Trick or Trailers: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Sure, I hear you: "T2 isn't a horror movie!" But with positive early word coming in on Terminator: Dark Fate, I've got Terminator on the brain at the moment. Besides, T2 got plenty of coverage in FANGORIA back in the day so that alone makes this a valid candidate for Trick or Trailers! You can't argue with a Fango cover - it makes any film legit!

And as trailers go, you've got to admit, this one's pretty awesome:



This trailer brings me back to a time that doesn't really exist anymore, back when the summer movie season was THE time of year that genre fans - with their subscriptions to mags like Starlog, Cinefantastique and Fangoria - looked forward to, the months when studios would bring out their big guns and everything else would have to step aside to clear the way for this year's blockbuster behemoths.



Now, of course, that time is year round. The summer movie season no longer is confined to the summer. We live in a world where what was once nerd fare begrudgingly tolerated by the adults in the room is now the center of popular culture.

Once upon a time, a Terminator sequel represented a genuine event that the whole movie year could legitimately revolve around. Now Dark Fate is simply one of many big budget franchise films. It's a drop in the bucket. Practically small potatoes in the scheme of things.

The world has changed so much that rather than be a summer tentpole, Dark Fate is opening at the beginning of November, on Halloween weekend. That's a release date that would have, in years past, been reserved for the low rent likes of Vampire in Brooklyn, not a new Terminator movie.

In the summer of 1991, there was nothing that could even touch T2, spectacle-wise. Absolutely nothing. It was the summer of The Rocketeer, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Point Break, if you even want to try and call that a "summer," for crying out loud. Now it's a far more competitive market where spectacle is commonplace.

Of course, that does not sit well with some people.

We've all seen the recent headlines, right?

I have to think about what Joe Dante said in Maitland McDonagh's 1995 book Filmmaking on the Fringe, talking about how his career path co-incided with the rise of what were formally B-movies to A-pictures: "All of a sudden, ideas that would once only have been considered suitable for second features or serials were being blown up to A-feature proportions. If you told someone twenty-five years ago that there was going to be a multimillion-dollar version of Dick Tracy or The Lone Ranger or The Addams Family or any of those things that were once considered cultural detritus when I was a kid, nobody would have believed you." And this is back in the mid-'90s we're talking about. It should be no surprise that, twentysomething years later, things have only gone much further down that road.

Much like the upgrade from the T-800 to the T-1000, we're always looking to build a better machine and improve on last year's model.

That's why we've gone from this:

To this:

To this:

To this:

You can't stop progress, right? You can bitch about it and you can absolutely kick and scream about it, but you can't actually fight it. Fighting the future, well, that's the kind of stuff that only happens in the movies.

The Dying Dream Of John Matrix

Eleven hours: that's the time that retired Special Forces operative John Matrix has to locate and rescue his young daughter Jenny from her kidnappers before they get wise to the fact that this legendary bad-ass and gigantic motherfucker has bailed on the assassination mission that they've sent him on. It's an impossible time table but if anyone can pull it off, it's Matrix - a man so tough he eats Green Berets for breakfast.

Anyone who knows '80s action cinema is familiar with the tale of John Matrix, played to a muscle-bound "T" by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the classic Commando (1985). Matrix was a man retired from killing the people that his country told him to kill and was enjoying an idyllic existence with Jenny (Alyssa Milano), letting her shove ice cream in his face and feeding deer that strolled onto their rustic property. However, when his violent past comes back to haunt him in the form of one of his ex-team members, Bennett (Vernon Wells), Matrix has to put his skills to work again for Jenny's sake.

With Jenny being held hostage to ensure that Matrix will assassinate a South American dictator in the name of placing the warlord that Matrix previously helped overthrow - Arius (Dan Hedaya) - back in power, the clock is ticking. Matrix boards a plane to Vel Verde with one of Arius' goons as an escort while another goon, Sully (David Patrick Kelly), watches from the ground to verify that the plane is in the air with Matrix on it.

As the plane leaves the runway without incident, Sully is satisfied that the bird has flown and moves on to more pressing matters - like making obnoxious come-ons to Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong), the attractive flight attendant who's caught his eye. What Sully doesn't know is that Matrix has killed his escort and made his way to the plane's landing gear and before the wheels have retracted into the plane, Matrix makes a spectacular leap into some marshes below where he emerges wet but unharmed and ready to visit some payback on Arius and his crew.

The rest of Commando is a full-course of carnage as Matrix works his way through Arius and his minions in his signature style until he wipes Bennett, his ultimate adversary, off the face of the Earth. Matrix has completed his last mission with a double-digit body count to show for it and he leaves the South American shit hole of Vel Verde with Jenny in tow.


But what if Commando wasn't about a conquering hero?

Yes, it sure looks like Matrix makes it out of the water without injury. But then again, you could say the same about these two characters, as well:

Watching Matrix take his epic plunge from the plane again, it suddenly occurred to me that Commando was perfectly set up to be turned into an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge/Carnival of Souls-style tale. What kind of mind fuck it would've been for audiences to discover that Matrix didn't quite land the way he'd hoped? Maybe he knocked himself out and drowned in the marsh. Maybe he missed the safety of the marsh altogether. Or maybe no matter where or how you land, falling from hundreds of feet in the air is fatal.

Of course, it would be kind of a bummer ending if Commando went that way. I mean, what about poor Jenny? Things wouldn't end well for her. And if Matrix didn't survive his jump, that would mean that Sully, Bennett, and Arius got away free and clear instead of getting deservedly slaughtered at the hands of Matrix. But look at it this way - in the end, no one ever really gets away.

Like Confederate sympathizer Peyton Farquhar, like church organist Mary Henry, and like John Matrix, we're all only flesh and blood. It's what makes all our struggles, great and small, so poignant.

Summer Shocks 1987: Predator

I'm relieved to see that the early word on Predators is very positive. Personally, I think even a bad Predator movie is kind of fun to watch - unlike most fans I didn't entirely hate either of the AvP movies - but it'd be really cool to see a really great one again. In 1987, the original Predator was hot stuff, for sure, one of that summer's best.

I remember seeing the trailers for it and flipping out over the camouflage FX for the Predator. To see that shape jumping out of the trees with that kind of pixelated, shimmering view of the jungle reflected it on it was like - wow, I've got to check this out!

There wasn't much question that I'd be checking it out anyhow - it was a Schwarzenegger movie and that was an automatic event back then. In the '80s, he couldn't choose a losing project if he tried. Some movies hit bigger than others but nothing derailed him and Predator remains one of the highpoints of his career.

Growing up in the '80s, I believed that cool movies like this would always keep coming along. Over time, that hasn't always proved to be true and looking back on Predator now is an occasion to appreciate that a perfect summer movie is never something to take for granted.

To read my full Summer Shocks review at Shock Till You Drop, click here.