Terminator Salvation Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Would you have liked Terminator Salvation more if Moon Bloodgood's topless bit hadn't been cut out? Would you have been more likely to see the movie in theaters if you knew there was a flash of boob? Probably not, according to a recent psychological study, which looked at 914 movies released between 2001 and 2005 to determine if sex indeed sells at the cinema.

The results of the study say no: "sex and nudity do not, on the average, boost box office performance, earn critical acclaim or win major awards." Well, the research did show that the Golden Globes are more favorable to movies with sex scenes than the Oscars, which might make sense given that many foreign moviegoers (particularly those in Europe) are more accepting of nudity than American viewers, though it's unlikely the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is thinking about sex while determining its nominees.

In contrast, the study actually showed that sex sells even less outside the U.S., which may be because a number of international markets, such as those in Asia and the Middle East, are more censoring of such content.

The countdown has begun, and we are just 17 short days away from the arrival of the vamp-romance, New Moon, so why not celebrate by re-enacting some of your favorite scenes with your very own Bella and Edward? That's right, Mattell has released Edward and Bella Barbie as part of the Twilight Barbie Collection, but for those of you on Team Jacob, you will be sad to discover that he hasn't gotten a doll yet (although the thought of the additional 'werewolf' Jacob could be fun).

Now, considering some of the other Twilight themed products we have been subjected to, a couple of Barbie dolls don't seem so bad, I mean at least they are age-appropriate. The dolls are modeled after the infamous 'sparkling reveal' from the first film, but when I took a look at the final product my first question was: "Who the heck are these two people supposed to be?" I've seen Twilight and even I wouldn't have recognized Bella and Edward.

But I'm sure that is not going to stop you hard-core collectors out there, so head over to Walmart.com or Barbiecollector.com where you can buy them online for the suggested retail price of $24.95 -- but something tells me you are going to have to act fast.

After the jump: more recent examples of bad movie tie-in toys...

What's happened to all the great movie nudity lately? Billy Crudup started the year off with a bang, so to speak, with his big blue penis in Watchmen, and Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th reboot featured sweaty sex and generous amounts of naked female flesh, but the summer and fall seasons have been curiosly bereft of talked-about sex scenes or body parts. Jessica Biel's bravely-bared breasts and backside in Powder Blue went direct to video, Hayden Panetierre nonchalantly limited her exposure to 'side boobage' in I Love You, Beth Cooper, and Megan Fox decided to keep her nipples to herself in the proudly feminist relationship drama ('cause it sure wasn't horror) Jennifer's Body.

In my youth, movies educated me about the wonderful diversity of naked bodies. Today, television and the Internet have stolen much of the thunder once claimed exclusively by the theatrical experience. (Case in point: Susan Sarandon's daughter, Eva Amurri, just made a big splash by going topless in Californication.) No wonder Terminator: Salvation director McG teased the audience at WonderCon earlier this year, bringing actress Moon Bloodgood up on stage and asking: "Who wants to see Moon's boobs in the picture?" She later said: "I'm a woman, I have boobs, it's a beautiful shot." As anyone who saw the movie in a theater knows, though, her toplessness was cut, reportedly as part of Warner Bros.' effort to secure a PG-13 rating.

The unrated director's cut is due out on DVD and Blu-ray on December 1, and the deleted scene has, apparently, hit the Internet (watch it after the jump). The verdict?

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.

When it comes to the Terminator franchise, the future might have begun, but it's sputtered and stalled out. It's not because of Christian Bale rants, McG, or poor reviews but pesky things like rights, loans, and financing. According to The LA Times, the franchise is back in court thanks to Terminator: Salvation producers Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek. They've brought a $30 million dollar lawsuit against Santa Barbara based hedge fund Pacificor, which lent them the money to buy the Terminator rights, and against a former Pacificor employee, Kurt Benjamin, who arranged the whole deal.

