MORE CRYBABYING FROM GEORGE LUCAS: CLAIMS HAN NEVER SHOT FIRST

Who you gunna believe? George Lucas or your lying eyes?

Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

Granted, Lucas has every right to change his films, every right to make them worse. That is his property. But this absurd stance of dismissing criticism after he alters (dramatically, in some cases) something that was so universally beloved, is truly remarkable. If it’s “just a movie” why the non-stop tweaking?

And the real problem isn’t the tweaks. Lucas is right that films get tweaked all the time. No question. The problem is that he practically forces us to purchase his inferior recuts, and only after we’ve all been stupid enough to do that, does he release the untouched originals.  This is exactly what he did with the DVD release.

If, in this latest Blu-ray release, Lucas would’ve had the decency to include the original cuts of the films, I doubt very much the backlash would be as big as it is.

There’s nothing wrong with being a profiteer. Just don’t pretend you’re something else.

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“Red Tails” is, simply put, a disappointing movie about an incredible subject.

The film tells the story  of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first all African-American flight unit in the United States military. The men and women–yes, there were female “Tuskegee Airmen”–who served in this unit were incredible individuals who overcame racism and the brutal intensity of war to become heroes during World War II.  Their story and the obstacles they overcame to become legendary figures in history, however, isn’t captured well in this patriotic but ultimately unremarkable film.

Directed by Anthony Hemingway, the story focuses on the group of young warriors eager for their chance to fight. Ambitious pilots like Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker), Joe “Lightning” Litte (David Oyelowo) and Ray “Junior” Gannon (Tristan Wilds) compose this energetic and idealistic unit. These soldiers don’t focus on the racism that has held them back. They spend their time training and dreaming about getting their chance to shine. They want an opportunity to serve their country in epic battles but are repeatedly passed over for major assignments.

Their supervisors aren’t satisfied with their missions, either. Played by Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr., Colonel A.J. Bullard and Major Emanuelle Stance want their unit to have a chance to prove itself. While Stance is their overseas commanding officer, Bullard is their D.C. liaison and must continually battle against the racist sensibilities of the scowling and perpetually displeased Colonel William Mortamus (“Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston).

In one well-done scene, the two argue about the unit, and Bullard tells the Colonel that he respects Mortamus’ uniform and rank but nothing more. That speaks volumes about the racism that these airmen encountered. They were asked to serve military leaders who often looked down on them and disrespected them. But the airmen served them knowing that they were serving their country above everything else. (more…)

The new World War II film “Red Tails” hauled in a tidy $19 million over the just-wrapped weekend.

That’s an impressive figure for a period film with no bankable stars opening against a popular franchise entry (“Underworld Awakening”) as well as Oscar bait material from Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock (“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”).

So what gives?

“Red Tails” producer George Lucas hawked the film as a patriotic ode to our World War II heroes, specifically black pilots who pushed past racism to fight for their country. But patriotism doesn’t sell, right? If it did, Hollywood would be inundating movie theaters with pro-troop films and other tales of American soldiers in heroic action.

“Red Tails” also slices into another depressing Hollywood meme. The film industry doesn’t put out many films with predominantly black casts. Lucas himself talked about this during his publicity tour for the film, even if his chatter may have been more about film promotion than stark realities. Lucas’ harangue did spark a retort from filmmaker Tyler Perry, who warned films with black casts may soon become “extinct.”

The truth is black-led films sometimes struggle to make money overseas, one reason why Hollywood is uneasy about such projects. But will the success of “Red Tails,” combined with the recent smash “The Help” start to open up the industry to the black experience?

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“President Obama stood in front of the screen… and he said this was an American tale of heroism,” Cuba Gooding Jr. recently stated during a roundtable interview about his new film, “Red Tails.” He was referring to a recent White House screening of the film that brought together members of the film crew and some of the real Tuskegee Airmen.

The patriotic film tells the story of the heroic airmen and how that first unit of African-American pilots fought valiantly for the United States during World War II.

