Nostalgia As A Special Effect

[elfs]

There's a new Terminator movie coming out, Terminator: Genisys, and if the trailer is anything to go by, I'm actually eager to see it, because it actually succeeds at something that I didn't see in the last Terminator film, nor did I see in Aliens vs. Predator, nor did I have any glint of in the trailer for the next Jurassic Park film, Jurassic World. Andrew Swann successfully identified the critical element to any reboot or continuation of a long-lived and fraying franchise: nostalgia is a critically important special effect.

The last Terminator film, the latest Jurassic Park film, and the Star Wars "prequel trilogy" (the Anakin Skywalker series) all lacked that critical ingredient, and lacked a meaningful storyline the audience could latch onto. I have no idea if the latest Terminator film has the latter; it's hard to say from a trailer. But it will surely push its aging audience's buttons hard about important scenes in the original, hopefully morphed into something that has depth and impact in our CGI-enhanced world, and given new life by having the context in which those lines are delivered changed to serve a new and interesting plot.

This editor of this trailer surely understood the maxim: "Give the audience exactly what they know they want, only different." Jurassic World looks like its struggling with that. Let's hope the rest of Terminator: Genisys has it nailed.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I personally don't like all these prequel movies. You know who can and can't be killed off, since you know what happens later. I appear to be the minority in that however.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

I'd agree in general, but in specific the timeline of the Terminator franchise has been shown to be mutable. Indeed, it's the foundation of the setting. Anything can happen and the past can be changed.