Between Reviews: The Day the Eighties Died
THE DAY THE EIGHTIES DIED
It’s bad enough that the new ‘Terminator’ movie annihilates memories of the original, and then Michael Jackson dies. What a terrible time for the thirtysomethings of today!
JUL 5, 2009 – THE GENIUS OF THE TERMINATOR MOVIES is the simplicity of the premise: the chase. In the film that launched the franchise – simply called The Terminator, and simply one of the greatest B-movies ever made – Arnold Schwarzenegger was the chaser, and his robotic inexorability was defined by Brad Fiedel’s now-classic score, a quintet of metallic clangs suggesting steel jaws of death snapping at the heels of the hapless Linda Hamilton. Schwarzenegger evolved from chaser to cuddly protector in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a sequel whose title hinted at the increased ambition in its conception. We were no longer in the realm of the microbudget B-movie. Judgment Day may have been a B-movie at heart, but the liquid-metal special effects raised the film to the level of sacred pop-art – it felt, at the time, like a religious experience, as if we were witnessing the rebirth of cinema.
The third film, freed from the directorial autonomy of James Cameron, returned squarely and unapologetically to B-movie land. (Even the title felt less like creative statement than commercial consideration. It was called, very simply, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.) But in the hands of the talented Jonathan Mostow – who’d made his bones as a solid journeyman, with sturdy B-movies like Breakdown and U-571 – it was a dependably no-nonsense entertainer. While it didn’t change the face of filmmaking, as its predecessor did, it knew what it had to do – lure back the faithful; keep the franchise running; send Schwarzenegger off in style – and it accomplished this with tongue pressed firmly against cheek. Why else would you have a muscle-strapped man-giant running scared of a woman with far greater powers of destruction?
That was the success of the sequels. The newness was in reimagining the nature of the chaser – the molten shape-shifter in Judgment Day, the quintessential femme fatale in Rise of the Machines – but the premise was left untouched. It was still someone on the run from someone who wanted to run them down. All that, however, changes with the fourth entry in the series, which is rather ponderously named Terminator Salvation, as if something as down-and-dirty as Terminator 4: The Rebels Strike Back would be an affront to its ambition. Like its even-numbered predecessor, the title aspires to grandiose myth – salvation! – and even the cast and crew (Christian Bale! Helena Bonham Carter! Jane Alexander! Danny Elfman!) appear to have cherry-picked with an eye on staving off the hints of disreputability and desperation that usually accompany late-in-the-day sequels.
We’re not in this for the profits but the prestige, they seem to be saying – and thus they misguidedly abandon the thrills of the chase for something far less fun, far more grim and grimy. They’ve reimagined the Terminator movie as a war epic, set in bombed-out battlefields populated with soldiers streaked with soot. The future of humankind was at stake in the earlier installments too, but this is the first Terminator movie that forgets to have any laughs en route to doomsday. The token attempts at humour appear to have been slipped in solely as nostalgic reminders of what-once-was. (There are reprises of signature lines such as, “Come with me if you want to live,” and “I’ll be back.” And no, they don’t even go near, “Hasta la vista, baby!”) Otherwise, the film takes its cues from its star’s surname – it’s bowed down by bale, and by boredom.
The one time the theatre erupted in cheer was when a prototype of a Terminator in the form of Schwarzenegger made an appearance. In that instant, we were transported back from the deadening nihilism of the modern-day superhero-movie to the irony-free delights of the eighties, which faced another blow with the passing of Michael Jackson. So much has been written about the King of Pop – so many reminiscences, so many reevaluations of his life and music – that there, really, isn’t much to add. This is not a great singer we’re talking about, someone like Frank Sinatra, say, who could phrase a song in so many ways, he’d make you think each iteration was a brand-new creation. Nor was he a great composer, in the sense of the word that leads us to imagine musical forms being shattered and then created anew from the shards.
Jackson was a synthetic genius who, like none other, channeled the zeitgeist of a decade ruled by synthetic pop – and I say this with respect and admiration, as an unabashed fan of the music of the eighties. (Thriller is one of the great albums of all time, period.) It isn’t easy to embody an era with everything you do, but Jackson, for a while, managed it effortlessly – whether it was in the magpie-like melding of funk and rock and pop and soul set to the most infectious rhythm loops imaginable, or in the high style of the music videos that were really miniature pieces of cinema, or simply in his signature dance moves that defied, simultaneously, the imagination and gravity. It may have been an unbelievably lightweight decade, all spangly artifice, but Jackson stood as an unimpeachable symbol to all of us who knew that, sometimes, style was substance.
