★☆☆☆☆

You really can’t go back in time.

No, I’m not going to tell you there is some secret government program which has achieved time travel. The fact we are all alive means they haven’t. If they are incompetent enough to be an elected official now and they can’t fix anything the last thing anyone wants is them going back in time to try and fix things. Though that notion does make the writer’s mind wander a bit. Just imagine some of the boobs we have now getting their hands on time travel, going back in time to “set things straight” only to find out what they fix means time travel is never invented. Can you say paradox? Knew you could.

I was dramatically underwhelmed with Terminator: Genisys. I couldn’t put my finger on why. It had great special effects, lots of stuff blowing up. It “should” have been just as good as the early shows, but it wasn’t. Maybe I didn’t like seeing Arnold old? Nah, he was good in “The Expendables 2”

The subconscious is a wonderful thing. Go to bed pondering something, get a good night’s sleep, and the answer might well hit you in the morning. You just have to be prepared to hear the answer. Most of us aren’t, which is why we claim getting the answer in your sleep is a myth.

Genisys Playboy Syndrome

I woke up this morning remembering an interview I heard on NPR. Sadly I don’t have a link to it, just the main news about Playboy no longer publishing nude photos. I don’t remember just who they were interviewing at the magazine, but he made one statement which stuck in my mind.

“Twelve year old me is very disappointed with forty year old me.”

That, in a thimble, was the problem with the new Terminator. They tried to sanitize it for The Hobbit and Harry Potter markets. The little boy in the back of my mind was very upset having a female time traveler and not even see a tushie. The original Terminator came out in 1984 and it was rated R. Genisys is rated PG-13. In 1984 I was in college and I’m sure to many still mentally 12. I got a kick out of the surgically implanted F-bomb and scripted nudity. The hallmarks of the franchise were missing from this installment.

Franchise in Trouble

According to news reports the franchise is in disarray. Emilia Clarke won’t play Sarah Connor anymore. Admittedly, I never watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles when they were on the air. They are on my rental list now though. Not because I’m a big fan of the franchise, but because I saw part of one on some cable/satellite channel and realized Summer Glau was in it playing a terminator which was a bit like her character on Firefly and I’m a huge fan of that series. Huge enough to own the box set.

In many ways the problem with this movie has to do with my “Control Your First Impression” post. The gimmicks they took out chasing a different market alienated every twelve year old me who liked the franchise the way it was.

Books, movies and songs can transport us back in time. Stumbling into one can magically transport us back to a happier time when things were good. As we get older we want them to keep doing that and we aren’t very forgiving when they don’t. We can’t help it, we feel cheated. Even if we don’t realize it, some part of us wanted to be young again, to go back in time for just a little while. When we pony up for the ride and it doesn’t take us there we are very disappointed with north of forty us.

For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.