Things aren't looking rosy for Anderson and Kubicek, who have been involved in more lawsuits than actual film productions. (Patrick Walsh reported on their feud with MGM back in 2007.) Their Halcyon Company is reportedly strapped for cash, and as they're currently trying to raise money in order to stay in business, Pacificor filed a lien against their other company, Dominion Group, which has froze their Terminator: Salvation earnings, and prevented them from borrowing against them for a fifth film. If the producing pair loses the $30 million lawsuit, and is unable to pay back Pacificor, the hedge fund will win the rights to the Terminator franchise. Anderson and Kubicek insist that they don't owe Pacificor any money on the loan thanks to a February settlement, and that the hedge fund company filed the lien in a "desperate and deliberate attempt to seize ownership and control of the Halcyon entities and of the ['Terminator'] franchise." They claim to have been led astray by Benjamin, who blackmailed and tricked them out of millions in order to help speed up foreclosement on the franchise, and win a piece of it for himself.

It's a big "he said, she said" financial and legal mess, and when you're on the outside looking in, it's impossible to say who is in the right. (Both Halycon and Pacificor sound like companies that would be share holders in Cyberdyne though, don't they?) But one thing is certain -- it's tangled up the Terminator franchise enough that John Connor might not be aiding humanity for a long time.

It's a dispiriting exercise to think about movie franchises that have been run into the ground. For years now, big Hollywood studios have focused on developing and cultivating franchise properties with worldwide appeal that are dependent more on iconic characters than the actors who play them.

When it works, it's fabulous (Star Trek). When it doesn't, it's awful (Fast & Furious). Even worse than the total misfires, though, are the movies that drag down a franchise into mediocrity, yet still make enough money to justify a sequel from a financial standpoint (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Box office disasters don't necessarily discourage further installments, but often force a studio to rethink the property (Superman Returns). But good box office earnings despite negative reactions tend to empower executives and filmmakers, who then feel they can safely ignore the warning signs and make another sequel without really considering what could be done to improve the product film.

After two fabulous movies, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines "revived" the franchise, but was barely average as an action picture. The new producers of Terminator: Salvation tried to make it their own by bringing in a new director, new stars, and a new storyline, but the results were disappointing in every way but the bottom line. With total worldwide earnings of $341 million, however, Terminator 5 is on its way, and director McG is talking again about what he wants to do. As for me, I say it's time we kill off the franchises that have become mediocre. Let them lay fallow for a few years or decades. Which franchise would you most like to see put out of its misery? Take our poll and let us know!

I think we can all agree that the art of making trailers has never been in such poor shape, and just keeps getting worse. As soon as moviegoers clue into the fact that they've heard "in a world..." one too many times, the trailer departments immediately jump to the next device that they will then flog to death. The exact same rhythms and editing techniques are used to sell different movies. Last year I deliberately skipped a screening of The Visitor on the sole basis that the trailer made it look awful. It turned out to be one of the year's real treasures, and even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. In short, the trailer did the exact opposite of its job; rather than coaxing me into the movie, it drove me away (from a free screening, no less). Then there's the most common argument, that a 2-1/2 minute trailer generally gives away everything in the entire movie.

Right now there are three such trailer gimmicks that are driving me crazy:

1. The pulsing fade-to-black gimmick

I've seen this in Knowing, G.I. Joe and to some extent, most other trailers out there today. Rather than a simple cut from shot to shot, the trailer shows a shot, then fades to black, and then fades up into another shot. The problem is that this usually goes by really quickly, like an accelerated heartbeat. At best, it's disorienting. But the trailer for District 9 takes it too far. I nearly had a seizure from the rapid-fire pulsing of black-to-white. Here's a question: If District 9 is supposed to be so groundbreaking, why not let us see more than 1/8 of a second of footage at one time?

Bet you didn't know there's a Shockwave game for Year One. That's because Shockwave, well, kinda sucks. I can't even get the game to play on my Mac; I tried Safari and Firefox, so if anyone would like to give it a whirl and report back let me know. So far all I know is that you try and herd ox without making them nervous and run away.

