400 Screens, 400 Blows - Smooth Terminator
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
In the late summer of 1993, all serious movie geeks had their eyes on two movies. The first one was Hard Target, which marked the American debut of the great Hong Kong action director John Woo (whose great Hard-Boiled had recently been in theaters), and the second was True Romance, which was the second screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, whose Reservoir Dogs had been out the year before. I enjoyed both of the new movies just fine, but I kept thinking: what if these two productions had simply switched directors? Tony Scott could have directed the latest Jean-Claude Van Damme snoozer (and hence I wouldn't have bothered to pay money to see it) and then John Woo could have taken over the Tarantino screenplay! How cool would that have been? True Romance would have been the greatest movie, ever!
Something vaguely similar happened this summer, but to a much lesser degree. I'm talking J.J. Abrams directing Star Trek (218 screens), and McG directing Terminator Salvation (81 screens). What if they had switched places? Neither one of them is any great shakes as a director, but I'd put my money on McG as the more interesting of the two. OK. Hear me out. Star Trek had a terrific script, with a really unique idea; it's perhaps the smartest series reboot I've yet seen, but Abrams' clunky direction drove the action to a dead halt at least half a dozen times. On the other hand, the screenplay for Terminator Salvation was pretty much unsalvageable, but McG put together some truly dazzling set pieces, using clean, fast gliding cameras to catch the movement and space of the action scenes.
There are really only a few living Hollywood directors who can do action well, and Abrams is not one of them. His camera does the usual shaky-thing, which usually indicates that he doesn't know what he's doing and he's covering up for it. (He's trying to simulate excitement without actually creating it.) Abrams has only directed one other feature film, Mission: Impossible III (2006), which was by far the weakest of the series. On television, he has given us "Felicity," which bored me within ten minutes, and "Alias," which I watched for a few episodes before I noticed something. In an Abrams production, there are no low points; there's no ebb and flow, no rhythm. Everything is a high-pitched, hysterical high point. Everything is the most dramatic it can possibly be, all the time. I got bored of this monotony quickly, and when I tried to watch "Lost," I noticed the same thing and gave up before the end of the first episode. I know everyone thinks Abrams is a genius now, but at one point David E. Kelley and Aaron Sorkin were considered geniuses too.
McG's last film, We Are Marshall, was one of the worst films of 2006 -- far worse even than Abrams' Mission: Impossible III -- and his only two other feature films are Charlie's Angels (2000) and the universally loathed Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003). If I haven't aggravated everyone enough up to this point, let me just say that I like both Angels films, mainly for the fluid way they move; they're slick and fast and clean and light. They're built well, and they understand space and flow and motion, regardless of how stupid the writing or the characters might be. So picture this: we give McG the good, solid Star Trek script and let him slip it into gear. And then to Abrams we pass on Terminator Salvation, where its humorless characters and abysmal writing would have been a better match.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
9-07-2009 @ 3:39PM
Chad said...
LOST is one of television's greatest series. M:I3 was by far the best of the series (you're beloved John Woo's was easily the worst). The Angels films were deplorable... need I go on?
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9-07-2009 @ 3:56PM
matt d. said...
WOW you are so far off here, its just mind blowing...
MI3 by far the worst of the trilogy? john woo to direct true romance? shaky cam automatically means you cant film action? ummm you know bourne and saving private ryan pretty much started that right?
i do like it when i can see the action but star trek would not have been better off with mcg, and the ACTION scenes wouldnt have either, yeah maybe some cooler moves and beats and some nicer shots, but the ridiculousness level would have been skyrocketed as well, and thats not a trade you want to make... like christian bale just getting thrown around by a terminator, wouldnt you think a terminator would just walk up grab your throat and squeeze rather than throw you 20 ft. everytime so you can shoot it back or run away? and what about marcus and his axe jump to the ship and so forth nonoononononononon no....
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9-07-2009 @ 5:55PM
Evan said...
I'm pretty sure the reason the script for Star Trek was better than Terminators is because of Abrams. If McG had balls he'd order a complete rewrite from scratch instead of trying to fix the shit that was written by the abysmal Catwoman writers.
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9-07-2009 @ 4:05PM
Rose said...
Wow. If you can't make it through the brilliant pilot episode of Lost, I'm not sure I can trust your opinion. Just wow.
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9-07-2009 @ 4:31PM
Wayne said...
Well stated, Rose.
9-07-2009 @ 4:54PM
Michael Byng said...
Wow. Dead wrong sir. Dead wrong.
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9-07-2009 @ 5:47PM
Jarrod said...
