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Personally, I'd place 2001 about 380 000 km above number 2. ;-) That film is absolute perfection for me, a mind-blowing experience, a true philosophical masterpiece. Lolita is more like a guilty pleasure for me. I know it's not Kubrick's finest but as the sum of its elements, I'm a huge fan. The incredible actors in the film, i.e. James Mason, Peter Sellers times three and many more, are totally delicious.
I'm certainly glad to see some recognition for Barry Lyndon, a film often misjudged I feel as Kubrick's weakest, primarily due to it not being his dream project Napoleon.
Overall, great ranking, sir. Except for 2001 that is. ;-)
I still like 2001, but just by personal preference, it isn't one of my favorite films. Lolita is surprisingly funny. Also, although it's by far his most mainstream, Spartacus was a really enjoyable epic; didn't think I'd like it as much as I do.
Anyways, Kubrick just really impressed me with his ability to tackle any genre and do it exceptionally well. I love how his filmography has such incredible variety. Truly a quality over quantity director, and I'll take that any day over the opposite.
I think the major problem with Spartacus is that Kubrick was brought in - by Douglas no less - to take over direction when the film was well into its earlier production phases. So it's not really a Kubrick conceived project. However, of all the 50s / 60s Roman epics I have seen (Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Quo Vadis, ...) I think Spartacus, by far, is the most clever and most energetic. The fight choreography, for example, is far ahead of its time. Some of Kubrick's choices were not liked by the studios. E.g. one of the Gladiator fights was shown in the background while Spartacus and Draba are in the centre of the frame, just staring each other down. Right there, you have your big spectacular shots "wasted" to two men who are looking at each other. It takes some big cojones for a director / editor to make that choice. Furthermore, the scene where Crassus and Antoninus discuss the morality of eating oysters while Antoninus is bathing Crassus was considered too homo-erotic back in the day and so it was cut from the movie. Not until the late 1990s was said scene restored. And this isn't the only moment in Spartacus where Kubrick deliberately insults the moral orthodoxy of the day. Unlike some of those other Roman epics, Spartacus is sometimes a little naughty, though in very subtle ways, and as far as action is concerned, this film is leaps and bound above and beyond the clumsy sword fights of Cleopatra for example. Lastly, I think Peter Ustinov alone makes Sparactus a delightful viewing. Oh, and then there's Jean Simmons:
The big irony is that even Douglas ended up getting in trouble with Kubrick. Hoping that Kubrick would direct Douglas' movie, Kirk rather got to play in Kubrick's movie. But I think Kubrick's persistence over Douglas' ego kept this film alive. To this day I marvel at how well it holds up to even the more modern films like Gladiator and Centurion. As a genre film, Spartacus is quite the achievement. But in Kubrick's resume, yeah, it's not the great film that 2001, The Shining, Paths Of Glory... were.
*** spoilers ***
The road to Genisys
The Terminator (TT) was one of those films that become a ‘hit’ after the facts. Others began to produce cheap copies of TT and fan enthusiasm for Cameron’s simple yet effective science fiction thriller was enough to have Dark Horse Comics produce a lot of great stories in anticipation of a possible sequel. That sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2) became an epic, the film that most fans will tell you is the best of the bunch. The story remained simple enough and both dark and frightening. A few new elements were introduced but in small doses and all for the purpose of reaching a satisfying conclusion. As far as Cameron was concerned, the Skynet timeline had been effectively erased by the end of the film.
But Hollywood always wants more. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (T3) decided that Judgment Day had just been postponed; it is sadly inevitable. Keeping the story fairly straight-forward and upping the stakes by making the prophesized nuclear holocaust hardcore fact, T3 was a short but nonetheless rather fine addition to the Terminator series, albeit suffering from the miscasting of Nick Stahl as John Connor. Director Jonathan Mostow delivered a compromised film; some bits worked and some didn’t.