Gooding Jr. was one of the many people who participated in interviews in Washington D.C. to promote the film. Alongside several actors from the film, director Anthony Hemingway and Dr. Roscoe Brown– a member of the actual Tuskegee Airmen– were there to talk about the production.

The actors said “Red Tails” executive producer George Lucas—who personally gave $100 million dollars to get this film made—came to the story with one overall mission. He wanted to make a movie about heroes– not victims– and he informed the cast that before the production began. During the process of making this feature, the creator of “Star Wars” was confronted with obstacles that stood in his way, including the reluctance of studios to finance a film with an all-black cast.

Such difficulties, however, didn’t include a reluctant cast.

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GEORGE LUCAS INSISTS IT’S POSSIBLE TO ‘NUKE THE FRIDGE’

Dear George,

Please see: Holes, first rule of.

Signed,
America

People wouldn’t have cared anything about the fridge thing had the rest of the movie not been so awful… and stupid. I doubt very much an inflatable life raft works like a parachute when it’s filled with people and thrown out of a plane. But we suspended disbelief for that because the third act of “Doom” made us wet our pants.

THR REVIEWS ‘RED TAILS’

The experience of black American aviators in World War II gets a whitewash in Red Tails. The story of the 996 pilots (and some 15,000 ground personnel) who distinguished themselves in the air in the face of institutional racism is a great one and, at least, will come to the attention of more people due to this long-gestating project from Lucasfilm. But every character here is so squeaky clean, and the prejudice as depicted is so toothless and easily overcome, that the film feels like a gingerly fantasy version of what, in real life, was an exceptional example of resilient trail-blazing. The tale’s considerable built-in inspirational value will move and impress black audiences of all ages and would do the same to a wider public if sufficiently promoted, but the determinedly simplistic approach will curtail interest among any viewers hungry for some real history. The anticipated low interest level for this material overseas is cited as a major reason the project took so long to get off the ground.

Related: George Lucas Heading For a Big Disappointment with ‘Red Tails’

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‘ACT OF VALOR’ TV SPOT & FEATURETTE TAKE YOU IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Today, we have a new TV spot for Act of Valor, as well as a five-minute long featurette that offers a better look at the overall filmmaking style of the project, along with the hazardous locations, up-to-date Navy technology/vehicles, and physically-exhausting combat maneuvers on display in the movie.

Act of Valor was scripted by Kurt Johnstad (300) and is reportedly based on several real-life incidents involving Navy SEALs. Those stories were thereafter reconstructed and tied together to form the film’s central narrative, which follows the Bandito Platoon as it works in collaboration with the C.I.A. and sets out to stop a global terrorist plot that threatens to result in the coordinated killing of thousands of U.S. civilians.

GEORGE LUCAS: OTHER THAN A FIFTH ‘INDIANA JONES’, I’M DONE WITH BLOCKBUSTERS

King George is butthurt and taking his ball home with him:

Lucas seized control of his movies from the studios only to discover that the fanboys could still give him script notes. “Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

In the interview Lucas acts all astonished that after he tinkered with three of the most beloved films ever made, fans got upset. And he apparently holds the opinion that we shouldn’t be upset because he has the “right” to tinker with his films.

Lucas can’t possibly be this stupid.

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To say “Star Wars” fans have a love/hate relationship with the series’ creator, George Lucas, is to state the obvious.

Heck, they made an entire film on the subject – “The People vs. George Lucas.”

Fans critical of Lucas’ incessant tinkering on his six “Star Wars” films should be comforted by the fact that Lucas has heard you. He’s just not taking your comments seriously.

Lucas, on the promotional circuit to draw attention to his latest project, the World War II film “Red Tails,” says “Star Wars” fans can only blame themselves for ending the franchise.

On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie,” Lucas tells the New York Times in a new profile, referring to YouTube fans who have re-cut his films in retaliation for the small changes he has made. “I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’”

Combine that experience with the cool reception the three “Star Wars” prequel films received in the late 90s and early 2000s, and Lucas says he’s done making new films in the canon.

“Why would I make any more,” Lucas says, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?

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Watch George Lucas pitch “Red Tails” directly to conservatives and American patriots.

