Blogical Conclusion

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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