Terminator Salvation (TS) came with the promise of several films that would show us the world of John Connor, our future, the war against the machines. The story they had outlined for these films was, however, dumped in favor of Christian Bale’s ego. While his casting as John Connor makes more sense than Stahl’s, Bale acted up and demanded more screen time. And thus John Connor, who had originally been set to be more of an abstract leader, cameoing here and there, suddenly became the main protagonist of the film, rendering the story of Marcus Wright and Kyle Reese virtually redundant. Expensive and loud and certainly good looking, TS unfortunately overcomplicated things and never found the proper punches. Though it spawned several comic books and some speculation on how to proceed from here, it failed to generate enough critical and financial success to ensure future sequels. But McG’s film did more damage than that. The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a rather interesting television spin-off of the closed Cameron universe, was cancelled despite fans screaming for more, because its story lines contradicted Salvation’s and because Salvation’s lacklustre performance contaminated the Terminator franchise. Even if Summer Glau’s portrayal of a terminator was the best thing since the T-1000 in T2, like Firefly the series got the shaft.
So how do you proceed from here? Twice the franchise had tried to relaunch itself. Twice it had struggled hard to break even. And since Salvation had left so many loose threads, the only reasonable way to continue was to reboot or remake or re-begin or whatever fancy words we use nowadays.
So why not Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes?
The Apes franchise had been left dormant since Battle For The Planet Of The Apes. And with the notable exception of Burton’s quirky re-imagining and some comics, not much happened with the apes. Until Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, a film that started over, that kept a few details but changed the formula almost entirely. No Heston-like main character, no time travel, no “Oh my God, it was Earth all along!”… By peeling off all layers of the POTA myth and retaining only the bare essentials – apes are smart now, deal with it, and one of them is named Caesar – the Apes series had guaranteed itself a fresh start. This should have been the template for Terminator Genisys (TG). Names like Sarah Connor, John Connor and Kyle Reese can be syphoned back in, one at a time and perhaps more in an elusive way, but why not introduce a whole set of new characters first? The comics have done so repeatedly and successfully I might add. Keep the mythological characters of the series as Easter eggs or as big surprises for future films, but don’t try to shove all of that in your semi-reboot at once. Take Batman Begins as an example. Gordon isn’t commissioner yet, Batman is still looking for a way to cope with his new ambitions and The Joker, whom they usually bring in immediately, is kept as the big reveal for the next film.
Relaunching franchises nowadays, given our level of sophistication in this area, is not about stuffing all the essentials of the old mythology back into the new film as quickly as possible. It’s about putting us on a new, fresh track full of surprises and gradually but slowly building towards something that’s closer to the original myth but without the imperative of mimicking that original world right away. The days when recasting familiar characters and providing a minor few twists here and there was enough to get us going, are behind us. We have grown more clever than that. We don’t want bland copies of what was done before. We want something new. Comic book artists have realized this for so long; why can’t filmmakers?
Why Genisys was over before it began
Since Abrams’ Star Trek and Singer’s Days Of Future Past, the idea of alternate timelines as a direct result of time travel, a concept taken from quantum physics, has become increasingly more popular. Ergo, TG goes that way too. So to clarify, the first film – TT – actually happened, sort of, but when Kyle Reese is sent from the future to 1984, things change, timelines are altered and therefore a lot of things are different now. Sarah Connor has had a protective T-800 – called ‘Pops’ – since she was 9. Okay, wait, so certain elements from TT we keep and some elements we throw overboard. Yet the film does a lousy job distilling a coherent story out of this. The writers must have often wondered how to proceed from one scene to the next, so they just grab stuff from TT whenever they need them and then make up a whole lot of stuff. When logic hits rock bottom again, the notion that it’s an altered timeline is brought up once more, for convenience.
Also for convenience, a T-1000 walks in pretty early on yet gets destroyed within half an hour. Then we make a time jump to 2017 because Judgment Day happened in 1997 and yet it didn’t happen. What? Worse still, a cop who saw the T-1000 in 1984 kept yelling about killer robots and is now the obligatory conspiracy theorist who does absolutely nothing yet is kept in the story either for comic relief or to help whenever a deus ex machina is wanted. We also get the famous Sarah Connor picture, which was taken at the end of TT, while she was already pregnant with John. TG shows this picture already printed out in present day, yet Sarah hasn’t been impregnated yet. She of course knows everything that must happen so she doesn’t look a bit surprised when Kyle Reese arrives and ‘Pops’ suggests she has to mate with him. But wait, I’m confused. Which part of TT has actually happened (picture) and which part hasn’t (Kyle Reese) and why doesn’t the film elaborate on that via good dialogue?