Mission Impossible 3 was the weakest film of that series? What have you been smoking? The trilogy is not exactly the pinnacle of modern filmmaking but Abram's entry easily bested Woo's Cruise-a-thon in the 2nd of the franchise. Abram's is by far the better filmmaker than McG. Abram's has directed TV drama for years - some of the best episodes of Alias (an action oriented show) and pilots for Lost and Fringe, again dramatic TV with a high degree of action set pieces. I don't worship at the altar of JJ (let's face it, Lost should've ended two years ago) but McG is by FAR the weaker filmmaker in that pairing. Simply put: name me a McG film that fired on all cylinders and worked as a film, that wasn't 'Charlies Angels'? He's a commercial's director but he isn't a storyteller.
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9-08-2009 @ 4:02AM
Yiannos said...
I completely agree with all the above comments! I think that the best English-speaking film John Woo has made is Face Off, and that is no masterpiece! He has also made several average ones and a few terrible ones too (Paycheck?? hello!! ).
Thank god for making the studio give Mi:III to Abrams! The second was one of the most boring films I have ever seen. The last fist fight is so fake, I was about to cry from boredom!
Star Trek is one of the best action films of the year, Lost is in my opinion the best drama show that has ever been produced and luckily for everyone, True Romance was a great film because of Tony Scott!
This article is not a joke, right?
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9-07-2009 @ 6:36PM
Kevin said...
Yeah, I'm on board with just about every other comment here. You're wrong to the point of almost offending me.
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9-07-2009 @ 7:18PM
Chris said...
Interesting. I like the fact hat you've clearly understood that you're going to piss a lot of people off with this post and you waded in anyway. And while I don't agree with your conclusions, you do make some nice points:
McG has some skill, probably far more than cinephiles give him credit for. Sure, his films (as a director and producer) are slick, packaged and over-produced, but at least you know what you're getting. He's a decent TV producer (Chuck and Supernatural are two of his projects) who occasionally bites off more than he can chew as a director. Having said that, aside from some really weird pacing in the middle, I thought Terminator: Salvation had a lot going for it.
J.J. Abrams does get ahead of himself sometimes and believes his own press. There are fans of his that put him at the same level as, say, Joss Whedon, which he clearly isn't. But still, he's got skill as well.
I'm a little mystified as to your calling MI:3 the worst of the series. While the films have all been fun, and generally OK, none of them has lived up to each individual director's potential. And until MI:3, none of them remotely resembled the TV show, which was a shame. Yes, it was a big budget version of Alias. But since Alias is kind of a "Mission: Impossible" remake anyway, I'm OK with it.
With Abrams, his TV work (mostly as a producer, since he handed Lost and Fringe over to others fairly quickly on the creative front) is generally B+ work: occasionally hitting the A- level (Lost, Fringe), but usually living at the B (Felicity) or B- level (What About Brian, Six Degrees, etc.). That said, not a bad track record. And I can usually count on being entertained.
But I like the concept of switching directors and imagining what could have been. For my money, I would have loved to see Fight Club with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton switching roles.
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9-07-2009 @ 7:36PM
Thiago said...
I watched True Romance other day and I thought it was pretty annoying. Change Tony Scott for John Woo would only make the film worse.
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9-07-2009 @ 8:21PM
jim said...
It seems obvious that, recently, the writers for this site have been instructed to make outrageous statements in an effort to see who can draw the most comments. I guess this has replaced the indefensible "movies I'll never see" writeups.
Now they don't have to wait for a troll to start a flame war any more, they can just toss out a grenade and watch the collateral damage.
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9-08-2009 @ 9:20AM
Erik Davis said...
Hey Jim,
The writers of this site haven't been instructed to do anything. This is Jeff's weekly column, and he decides what to write about each week, not us.
We would never instruct anyone to favor a certain opinion because it isn't popular and would piss a lot of people off. Why would we do that, again? Because we like people trashing our writers, our site and our opinions? Yeah ... um, no.
Everyone feels differently about everything. If you don't agree with a writer, then feel free to skip the post or share your opinion in the comments section.
We like debate, not hate.
9-07-2009 @ 9:33PM
Loc said...
Weird...but some "interesting" ideas...Wouldn't mind seeing that...but, it's just pontificating...No such thing would happen...
But stiLL...Fun to think about...Who "cares" whether his "claims" are Outrageous or not...
It's HIS opinion...we'll just say he has some "interesting" thoughts on things...Whether or not they're REAL...
Doesn't matter...very interesting...indeed, heh...
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9-07-2009 @ 10:43PM
Jey said...
Right off the bat, you can probably guess that I obviously am with the rest of the posters in not disagreeing with just about everything in this article.
I'm not mad, because I am just so confused by everything that was presented in this article.
What confuses me the most is saying that the Charlie's Angels movies are "fluid." You're talking, but you're not really saying anything.