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Lucas describes “Red Tails” as “very patriotic,” “very jingoistic,” “old-fashioned” and “corny.”

NewsBusters:

“I showed it to all [the studios] and they said, ‘No. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.”

When Stewart asked why, Lucas first responded, “Because it’s not green enough. They only release green movies.”

The filmmaker clarified, “It’s because it’s an all black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all. It’s one of the first all black action pictures ever made.” ….

Sadder still was how Hollywood balked given the message Lucas was trying to convey.

“I wanted to make it inspirational for teenaged boys. I wanted to show that they have heroes, they’re real American heroes, they’re patriots that helped to make the country what it is today. And it’s not glory where you have a lot of white officers running these guys into cannon fodder. It’s like a real, they were real heroes.”

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I am a filmmaker because of “Star Wars.” Plain and simple. After my first viewing of the film in 1977, I turned to my father and announced my future job plans. I was to be a Jedi Knight. Undeterred by the revelation that Jedis weren’t real, I simply moved to my back up gig; X-Wing pilot for the Rebellion.

After a longer explanation from Dad, I switched my focus to making movies. I wasted a ton of money processing Super-8 film and spent my weekends at the the local mall theater and the library. I would pour over books about filmmaking and filmmakers. While most pre-teen boys were asking their parents about the birds and the bees, I would quiz mine on how dual system audio worked.

I owe my life-long obsession with film to George Lucas. It was only fitting that he presided over my graduation from USC Film School. That’s right, Lucas and some guy named Steven Spielberg actually handed me my diploma. So, I hope that you can appreciate the inner turmoil, the momentous struggle that I have endured in deciding to write this.  However, duty compels me, and this must be said.

Lucas must be stopped.

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Is George Lucas having the last laugh?

Lucas, the visionary behind the ‘Star Wars’ franchise, insists on tweaking the original trilogy every time it hits a new media platform. And with each change, longtime ‘Star Wars’ fans rise up in near unanimous fury.

Alexandre O. Philippe, the director of the new DVD ‘The People vs. George Lucas,’ is starting to believe Lucas relishes the negative attention.

“Some of the things Lucas does to this day make me wonder … I feel like he’s enjoying triggering reactions from his fans. I see no other good reason for him to do what he does,” Philippe says. “The changes [to the franchise] are ridiculous. I don’t know of a single fan who says, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”

‘The People vs. George Lucas’ investigates the love/hate relationship between Lucas and a galaxy of ‘Star Wars’ faithful. They adore Lucas’ space opera and the colorful characters inhabiting it, but they despise how he won’t let the films exist in their original form. And don’t get fans started on Jar Jar Binks, the comic relief introduced in 1999’s ‘Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.’

‘George Lucas’ showcases the nuttier side of the modern fanboy, but it also tackles meatier themes like a director’s responsibility to the public and if a beloved movie belongs to the filmmaker or the culture at large.

Philippe says the ‘Star Wars’ films had a “profound” impact on him as a child, and while he floated away from the franchise as a young adult it always remained in the back of his mind. So when Lucas re-released the original ‘Star Wars’ movies in Special Editions – complete with enhanced special effects and small but significant story edits – fans like Philippe blew a galactic gasket.

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Apparently, after selling somewhere around 500,000 copies to unsuspecting families everywhere, the creators of the video game “Star Wars: The Old Republic” have decided to add same-sex romances to the online feature.

Say goodbye to your child’s innocence.

Via Shack News:

Though Star Wars: The Old Republic has wooing, romance, and all that soppy stuff one would expect from a BioWare game, the developer had so far said that the MMORPG would only allow coupling with NPCs of the opposite sex, not same-sex pairings. Delightfully, it’s now changed its mind, announcing that same-sex romance will be added post-launch.

The revelation comes from an official statement posted on the game’s official forums (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun): 

Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO [massively multiplayer online game]  of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature. Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options. 

BioWare does seem to be revising history slightly, as its past talk of same-sex relationships in The Old Republic made no mention of any plans or desire for them. “Same-sex romances are not in Star Wars: The Old Republic,” producer Cory Butler answered curtly when asked about same-sex romances on BioWare’s own ‘BioWare Pulse‘ show at Gamescom in August, without the slightest hint that there was more to it.