The script gets confusing almost right away when alternate timelines overwrite each other at the convenience of the screenwriters. Every time a new but puzzling idea is blended in, the mind reels. Simple lines like “remember, it’s another timeline now” are supposed to set us back on track. Instead, logic gets flushed down the sewer. Parts of this script effectively negate the events of TT and other parts borrow heavily from TT in order to keep the story going. When the Dysons are mentioned, a T2 connection is established but without any direct links to the events in that film.
Worse still, John Connor himself is turned into not quite a cyborg yet something of a nanomite infested semi-cyborg… something … ish. Who also travels through time. To oversee the launching of Skynet. Whot?
It took me about 15 minutes to figure out that the story behind TG is an illogical, confusing mess where time jumping is used not so much as an intelligent plot device but as a pencil eraser for all the rubbish the screenwriters had been stuck with after another few scenes of heavy exposition. Speaking of that, so much talking in this film but not in a good way. Between two action scenes, some of which look great by the way, we need the obligatory emo talk. Ripped from the formula that made Twilight and Divergent popular among 16 year olds, we get to digest tons of dialogue that never helps us. TT also spat out a lot of exposition but always just enough for each scene to up the tension. T2’s philosophical dialogues were needed as a motivation for what came next. But TG uses dialogue to put the pace of the film on ice. When people start talking, it’s time to whip out your smartphone and check your emails because that’s when the film heavy-handedly works on a love story that never convinces.
It just doesn’t feel and sound right
TT and T2 (and T3 to an extent) felt like terror was imminent. The war against the machines, against these deadly infiltrators, whether a metaphor for the Red scare and our fear of terrorism, or just an instrument of horror, never failed to upset us. Cameron’s films in particular did a tremendous job in making us nervous. Very nervous. T3 came close. The inevitability of the nuclear horror was a frightening reveal. But at no point in TG does it feel like we’re about to be annihilated. The movie keeps us distracted from the harsh realization of what’s at stake in such a way that I’d almost forget our future is a dark one. It doesn’t help that the opening scenes of the film end with mankind’s victory over Skynet. Cameron and a lot of comic book writers understand that the true horror in Terminator is us fighting a seemingly inevitable war before it has happened. Once you’ve actually taken us into that war and shown us how it ends and that it will end, all tension is stripped from the film. Now Skynet is seen trying to erase the future; Skynet set us up for defeat once more. But how the film handles that just doesn’t do the trick. Our heroes are almost always on the winning side. They destroy the T-1000 within the first half an hour! While in TT it took us an entire film and the life of one of our two protagonists to beat the machine, a machine that keeps going even with its legs blown off, a machine that simply will . not . stop, a machine that single-handedly vacuums a police station full of trained cops with machine guns..., we get none of that menace in TG. A brainwashed John Connor just isn’t good enough!
Furthermore, Brad Fiedel’s synth scores with those thunderous metallic punches in the background aided tremendously in giving the Cameron films a sense of danger and menace. Beltrami’s score for T3 went orchestral and so did Elfman's for TS. Rather than support the mood of the film, those orchestral scores at times tried to hijack the mood. When violins tell me I’m watching a sad moment when the images don’t show me that and the story fails to voice that, it just doesn’t work. Lorne Balfe’s score for TG is even more generic emo-action material. At times, the music feels so uninspired, it’s as if the score was ripped from Divergent or the likes. Remember when Fiedel’s epic Terminator theme started playing at the end of TT when Sarah drives straight into a storm? Well, right there, you make a fist and go ‘HELL YEAH!’. TG doesn’t have even one of those moments. When the Terminator Theme finally plays during the end titles, it feels like an insult. I wanted to shout at my screen, “you haven’t earned the right to use this music”!
Casting…
Oh boy. I don’t care what Emilia Clarke did in Game Of Thrones, she’s no Sarah Connor. She’s good looking, I’ll give you that. But I need more than that. Cameron understood the power of introducing an everyday woman, not exactly cover girl material, who would then become a gun wielding momma. Sigourney Weaver did it in Aliens, Linda Hamilton did it in TT and T2. And these ladies could hold a gun and make you back off with both hands high up in the air. Clarke holds a gun like a schoolgirl who wants to pretend she’s like her superdooper favourite heroine from that television cartoon she likes to watch after school. When Linda Hamilton went Rambo on Miles Dyson, I felt the power. You go, girl! When Emilia holds a gun or drives a bus, my only response is, “ahw, aren’t you cute”. Is this the “mother of the future”? No, this is the girl who sells ice cream snacks in the local zoo. The actress may be 29 but she looks barely over 14 in this movie.
