https://www.gamespot.com/articles/terminator-2s-joe-morton-shares-the-story-behind-h/1100-6452875/
You just don’t get that kind of detail in movies these days. The expendable side character drenched in sweat, repeatedly, desperately gasping for air for a good 5-10 seconds, then he dies and everything blows up. The same thing happened in Star Wars when Luke got dunked in the trash compactor. He came up gasping for air, soaking wet, garbage stuck in his hair. He was still basically towling off in the next scene even.
There is something REAL about good films.
Then you get all this new garbage. Cartoon CGI. Actors in front of green screen. More “acting” in front of green screen. Close-ups. Hamming it up for the camera. Over-acting. Everything is too clean. It’s artificial. It’s staged. There is nothing real in movies anymore. It’s a show. A hoax. A fraud. Watch at your own risk.
I’m glad I got to watch T2 on the big screen this weekend, even if it was in 3D. Like the Star Wars OT, James Cameron’s best film was created at a time in movie making which existed between the serious films of the generation before, and the trite, indulgent, self acknowledging green screen garbage that pollutes nearly everything today. There was a time when you could have an action movie that was fun, but that was also dark, or full of despair even. You could have a movie that employed CGI, but was still based in reality, with physical sets, explosions, even robots and more. A semi-truck can really fly off an overpass and explode into a fireball and be captured on film, rather than a car being rendered on a computer screen doing impossible flips in mid-air amid inserts of actors winking at the camera and breaking the fourth wall.
These were the thoughts I was left with from the other night, after we watched an interminably long preview sequence before the movie started. The only one I can remember was the preview for Thor: Ragnarok. Honestly, it looked like one of the worst pieces of shit I have ever seen put on a movie screen. But it’s not a singular failure that deserves to be singled out and mocked or derided. The movie looks like literally every action or adventure flick that is put in theaters these days. There is something wrong with the movie making process. From the studios, to the lack of talent among the people making the movies and writing the scripts, no vision, all the way down to the moribund audiences who have all but turned into those idiots from Wall-E.
At least for one night it was fun, to go back in time and watch a movie that was well-made. A movie which was home in the nexus between that which is fun and entertaining, but also real, thought-provoking, and fierce at the same time. I can only hope I’ll be able to watch the original Star Wars films in a similar way one day–in their original, unaltered versions of course.