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Yes, the juxtaposition of terminator and Micheal Jackson certainly echoed the eighties-a time when people danced to the anthem “Greed is good” from another favourite “wall street”
The King is gone and sadly just makes one feel older not any more wiser!
cheers,
A
I don’t know when Terminator 2 came out, but that’s the only Terminator film I have seen. It was in 1994 after our 12th board exams some of us went to Sterling in South Bombay and bought 8 tickets in black from an old lady outside on the street. Watching a movie like Terminator 2 sitting in the first row stall of a cinema hall like the Sterling is an experience. Believe me.
About MJ, it should suffice to say that for some of us who grew up in the early-80s Bombay, western music meant Michael Jackson. People who have no interest in western music, if they know one name it would be MJs.
Talking of the 80s, I have always felt that the generation which went to college in the 80s in India was a unique generation. I like to think of them as the best, but I am not sure how to define ‘best’. It was an innocent generation. A generation which sang ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ in college lifts, a generation which dropped the bell-bottoms and took to denim. A generation which rode the Yamraj. A generation which adored Kumar Gaurav and had the sense to recognise Aamir Khan for the benefit of a future generation. This was the generation which enjoyed the brief time in India’s history where TV serials made sense.
And this was the generation which came before what is perhaps the biggest event-changer in post-Independence India – the 1991 budget. India was not the same after that (you could add the 1992 mandir-mosque thing as well). The generation which preceded the MTV-generation.
I went to school in the 80s. I would have loved to go to college then.
Should I be catching the last train to the coast?
BR:
Wasn’t Madonna just as slick a symbol of pop candy stuffed into a synthesizer?
Material girl,Like a Virgin, and La Isla Bonita were already manuals in the art of selling through direct video.
Ray of Light(her best?) came out in 1998 – I wonder if there would have been room for it amongst the Duran Durans and Lionel Ritchies, Elton Johns, and Michael Boltons.
(All of whom,incidentally,were around to sell CDs with Britney)
I think the 80s are more robust then they’re given credit for; if nowhere else, they still survive in the elevators of the Marriott and JP Morgan Chase.:)
An information to all movie lovers out there(a sad news):
One of the best
script writer/director of malayalam cinema,shri A.K.LOHITADAS(55), passed away last sunday at a hospital in kochi.He was the greatest script writer(probably along with Sreenivasan) to have appeared in malayalam cinema after the likes of legends such as M.T Vasudevan Nair and late Padmarajan. He has written script for many unforgettable true classics like Kireedam(1989),Thaniyavarthanam(1986),Bharatham(’91),Kamaladalam,amaram(’92),His Highness Abdullah,venkalam and so on.
As a director too he gave a few gem of a movies like Bhootakannadi(1997),Karunyam(’98) and Kanmadam(’98).
Some of these movies got national and even international attention.
He has also directed a tamil movie, Kastooriman,with Meera jasmine in lead, which was a remake of his mal movie of same name.
I decided to put this here because i’m a regular reader in this forum and found there are many true movie lovers out here.Anybody who’d got to see Lohi’s movies(especially the ones he’s written script for) are never likely to forget the movie and their characters in their lifetime.He was a master in creating emotions that can touch the deepest parts of a human heart.
A great and irreplaceable loss to malayalam cinema and Indian cinema as a whole…
BR,would like to know if you got to see any of his movies?
A: The “King” is Elvis, no?
Arif Attar: “Should I be catching the last train to the coast?” So who are the three men you admire the most? Ha!
Thanks for that nostalgic ramble. I agree that those of us who went to school in the 80s were a good mix of the east and the west. (There’s a nice slangy phrase in Tamil for these characters: “rendungattan.”) Whenever someone asks me, “But how have you seen all these old films,” I have to tell them it’s nothing and that there are many others who grew up with DD who were simultaneously exposed to Indian/foreign films. The same applies for music. Ilayaraja and RD Burman’s latest tapes were as eagerly awaited as those from, say, (okay, don’t make fun of me now) Pet Shop Boys or MJ or the mindblowing Topgun soundtrack. And because of Chitrahaar and Sugam Sangeet and Vividh Bharatiyin Varthaka Oliparappu, we knew the music of MSV and SDB and the older masters too.
