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Saw it last night. Decent. I liked it.
It's not that it was "bad", per se~. It was "incomplete". It's setting itself up for sequels if the numbers are right.
Let me try and say this correctly (bear with me and really try to fill in my blanks). Take the Resident Evil stuff. It really didn't matter what the back story was ..but it had one ..of sorts. Evil Empire greedy profiteering corporation ..add totally horrific menace run amok ..throw in unique hero figure (in this case, babage) with many colorful sacrificial lambs. Well done for what it was. Throw in some macho "Lock and load" stuff ..a moral/emotional dose or two
I'll watch them all (on cable). I have no delusions of "art" beyond that it's very good at what it attempts to tickle within me. Your suspension of reasonable belief is a cheap ticket to enjoyment.
They "work" for the most part.
Now take Lord of the Rings. At the end of the first installment.. I was asking (as one critic put it) "Are we there yet?". Tons of character development ..but really no point to the action ..rather anticlimactic. You were watching one movie in 3 parts.
"They" worked. IT struggled.
The success of the T1-T3 ..and all the Star Wars offerings (however good or bad you may feel they were) is that each was complete unto themselves, imo.
With Arnie, we got to see tons of cliche moments that we've grown to expect and ..more or less, depend on. Would the bar tender really just stand there with an unarmed man walking up to him with a shotgun trained on him? Would he have even bothered after what he saw in the bar? ..but it was fun for the sunglasses part of it ..as it was in the next one.
They all worked ..some better than others.
This had the disadvantage of no comical Arnie antics yet was already in high gear from the get go due to the rest of the Terminator offerings. The majority of the dwell time on character development was spent on a character that probably can't return. He should be toast.
But I paid my money and I hope that it makes enough to justify the next installment.