With very minor edits for clarity, a BH reader sent the following email with their own personal take and opinion on the matter:

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SPIELBERG PROMISES NO MORE TINKERING WITH HIS FILMS

During an audience Q & A, director Steven Spielberg got to the heart of the matter (and also kinda dinged his pal George Lucas) when he said that altering a film after the fact is “robbing the people of their memories of the movie.” That’s exactly right. As I’ve mentioned before, if a filmmaker wants to tinker, fine. Spielberg rejiggered “E.T.” for the 2002 DVD release but did the right thing and also included the original theatrical cut. No one can argue with that. But I will say that it’s a good sign he regrets touching the film at all.

Forget the prequels, forget Jar-Jar, forget “NOOOOooo” — forget all that. What George Lucas is doing by selfishly refusing to allow one of the most feverish fan bases in film history to own an original cut of the first “Star Wars” trilogy, is mean-spirited and selfish.

Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t make it right.

Moreover, why mess with the original trilogy, which was almost perfect? If Lucas wants to make something better, “Howard the Duck” might be a good place to start. Fix what needs fixing, not what isn’t broken.

P.S. You’ll like this.

TRIBUTE TO CLIFF ROBERTSON

The A.V. Club offers up an excellent run-through of the Oscar-winner’s career. Whenever I think of Robertson, though, it’s always as the sinister CIA chief in “Three Days of the Condor.” His final monologue/explanation as to why the Redford character (and therefore the movie itself) might be a little too morally self-righteous for anyone’s own good, is unforgettable. First off, you don’t expect THE Cliff Robertson to be a bad guy. It really was a piece of genius casting by director Sydney Pollack. And the actor sells that final moment so well it adds an unsettling but very satisfying and intelligent layer to what was already a satisfying and intelligent film. For my money, that’s the scene that locks down “Condor” as a classic.

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BUMMER: STARZ ENDING STREAMING DEAL WITH NETFLIX

As of Feb. 2012, Netflix will no longer stream Starz, which means a lot of newer movies won’t be available.

Bad timing with the new Netflix price increase starting today. Starz content was a big attraction.

Related: Netflix stock took a hit.

More: If you want to understand the power of streaming, Starz turned down a $300 million  a year deal up from $30 million last year, and…

Starz was looking for tiered pricing, which would have seen subscribers of Netflix, led by CEO Reed Hastings, pay more than the standard $8 per month for content from the premium TV provider.

That is in line with comments from Starz executives who said repeatedly this year that they were looking to charge Netflix more in line with cable and satellite TV distributors, which have seen the streaming video service as a reason for consumers to cut the pay TV cord.

Count me among those eager to cut the pay TV cord.

FANS CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF GEORGE LUCAS’ ALTERED ‘STAR WARS SAGA’ ON BLU-RAY

Couldn’t agree with this more:

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I liked this movie better when it was called “Tuskegee Airmen” and wasn’t all CGI-ey. And I really liked it when it was called “Glory.”

To be clear, I’m criticizing a tired story, a tired plot device, a tired … everything. The men and women who risked their lives to protect our freedoms deserve as much cinematic love as they can get, but isn’t there a story about the Tuskegee Airmen where the enemy is Germany or Japan — that isn’t the same story we’ve seen a hundred times already?

Think back to your summer vacations growing up. You probably took a few trips with your family, then moved on to a lame summer job working in a mall or flipping burgers. Some of those memories are probably preserved in home movies that no one – not even you – would want to watch again.

On the other hand, Lincoln Heights resident Chris Strompolos spent his teen summers being shot at, dragged under a truck, and chased by a giant boulder. He had his first kiss, fought off Arabs and Indians, and eventually saved the planet from Nazi domination. The best part is, he captured it all on video and for the past five years, people all over the planet have been clamoring to see the footage.

