River Tam fails to beat up everybody
Feb. 5th, 2008 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroOne Superbowl commercial actually accomplished its goal (getting me to seek out the associated product): the commercials for Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. I actually set the VCR to tape it in case I didn't get back from rehearsal in time, and when I did get home in time, I watched it live. I can't recall the last time I watched a live broadcast series show.
The show has huge potential: Summer Glau (River Tam!) plays a terminator sent back to protect John Conner (that kid who was Claire's best from in S1 Heroes) in an "alternate universe" where T3 never happened. The concept is there, the actors are there, and the CGI has gotten cheap enough that network TV could afford to have a T-1000 for sweeps week.
It was upsetting, then, when it utterly failed to live up to that potential. The dialogue was totally not there. The drama wasn't there. The acting was barely there. The technobabble, to the extent it was there at all, was lame. River Tam hardly beat up anybody--they cut away from one obvious scene of awesomeness, the fight scene against another terminator was clunky (badly choreographed and poorly flimed), and while her jump from a truck that was plummeting off a cliff was badass, it should have included a backflip and ninja-style landing.
This could have (or should have) been similar to first-season Smallville with a large cast of possibly/likely-disposable supporting characters and, if not Joss-worthy, at least passable dialogue and snappy patter. And the fight scenes between terminators should be the show's big money hole--They could own the airwaves (especially in this writers-strike environnent) with super-robot fight scenes and passable everything else. As it stands, they're dead in the water as soon as everything else restarts.
The show has huge potential: Summer Glau (River Tam!) plays a terminator sent back to protect John Conner (that kid who was Claire's best from in S1 Heroes) in an "alternate universe" where T3 never happened. The concept is there, the actors are there, and the CGI has gotten cheap enough that network TV could afford to have a T-1000 for sweeps week.
It was upsetting, then, when it utterly failed to live up to that potential. The dialogue was totally not there. The drama wasn't there. The acting was barely there. The technobabble, to the extent it was there at all, was lame. River Tam hardly beat up anybody--they cut away from one obvious scene of awesomeness, the fight scene against another terminator was clunky (badly choreographed and poorly flimed), and while her jump from a truck that was plummeting off a cliff was badass, it should have included a backflip and ninja-style landing.
This could have (or should have) been similar to first-season Smallville with a large cast of possibly/likely-disposable supporting characters and, if not Joss-worthy, at least passable dialogue and snappy patter. And the fight scenes between terminators should be the show's big money hole--They could own the airwaves (especially in this writers-strike environnent) with super-robot fight scenes and passable everything else. As it stands, they're dead in the water as soon as everything else restarts.