Granted, Sony's Year One is not exactly a property ripe for video game adaptation, and its target audience is much broader than movies whose studios put in a lot of effort at viral buzz, but if it's that the case, why bother even making one at all? It's shoddy and looks like the marketing department already knew Year One (which I liked, by the way) would already be poorly reviewed and have a weak box office showing despite the big names attached.

On the other hand, The Dark Knight, which was distributed by Warner Bros., built up a ton of online buzz from its viral websites like WhySoSerious.com, Friends of Harvey Dent, and others with help from the marketing company 42 Entertainment. The Dark Knight would have been very successful even without these sites, which took a lot of effort and money to put together. Same with the campaign for Terminator Salvation and its Skynet Research site. It's a no-brainer summer blockbuster, destined to rake in the bucks despite the many complaints from critics and fans.

Oh, Terminator Salvation. It's the sequel that tried, grabbing excellent names like Christian Bale, Helena Bonham Carter, and Anton Yelchin ... but it had so much going against it. We had already learned, after Terminator 3 came out, that Terminators without James Cameron aren't much fun at all. But now another sequel with another John Connor, all at the hands of the Charlie's Angels helmer, and it just didn't do very well at all -- disappointing numbers and an ouch-worthy 34% fresh at Rottentomatoes.

And what we all want to know is what does James Cameron think about what's happened to his beloved franchise? Well, he's not the sort of guy to be too catty, but what he said during a Q&A at the end of last month says it all. Cameron discusses how he wasn't keen on returning to Terminator after Titanic, and how he suggested that Arnold Schwarzenegger get as much money as he could for his work in the third film. When Cameron told him just how much he should ask for, Arnie said: "Really?" And Cameron's response was: "Sure, are you kidding? They're not gonna make the movie without you. That'd be stupid!" (You can hear Cameron tell the story over at Movieline.)

So, there you have it. Of course, it takes more than Arnie to make a good Terminator film, as we learned last time. And it certainly takes more than some mediocre-at-best CGI of the man to make for a good T800 this time. But hearing Cameron talk, I want to see the director finish Avatar and get back into the Cyberdyne spirit, like the anal-retentive parent who trashes their kid's haphazard school project and redoes it into a masterpiece. Father knows best ...

Terminator Salvation has been in theaters for over a week now, and it seems to have already been largely forgotten. Remember how much we looked forward to seeing it? It was a little like those similarly heady days, way back in March, when we were eager to see Watchmen. Ah, we were all so young then.

Despite the long summer days that have passed, I find myself still pondering Salvation. But I'm not thinking about the waste of a perfectly good Christian Bale, or continuing to boggle over the sadly inept action sequences. To be honest, I willed myself to forget most of it as soon as I was in the car. It seemed kinder to just let it go.

No, what I can't get over is how dead stupid SkyNet turned out to be. The evil, all-powerful threat to humanity that James Cameron introduced in 1984 turns out, in the fourth movie, to be a huge, incompetent boob who can be beaten with a tool belt and a lucky shot fired at a coolant line.

Seriously? That's your mechanized threat to all mankind? I can't get over it. It was just so ... silly.

(Please note that spoilers follow. Serious spoilers. Like, not just descriptions of things that happen in the movie but spoilers. Thank you.)

Back in 1970, there was a tidy little B-movie called Colossus: The Forbin Project. Based on a novel by D.F. Jones, the plot focused on a Cold War supercomputer, designed to control all of the U.S. and Allied nuclear weapons systems, which becomes sentient. Coincidentally, the Soviets have built a similar computer called Guardian -- and when Colossus and Guardian become aware of each other, they decide to join forces and tell humanity to shove off.

At the end of the film, Colossus announces that he/it is now ruler of the world. And there's not a damn thing we can do about it.