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If his adventures sound familiar, that’s because Strompolos was starring in a remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” reenacting the adventures of Indiana Jones. The difference is “Raiders” was directed by the biggest director on the planet, Steven Spielberg, while Strompolos was taking orders from his best friend, Eric Zala, who is only a year older than he is. They were also hindered by the difference in their budgets ($18 million for Spielberg’s, $5000 for the boys’), and having to shoot their entire movie on the fly over seven summers in the backwoods of Mississippi.

On May 14, 2008,  nearly 20 years after they finished production in 1989, Strompolos and Zala reunited with their friend Jayson Lamb, who served as editor/cinematographer and effects whiz on the film, to present the Los Angeles debut of “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” on Hollywood’s ultimate big screen at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. The event was a benefit for the Festival of Children Foundation, but it followed five years of whirlwind screenings at film festivals all over the planet and a personal letter raving about the film from Spielberg himself. (more…)

–WOODY ALLEN FINALLY LETS DOWN HIS GUARD FOR PBS– 

Heaven help me, I love Woody Allen. And not just his “older, funnier” stuff. I hung in there straight through to 2003’s “Anything Else.” It wasn’t until “Melinda and Melinda” that the 75 year-old filmmaker lost my rabid loyalty. “Match Point,” however, was a major comeback — a brilliant film. “Scoop” was weak but entertaining. “Cassandra’s Dream” gets better with each viewing. Unfortunately, although I haven’t seen his latest and biggest hit “Midnight and Paris,” the three films prior to that weren’t even watchable.

When you go back into the ’70s and ’80s, though, you’re talking about a dozen or so masterpieces and near-masterpieces; movies I watch again and again and again. Allen’s impact on film is forty years-old now and and his extraordinary ability to pull a success out of nowhere just when just about everyone says he’s washed up, has been going on for two decades.  My guess is that his impact will live for as long as he does.  

And so it’s good news that he’s agreed to cooperate for a retrospective documentary honoring his work. Regardless of what you think of Allen personally (and I don’t think much of him), he’s been a major part of the cultural landscape for over forty years now — and something of a mystery. Like many famous artists, Allen can be a loathsome character, but the work stands on its own and will for as long as there’s a civilization.

Now, if someone could just convince Allen to do DVD commentary…

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Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

In many popular narratives of the period, it was the Baby Boomers (born 1943-1960) who “ruined” the movies. Here’s the pretentious film snob summary of the death of Hollywood’s alleged second Golden Age, as popularized by Peter Biskind. The seventies were filled with bold, dark art and transgressive intellectualism. Then the greedy Baby Boomers – like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas – made “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” All of a sudden Hollywood did not want to make serious, grown-up pictures. Now it was the age of blockbusters so simple that 3-year-olds can summarize them.

It was the 1980s when Boomer Blockbuster filmmaking would arrive in the event pictures of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. We see this tendency further in the films of arch-Boomers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. For a definition of Boomer cinema just look at the output of their company Imagine Entertainment. These aren’t the New Wave-influenced pictures of Roger L. Simon’s generation.

It was the Boomers who also gave us our most strident and simpleminded cinematic leftists: Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore. Think about these three careers. Over the past 30 years have any of them shifted an inch in their political thinking? Of course not and neither have most Boomers who are still arguing over sex, race, and the Vietnam War as though it were still 1975. (more…)

Living in California and having as friends many artists, writers, and poets (all of them, to a one, blissfully, unreflectively liberal), I often have the opportunity to hear them wax poetic about the Golden Age of their lives: the late 1960s/early 1970s hippie scene centered around San Francisco/Berkeley. The drugs were amazing, the sex constant and unreserved, the spirit of joie de vivre and carpe diem all-encompassing.

After listening to these misty-eyed reveries, I usually press them with what, to anyone else, would be the obvious question: If it was all so great, why did they leave the Haight and the Castro and all of their associated communes and bong-fueled revolutions behind, and fall into a more conventional lifestyle elsewhere? Why not continue living in what was, according to them, the closest thing to paradise on earth imaginable?