I actually don't loathe McG at all, because I think he's an interesting director that is actively trying to avoid becoming as shallow as Michael Bay, even though he is very capable of being a technical wizard and flashy director of action sequences.
However, I consider JJ Abrams to be a more balanced director that is capable of entertaining General Audiences in the vein of a Steven Spielberg-summer-blockbuster-type of way. That's precisely the type of tone that is required for a reboot of an IP like Star Trek; it needed to be reacquainted with the masses all over again.
With that said, JJ Abrams is probably as good right now as he's ever going to get; while McG has the capability of being better IF he tries to let go of old MTV-audience-friendly habits.
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9-08-2009 @ 12:27AM
Sean Stangland said...
OK. There's just too much to say about this piece.
1. J.J. Abrams has almost nothing to do with "Lost." He directed the pilot and introduced the basic idea of a mysterious island to what was originally a basic survival story. But Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse call the shots, and plot the mythology.
2. I loved "Star Trek" and hated "Terminator Salvation," but I find it laughable to say that "Trek" had a great script. Did it have good dialogue that was well-served by a perfect cast? Yes. But that plot ... Ugh. Everything that happens depends on getting the captain off the ship, causing a chain reaction that promotes a bunch of young cadets to senior positions on what is allegedly Starfleet's flagship. Then there's the chain of coincidences that lead Kirk to Spock Prime, then to Scotty. Then there's the Enterprise catching up with Nero's ship just before he lowers the drill, even though they were following different courses for a period of time long enough for Kirk's discovery of Spock Prime and the subsequent mindmeld, their 14-mile hike to a Starfleet outpost, their meet-cute with Scotty and Keenser, Spock Prime's explanation of transwarp, Scotty's jaunt in the engineering tubes, and Kirk's coup on the bridge. But somehow, the Enterprise catches up with the Narada and beams Kirk and Spock from the rings of Saturn onto a ship that's orbiting Earth. (And don't get me started on how horribly written that mindmeld scene is.)
3. The opening scene of "Star Trek" is about as perfectly constructed a setpiece as I can remember. When the sound drops out and Michael Giacchino's score takes over as Kirk is born and the Kelvin begins its march to doom, the effect is downright chilling. The most thrilling sequence in "Terminator Salvation" depended on a cameo by the California governor's digital face.
4. "Mission: Impossible III" is easily the best of the three. It isn't hard to follow like the first one, or jaw-droppingly cheesy like the second one. The scene at the Vatican is beautifully constructed, and it's fun to see Tom Cruise go all Jack Bauer on PSH in the airplane scene.
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9-08-2009 @ 12:33AM
cablebfg said...
I appreciate the set pieces that McG gave us in Terminator. Some were brilliant, like the opening scene and the water scenes. However, as someone pointed out, he could have scrapped the story and given himself a better chance. He went through tireless rewrites, and still ended up with a clunky story. He probably over reached, as many have pointed out, in trying to help rewrite the script with help for Jonathan Nolan and even Bale.
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9-08-2009 @ 1:18AM
skapig said...
Terminator: Salvation certainly wasn't a great script, but the film was surprisingly well executed. It was well paced and a fun action movie even if some moments were a bit over the top. If you think about it, the machines design their own very poorly and are courteous enough to design their facilities with humans in mind (traversable, controls, etc.). Still a fun ride.
Star Trek had me disappointed. I didn't find the script to be anything special. It just didn't suck. In typical Abrams fashion, the film is more about flash than substance. It also suffers from a common failing of prequels in that it goes out of its way to force a story that weaves established characters and story elements together within a short time frame while trying to also express a self-contained plot. The result is a painful run through cliches, bad jokes, and small-world scenarios. Certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I found a good portion of it to be tedious. Newcomers to Trek or Abrams followers probably didn't mind so much though. Hopefully we got all of the rehashing out of the way with this one.
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9-08-2009 @ 2:14AM
pete thomson said...
Both directors are known for their preference for shallow emptyness- MI4 was a great trailer that didnt work as a film!!. Star Trek worked because of our sentimental familiarity to the characters- we knew who they were so they didnt have to be sketched in that deeply and we liked what we got which in essence was quite a weak unoriginal story. McG to be rated at all is quite ridiculous. His movie was incoherent, badly lit and had plot holes the size of Monster Munch. I dont get the need to admire a director who churns out stuff that is rubbish just because it involves stale CGI action. Lost long ago became more about the money and the marketing than serious intention.
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9-08-2009 @ 5:19AM
Michael said...
The first two MIs were true masterpieces of true artists, MI3 is the work of a craftman, and I don´t even remember one single moment of that film.
The idea "True Romance directed by John Woo" is fantastic! Bring on the pidgeons!
The change of directors for Star Trek and Terminator Salvation doesn´t make sense to me, because it wouldn´t change a thing in my opinion.
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