the problem. The Terminators are designed to be infiltrators; it makes sense for them to come in a wide variety of appearances (we know there are at least 101 models of the T-800). Why wouldn't one of them be a teenager?

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, that's half the point, isn't it - that she's stronger than she appears? The incongruity works for me.

Of course, the other issue is that she's probably not going to look like a teenager (even a TV teenager) for a four year run (they land in 2007 and set Judgment Day in 2011), and that might need some explaining. I'm guessing that she's more biological than previous Terminators and aging is a side-effect of that.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

It's causing a fundamental problem for me, though, I simply don't buy her as a Terminator capable of being tough enough to withstand multiple encounters with the T-800's (even if she is one), she just looks too damn delicate and fragile.

My willingness to believe in the toughness and strength of Terminators compared to their size only goes so far and IMO she's stretching it too far, Lokin worked because she looked like she was strong and in very good shape but Glau looks like she weighs 100 lbs soak and wet. It also didn't help that Glau's performance wasn't all that good.

 

[Shawn_KE]

Thought it was awful. They are trying to not be detected, so lets put John in school under the name John Reese. They've dumbed Sarah down. Sarah also thought the terminator might attack at home, so she had a special recliner chair made from kevlar. Why would a terminator hide a gun IN his leg? Just so we can see his robot leg? Also being told that Sarah murdered Dyson??? And then they send people back in time to build a time machine was just too much. And why would they stand in the middle of the street for several minutes while people take their pictures?? And since when did Terminators have the strength to overturn a bus and to break and rip through a bank vault?

The was worse than all those horrible Star Wars EU stories.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Glad you mentioned that, that whole business about the "engineer" was far too contrived and conveniant. Okay so i'm to believe that someone was involved in building the vault complete with eye scanners, time travel equipment and futuristic weapons and none of that was noticed by other builders and inspections which i'm sure banks do before approving use of the vault?

Uh huh.

I know one thing, Skynet must be getting pissed because I assume it's going to keep sending Terminator after Terminator back after John and Sarah until it nails them, I mean at some point you'd think it would go "okay, this plan clearly isn't working" lol, maybe it should send a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah's father as a kid.