John Connor is another role that seems hard to cast. Apart from Edward Furlong and the guy who gave us that menacing stare at the start of T2, no-one has come even close. Thomas Dekker was serviceable at best and Nick Stahl lacked several pounds of muscle to be the leader of the resistance. Bale was built enough and certainly carried the energy in him, but his Connor was perpetually ill-tempered and not even “the leader”. Still, Jason Clarke is the most boring Connor ever. I wouldn’t follow this guy. He looks like a desk clerk. Whatever fame he got out of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, it shouldn’t have landed him this part. As a terminator, he’s even less convincing.
I like Lee Byung-hun, Storm Shadow in the GI Joe movies. An agile and handsome Korean actor with a lot of stamina. As the T-1000, he could have been my saving grace for this film, apart from Arnold that is. But they don’t give him anything to do that’s even remotely interesting. He does what he can, mimicking Jason Patrick’s artificial head tilting as well as possible, but he’s out of the picture before you know it.
J.K. Simmons as the killer robot nut... eh… central casting? Someone must have told him he’s in a comedy because that’s how he plays it. Things get really absurd when he does his buffoonish J. Jonah Jameson from Raimi’s Spider-Man films all over again. A wasted character, undeserving of this actor.
Thank Skynet for Arnold. Old – but not obsolete. I actually like that. Rather than trying to convince us this is still the T-800 in his prime, the idea of the living tissue ageing while the rest of him doesn’t, is perhaps the only smart move in the entire film. Furthermore, Arnold is the only one whose comedic moments are earned. He gets away with it. I’m glad for the original Terminator to still be around, even if his role has been reduced from titular character to sidekick. And ‘Pops’? Seriously? ‘Pops’?
Okay, maybe the teenage girls dig Jai Courtney but when will someone realize this guy can’t act? He was one of many bad things in Die Hard 5, he barely made it through Jack Reacher and then there’s Divergent… Now he’s set to infest my superhero love since he’s going to play Boomerang in Suicide Squad next year. Whatever. Point is, Michael Biehn was Kyle Reese. Anton Yelchin was pretty good in TS as a young Kyle Reese. But Courtney is the best terminator in a non-terminator role in this film. Even during the emotional scenes with Emilia, of which we get too many too often, he “acts” as if romance is also a dish best served cold, or even frozen. To his credit, he really might have been a good robot.
Again, this is what you get when you try to re-introduce characters we know and love and recast them with fashionable stars of the moment. If this story had revolved around new characters, it wouldn’t have been so much of a problem.
In conclusion
I love TT, T2 and a lot of the comics. T3 and TS were passable. The Sarah Connor Chronicles were interesting. But the fact remains that after ’91, Skynet has struggled to find an audience. TG certainly won’t help. This might very well be the second or third (depending on how you count) failed attempt at relaunching the series. Another film that promises sequels and whatnot but will most likely never recover from the harsh critical response and the financial disappointment it had to sustain. It’s what you get when you throw elements from the first movie in the mix yet negate others almost randomly and replace them with generic action B-flick stuff. What worked for the first two films, a simple but well written plot, is replaced by an overcomplicated and inconsistent cocktail of immiscible old and new stuff. If they were making this film ‘for the fans’, they failed, because most fans will reject this makeover that’s about as successful as Meg Ryan’s. Fans hold TT or T2 up as the high bar. TG doesn’t even come close. But they were clearly making this film for new fans, and that’s where their biggest failure lies. New fans will be left totally clueless. They have no love for most of the iconic terminator elements proudly yet totally out of context exhibited in TG:. the picture, the remastered scenes from TT and even Arnold. If you’re not into the first couple of films, you just won’t care. Like I said, they should have gone for a story revolving around fresh and new characters, rebuilding the old terminator myth bit by bit.
