Brain Dead Radio Episode 152: I'm a Big,Bright,Shining Star

[Abraham Smashington]

Rob and Ceej are back with tales of fallen soldiers, alternate versions of classic movies, and superheroes.


Our duo take a moment of silence for Sonny Landham, they both survived the eclipse, and the 90’s attitude is still alive. Rob is jealous of Ceej’s D&D games so he decides to play fantasy football for the first time ever and Ceej just doesn’t understand what the hell is going on. A punk rocker would have made a classic movie even more amazing, Rob and Ceej work on their tight 5 in the new game Comedy Night, Rob Lowe meets a famous abductee and Marvel collectible cards spur a game of “Make it a Movie!”

[Nathan]

Downloaded

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[Captain Russ]

Yo T2/T3 hot take just gave me the dry heaves.

Explain yourself Hughes!

(Billy Idol is the shit BTW)

[Nathan]

Yo T2/T3 hot take just gave me the dry heaves.

Explain yourself Hughes!

(Billy Idol is the shit BTW)

Ha, I just got to that part.

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[Nathan]

https://www.reddit.com/r/LPOTL/comme...travis_walton/

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[Nathan]

I can't give less of a shit about any comic book related stuff anymore. I just do not care.

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[Captain Russ]

Paraphrasing here, but hold on.

How many comic books don't have action these days?

How much time ya got?

[Abraham Smashington]

Yo T2/T3 hot take just gave me the dry heaves.

Explain yourself Hughes!

(Billy Idol is the shit BTW)

The ending of T3 combined with my hatred of Furlong and my love of Stahl and crush on Danes elevates it as a movie I like to watch more than T2. The action scenes are great (that freeway chase with the crane is better than any of the chases in T2) and I dug seeing proto Skynet.

It also doesn't drag ass like T2 does for me. Obviously T2 is a better crafted movie overall, but I legit love the "we're fucked no matter what" ending that T3 gave us.

[Captain Russ]

I don't think I can get on board with saying the chase in T3 is superior to those in T2, either the daylight or final nighttime sequences.

Not sure if you would agree or not, but do you feel a bit of the atmosphere is missing with the majority of T3 taking place in broad daylight? There is just a bunch smaller things in that film that feels just a bit too askew to work for me, but they're all trivial so they don't feel like nearly as big an issue as the overall problem of the story's reason for being.

The more I look at it, the less the logic of an inevitable Judgment Day works in the world of the Terminator series (before Cameron left to make bluecat movies).

I've come around to accepting Furlong as the whinging idiot he is supposed to portray from the get go who only really begins to understand the weight on his shoulders toward the end when the only thing he's fully identified and trusted in his life as a surrogate dad sacrifices itself to unburden him of what horrible events would play out should he act in his own self interest and obey John's order to stay. It is a complete arc for a fucking robot revolving around choice in altering the outcome of a possible future.

It accepts its death, understanding why it is a tool that does not belong in an optimistic future, knowing it is the correct decision that will still cause pain for those it has grown to care about.

It's the theme of the film in action and it's great. Cheesy but sincere.

That theme and the lesson regarding the heavy-handed but well-meaning concept of "NO FATE" is all undone in T3 and the whole sacrifice of not just the Terminator but every other character that died to secure a better future is undone. It all just rings as hollow and cynical. But that's just my two cents on it.

What do you think?

[Captain Russ]

I do agree on the hot take regarding the wet fart that is the Netflix Marvel output though.

Woowee it has been clunky and downright sloppy in its storytelling over the course of tens of hours of filmed "entertainment."

[Abraham Smashington]

I don't think I can get on board with saying the chase in T3 is superior to those in T2, either the daylight or final nighttime sequences.

Not sure if you would agree or not, but do you feel a bit of the atmosphere is missing with the majority of T3 taking place in broad daylight? There is just a bunch smaller things in that film that feels just a bit too askew to work for me, but they're all trivial so they don't feel like nearly as big an issue as the overall problem of the story's reason for being.

The more I look at it, the less the logic of an inevitable Judgment Day works in the world of the Terminator series (before Cameron left to make bluecat movies).

I've come around to accepting Furlong as the whinging idiot he is supposed to portray from the get go who only really begins to understand the weight on his shoulders toward the end when the only thing he's fully identified and trusted in his life as a surrogate dad sacrifices itself to unburden him of what horrible events would play out should he act in his own self interest and obey John's order to stay. It is a complete arc for a fucking robot revolving around choice in altering the outcome of a possible future.