I wonder why the kids today don’t know as much about Indian movies/music (except the latest stuff). Is it because they don’t care? Is it because they don’t have the time, given that all their time is spent on Facebook and email and stuff? It it because it’s not cool? Is it because they don’t have a DD equivalent, and the Sony Max-es of the world only play films from the past decade? I know I’m doing a lot of old-fart generalising, but…
Krishna: Yes, she was, but did anything she do come close to matching the impact of “Thriller?” And please don’t club Elton John with Michael Bolton just because of the former’s crappy “Candle in the Wind” phase
The man’s a gen-you-wine rock star. Rent “Tommy” and see his knock-the-lights-out performance of “Pinball Wizard” if you want to know what I mean. Or simply listen to his great 70s albums.
Sangeet: I have heard his name in connection with the movies you mentioned. I’ve seen a few of them. I remember watching “Amaram” (in Safire theatre) with a Mallu friend and chewing his head off asking for the translation of each minute.
>>What a terrible time for the thirtysomethings of today
fortysomethings, don’t you think? the thirtysomethings of today must’ve either been in nappies when “Dont stop” came out, or warbling Preeti Sagar nursery rhymes when “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” were hits. You kids, i tell you, want to claim our youth as well as yours.
I never thought the death of a “celebrity” or famous person would ever effect me in a personal way, but with MJ I honestly feel like I lost someone I knew. Yes, I feel THAT sad.
I was a late 80s baby, so I grew up in the 90s and I think he was almost at the height of his popularity in India during the early 90s. I remember that as a kid, he was pretty much all I listened to. I won’t say I was “obsessed” because that sounds negative somehow, but I was a very devoted little six year old fan. I knew all the lyrics, attempted every dance move and my parents thought it was cute how much I loved him and the music.
Such a huge part of my childhood and it feels like it’s gone. I was so hoping his tour and new album would work out, but guess it wasn’t meant to be. There will never be another like him. RIP.
We were driving down last night and saw the July 4th fireworks going off. Pulled over to the shoulder to watch them, when the car stereo suddenly burst into “I’ll be there”. It was a sweet, yet sad, magical moment.
I wish you had done a separate piece on him.
…and Oliyum Oliyum, chhaya geet and aapki farmayish!! Most of the songs I know today are thanks to these.
I was born in the mid-80s, so I wasn’t too conscious of his Thriller mania, but I still remember seeing Bad on MTV as a toddler. Eventually I bought all his albums on LP and cassette (this was before we had a CD player). I bought Dangerous on cassette when it came out, and a few months later my family visited India, and I remember being surprised at how my cousins liked Michael Jackson too. I didn’t realize how his popularity reached worldwide until then.
School days were in a rural village of TN during 80s. There were quite a few standard englees museek tunes played for the school annual day function, during which a couple of “hip” boys used to perform the break-dance (hands hanging loose, rope movements, kamal’s “raja kaiya vacha” movement etc.) routines. Never had a interest in knowing what that music or source was… (was more interested in seeing whether indian dance would win against these western performances). It was later when someone performed something new to the school – called “moon walk”, got really interested. The term itself was for some reason catchy and the act was cool. For the first time got interested in “that” museek, tried imitating moon walk in bare foot on sand, heard the term “Michael Jackson”. He should be really moon-walking now. hmm.. those were the days..
I remember having amazing conversations and friends who shared Ayan Rand, art house flicks,sing song sessions from the oldie-goldies and overall a very interesting childhood…teaching and interacting with kids these days, there is so much of info overload but very little memory associated with it
ahh…the ramblings of an old f..ig!
thanks Br..for a trip down the lane!
and elvis and micheal are both rockin heaven!
Truth be told, I enjoyed T:S. I can’t say I loved it (too formulaic for it to be memorable), but I thought it did a good job of driving the narrative ahead.
For me, the SF element of T:2 resonated very strongly. SkyNet, robots vs. humans et al. I felt the movie caught that apprehension quite well. If you see it as a chase, yes, it disappoints.
More than the obvious moments, my favorite was Christian Bale blasting GnR’s “You could be mine”. Subtlest in-joke in the film
How would you define a B-movie? Terminators 1&2 after all had interesting ideas, were smartly written and were fantastic entertainers overall. Both Rise of the Machines and this new one are wretched bores.
Akasuna no Sasori: You seem to imply that a B-movie is a bad movie. Far from it. A film can be smartly written, fantastically entertaining, and still a B-movie. Case in point: the Tarantino oeuvre.
I think Akasuna is asking as to how Terminator can be classified as a B movie in the first place. I am not sure either. what is the criteria?