The answer, boiled down, is usually some variant of “I realized the lifestyle was killing me — that if I didn’t get away I would soon be dead.” I’ve heard tales of bad drug trips, violence and paranoia, anarchism and terrorism, and any number of utterly disgusting and disease-ridden sexual perversions. Promising paradise and delivering nightmares is as good a definition of socialism as any (socialism, communism, liberalism, progressivism — call it what you will, it’s all the same poison, just delivered in different doses and by different means). Every few decades a new group of idealistic young fools attempt to stage a new revolt (“Yes, we can!”) in an attempt to overturn the wisdom of their forefathers and the immutable laws of reality, and each time they end up like Icarus, staging spectacular belly-flops into cesspools of unintended consequences.

Examine the cinema of the era, and you’ll see this whole thing play out again and again. Easy Rider, Billy Jack, Vanishing Point, The French Connection, Apocalypse Now!, and so many others glorified nihilism, hedonism, revolution, and hopelessness. Again and again we were treated to, on the one hand, liberal myths of heroes striving mightily to fight, escape, or ignore evil conservative society only to be mercilessly extinguished, and on the other stories of conservatives discovering the corruption and emptiness infecting their base values and ideals.

One of the things I am most grateful for in my life is that I came of age not in the late Sixties, when America was descending into this chaos, but in the early Eighties, when Ronald Reagan was dragging us out of it. (more…)

Cleaning out some old books in preparation for an impending move, I came across some items that reminded me about how precipitous the drop in the quality of the moviegoing experience has been.

Believe it or not, there was a time when it was a regular thing to get a printed movie program whenever you went to an A-list film. These booklets would have photographs, cast and crew biographies, interviews, and information on the production, music and special effects. Not only did they act as a nifty souvenir, but they increased the appreciation the audience had for the film they were watching and for the art of cinema in general. In a way, they were a sort of analog version of the special features you typically find on DVDs these days.

Movie programs, like so much else that used to play a part in luring audiences to the theater, had largely died out by the time I reached the Age of Attendance in the mid-’70s. But luckily, I arrived at the perfect time to catch a final brief renaissance in the form of the Spielberg/Lucas blockbusters of the late ’70s and early ’80s. (more…)

Few franchises have had a steeper fall than the Alien series. In 1992 Alien³ appeared to near-universal derision. James Cameron nailed the essential problem when he said, “[director David] Fincher pissed me off by killing off Newt, Hicks, and Bishop, essentially trashing the entire ending of Aliens in the first few minutes of Alien³.” Absolutely correct. In the place of Cameron’s great characters, Fincher’s film substituted Sigourney Weaver’s wacky desire to have her character die, use no guns, and (in effect) “make love” to the aliens. The result was catastrophic.

And yet is that very different from the disastrous decisions Cameron himself has made since Aliens appeared in 1986? Take his Terminator franchise — the director’s initial script note when first conceiving of the sequel read, “Young John Connor and the Terminator who comes back to befriend him.” Cameron’s buddy and fellow Terminator scribe Bill Wisher remembers that “The idea of a boy and the Terminator seemed real funny to me, and we both had a good laugh about it. But after we finished laughing, Jim looked at me seriously and said this was the story we ought to do.”

For those of us who thought that a Cameron-helmed Terminator 2 would build on the space marine look-and-feel introduced in the first film and perfected in Aliens — in the process bringing the story into that way-cool dystopian future, perhaps with Sarah Connor traveling forward in time to somehow reunite with a still-living Reese and change history for the better — Cameron’s decision to make Arnold the good guy and build the movie around a Hollywoodized moppet was the worst possible outcome.

It wasn’t just the decision to make one of the greatest villains in movie history into a joke that ruined Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it was the simplistic preachiness underlying the plot. Joe Morton, the actor who portrayed the doomed Miles Dyson in the film, recalls that, “[Cameron] told me how Terminator 2 was going to be an anti-nuclear film and that it would show authority figures as the real Terminators. I had read the script and so I remember laughing and telling him ‘Sure Jim. I think kids are going to walk out of the theater after seeing this movie, saying ‘Did you see the way the Terminator shot that guy in the knees?’ But Jim insisted that it would be much more than that.” (more…)