It accepts its death, understanding why it is a tool that does not belong in an optimistic future, knowing it is the correct decision that will still cause pain for those it has grown to care about.

It's the theme of the film in action and it's great. Cheesy but sincere.

That theme and the lesson regarding the heavy-handed but well-meaning concept of "NO FATE" is all undone in T3 and the whole sacrifice of not just the Terminator but every other character that died to secure a better future is undone. It all just rings as hollow and cynical. But that's just my two cents on it.

What do you think?

I dont' necessarily agree with your opinions but I understand them. I don't see it as the sacrifices of the characters are undone in T3 only because I never bought the "NO FATE" stuff to begin with. The future war was always going to happen no matter what. It's the sticky situation you get yourself in when time travel stuff is brought to the table. One can agree that an alternate time line could see everyone happy and alive still (as Cameron's own alt ending showed) but it's the fact that even with all of the sacrifices and struggles that it's pointless in the face of the neverending abyss. Life ends and you either deal with that or you don't.

Furlong as a character was good in theory however the acting on display is not. While I was totally on board with him when I was 11, as an adult every scene with him now is just grating and in no way can I buy this kid as a future leader of the resistance. I do agree with the surrogate dad and the whole arc of the T-800 but I still enjoy even more the interactions between Stahl and the T-800 in T3. Even the stuff in daylight works for me because it shows you're never safe. Again, it may just be that I overdid it with T2 as a kid and it needs to be a while before I can revisit but anytime I do a rewatch of the series, I tend to be the most bored with the second one past a few decent scenes. I'd probably rank the entire series in regards to how much fun I have with them as:

T1>T3>Genisys>T2>T4

I legit love the schlock of Genisys and only wish they didn't hire that girl from Thrones because she can't act her way out of a paper bag.

[Captain Russ]

I feel you on some of that, as the whole "No Fate" message is open to interpretation by not only the characters but the viewer (another reason I appreciate the film).

And I totally understand T2 burnout and the difficulty and getting past the rougher edges of the film, i.e., Furlong's casting.

But the more I think about it, the less the time of day seems to really impact the credibility of the threat inherent in the T-X and becomes more a symptom of the overall problem with the establishment of such a threat from the beginning.

In T3, the T-X arrives in full view, in the storefront of a shop in Beverly Hills. T-X immediately walks casually up to some lady in her car and off-screen it is implied the lady's throat is torn out. It cuts to a cop pulling the bot over, and immediately the film makes a tonal misstep and plays the brief scene for laughs, with the T-X's enhancement of its breasts to misdirect the cop before it yet again kills off-screen. The problem here is It takes the franchise's familiar arrival scenes but doesn't really do anything with them except make jokes out of the antagonist (the Arnold jokes are way more hokey but are also tone deaf. That is not to say the whole "Bad to the Bone" scene in T2 is not also tone deaf, but I digress.). The result of this rocky start is that it puts the villain at a disadvantage from its first inception and never really becomes a fully realized threat.

For being a killbot with skills of human mimicry and infiltration, a Megaman arm cannon, AND the ability to bend any and all contemporary technology to its will, it never really set itself up to be a compelling or fully realized threat to the heroes. Had the threat of the T-X been more firmly established as credible, T3 probably would have a better reputation than it does of being an uneven film with a pretty strong ending.

I do enjoy Stahl tremendously as John Connor, as he is always extremely good at adding vulnerability to his characters while also lending a credibility to his actions that feel genuine. It's a shame about his real life problems, as I think he is a vastly underrated and underappreciated performer who got lost in the shuffle.

[Captain Russ]

The rest of the films are deeply flawed, but have merits to them that I can appreciate on either a conceptual or technical level, but I don't think I can really take much from Genisys.

[Ingrid]

Out of curiosity, are you not doing iTunes anymore? I kept waiting for this one to be on there to listen to it, but nothing's come up.

[Abraham Smashington]

sorry Ingrid. I believe the problem was due to my xml file and a mistake on the last 3 episodes. I just fixed it and re-uploaded it. I have no idea how long it takes for iTunes to access it BUT i did notice that the three missing episodes were actually showing up in iTunes prior to episode 1.