The trailer had me rather excited when I first saw it. But now that I’ve seen the film, I know that TG is an overall flawed and failed film. Sure, the effects are great. But a good terminator film ends with great effects but starts with a superb story. And TG is a painful catastrophe of bad storytelling, poor acting, terrible casting choices, mediocre music and utter disrespect for the original films. I’ll probably watch the film again, if only because I’m a completist, but if this is where the series must end, then Skynet has definitely won and we have lost.
A magical film. Easily the best Christmas film. Ever.
a great thriller. Amazing to think Sir Roger was in the running to play
The Jackal.
New fact. :)
Yes it's quite interesting. That's the first time I've come across a movie without one. Funny had Moore starred as the Jackal, It would have been Drax as the hero and Bond the villain. ;)
I believe 'Cloverfield' and 'No Country for Old Men' have no music either.
@DanielCraig007,
There are quite a few films with no score like The Birds and M and most of those found footage horror flicks.
Getting ready for Episode VII so I'm watching the other six in timeline order.
The Phantom Menace
I've seen this one more than a few times since I was a kid. While I always thought it was the weakest of the movies, I by no means hated it, other than Jar Jar. After this last viewing I found it to be complete crap. Still love pod racing, Qui-Gon, Darth Maul, and Dual of the Fates but that's it. The plot was weak, the special effects were not great, kid Anakin, Jar Jar Binks, and the terrible dialog, nuff said. Yet it still had that nostalgia factor for me so I enjoyed it on some level.
Attack of the Clones
I've always understood the hate that TPM got but never understood the hate for AOTC. Yes some of the dialog wasn't good and Hyaden Christensen's acting at times was pretty shoddy (I think some of it had to do with his lines) and there was too much cgi but I still love the movie. The plot is great and IMO this should've been Episode I. I've heard people say the chemistry between Christensen and Portman is terrible but I disagree. They don't have amazing chemistry but it's still there. Honestly, on my last play through of the prequel trilogy I enjoyed AOTC the most out of the three and that has me questioning if I should rank it above ROTS.
Revenge of the Sith
I feel this one had better quality than the last two and we finally get to see that brotherhood between Obi-Wan and Anakin that everyone had been wanting to see since the beginning. I felt Christensen nailed the uneasiness of Anakin in this movie but did struggle to maintain the anger in him and it came off whiny, which I would blame more on Lucas because he kept telling Christensen to tone back the evil/anger. They're are very few things I would change in this one, Padme' losing the will to live (seriously, WTF?!) being one of them. Otherwise this one fits in pretty well with the rest of them.
I know I'm in the minority in liking Episodes II and III but I really don't care, I find enjoyment in them. Later this week I'll be watching the original trilogy and then next week I'm off to see The Force Awakens!!!
Agreed; though 2 still ranks 5th place, I really do enjoy it still. It has its faults, but it's still good entertainment value. Revenge of the Sith is my personal favorite, while 1 ranks last for me.
Tonight I finally got a chance to see CREED.
Normally this is the sort of movie I'd see opening night but my work schedule didn't cooperate.
I loved it, beginning to end! I was a little afraid that Stallone would have a small role and it would be Michael B Jordan's show, cause I really love Stallone. Plus I wasn't initially overjoyed with the idea of a 'spinoff'.
Fortunately it's about 50/50, so screw it, this is Rocky 7 in my book!
If you liked Rocky Balboa (Rocky 6 ;) ) then this is about on par. I was rooting for Creed and I teared up more than once. If they make another one I'm on board!
BTW did you all notice in the scene when Rocky goes upstairs and leaves the two lovebirds on the couch they were watching SkyFall on tv? :D
I know this lot of moviegoers did!
I thought Rogue Nation was ok (they shouldn't have opened with the A400 sequence). Not as good as 1, 3, &, and GP, but better than 2.
My favourite MI movie, barely over Ghost Protocol
Pretty solid film. With a good performance by the now star Michael Fassbender.
Best movie ever? The excitement must wear off before ranking this film amongst the all time greats. Best movie experience ever? Most definately, by a huge margin.
I am starting to think that you sort of liked it?
I feel the opposite about TFA than you do about Brosnan. ;)
Now that Disney owns it, expect a new version where he is substituted by Goofy. An improvement.
2 of my favorite films, they are just so rewatchable due to fantastic plots, killer performances from Cage and Dicaprio, and stunning soundtracks.