Terminator: Dark Fate

By this point, “I’ll be back” has started to sound less like a promise and more like a grim cinematic threat.

Imagine, for a moment, walking out of a screening of the original “Terminator” in 1984 and being told that the film’s stars would still be playing those action roles 35 years later.

That a waxen-faced, 72-year-old Arnie Schwarzenegger and a profoundly haggard Linda Hamilton (63) would still be hobbling around in biker leathers, toting over-sized guns and spouting inanities about ‘holes in der fabric of tiiime…’ You’d find the prospect more incredible than the movie you’d just seen.

And yet here we are. It’s 2019, and Arnie is back doing his shtick as everyone’s favourite T-100. To paraphrase Michel Biehn in the original film: “The Terminator franchise is out there. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead (bored of these endless sequels).”

The Case of the Missing Movies

You know how the Terminator movies often end with a knackered-looking robot being slowly lowered into a huge smelting vat? Well, that’s apparently what the makers of Dark Fate decided to do with T3, Salvation and Genisys.

With James Cameron back in the driving seat as producer, this new movie follows directly on from the last half-decent Terminator film – T2: Judgment Day – and unblushingly pretends that nearly three decades’ worth of increasingly confusing sequels simply never happened. (If only the poor audience was afforded the same luxury.)

The plot

But even with such radical surgery, the plot of this movie is still a mess – hurriedly tying up loose ends and conjuring up whole new story arcs with scraps of cranky exposition. It starts with a flashback in which annoying teen, John Connor – the original saviour of the world, remember – is casually killed by a CGI-young Arnie. (In other words, everything that was achieved in the first two movies was a complete waste of time.) The action then clunks over to Mexico, where a new ‘good’ Terminator and obligatory liquid-metal bad guy both arrive in search of the latest saviour, a feisty young auto-worker.

Naturally, within five minutes there’s a Terminator fight and car chase. Linda Hamilton turns up, armed with a massive bazooka and, even more worryingly for the viewer, yet more nigh-unlistenable exposition. Then they all go to visit Arnie, now living incognito as a curtain salesman called Carl. (Yes, you did just read that correctly.) The bad guy finds them again. There’s another fight. Then another, on a plane. Then it’s on to the obligatory climactic fisticuffs in a giant industrial setting. And by this point, the action has essentially morphed – Terminator liquid metal-style – back into the first two movies.

You’ve almost got to admire the studio’s unabashed intent to put on a karaoke-style tribute to the franchise’s glory days, but the result should be more coherent. Apparently, new director Tim Miller and the famously combustible Cameron had radically different ideas for the script and did not get along. Word is they essentially waged a Hollywood jihad on each other as they wrestled for creative control, and you can see the results in the lumpy storytelling and uneven tone.

The cast

However, the studio did manage to muster some innovation with its cast. Showing some serious post-#metoo savvy, they decided to feature three female leads. In theory, this was a good idea. The franchise has had more than its fair share of macho meatheads – Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, the abominable Jai Courtney – so switching chromosomes felt like a fresh and bold move. Unfortunately, all the main roles have been woefully underwritten and the actors themselves are largely terrible.

The ‘good’ Terminator – a genetically enhanced human, this time – is played by gangly-limbed tomboy, Mackenzie Davis, who is great at ass-kicking but otherwise seems totally lost, unsure whether to emote or act tough. Playing the chosen-one-who-mustn’t-be-killed, Hispanic actress Natalia Reyes alternately bleats and wails and gets angry, but all to no discernible purpose. Only Leathery Linda is able to instil her character with a bit of steely resolve, spitting out withering asides and giving everyone the stink-eye.

As always, Big Arnie’s performance seems stuck between acting like a robot and being the robotic actor that he really is. Gabriel Luna does manage to bring a chilling menace to his role as the new bad terminator, but when the actor being singled out for praise only speaks about 30 words in the whole movie and is basically a CGI-composite for 80 per cent of his scenes, that’s pretty telling.

Get to the action, for God’s sake…

Luckily, the film-makers seem to have realised what a load of complete bobbins their story and actors were, so opted to throw a boat-load of action at the screen – and the formula largely works.

Following an opening contretemps in a car factory, the film really gets going with a prolonged (and hugely destructive) giant lorry chase along a freeway. And while, post-Matrix, this kind of scene is becoming a little too familiar, there’s a lot of stunts-and-explosions creativity on display.

Later, the gang somehow find themselves locked up in an immigration holding facility, until Old Liquid Stabby Arms turns up and starts slicing and dicing his way through everybody. (It’s a wonder Trump hasn’t tried to hire him.)

From then on, it’s basically non-stop action. The extended dust-up inside an airborne C-130 is pretty rousing stuff, then it’s a hair-raising fall to earth in a Jeep attached to a wonky parachute, followed by two minutes avoiding soggy murder at the bottom of a lake and a chase across a dam. As mentioned, the climactic battle takes place in a ma-hoosive industrial plant handily equipped with plenty of Terminator-unfriendly materials. In short, it’s a full-on barrage of blows and bullets.

…because it might stop them speaking. 

Exploding Helicopter has witnessed some truly appalling guff during its decade-long existence, but certain talky scenes here might well make the blog’s Mount Rushmore of Terrible Exposition. They are epically, finger-gnawngly bad. In one rambling early scene, where the main players are meant to be establishing themselves while holed up at a motel, you can actually see that chunks of dialogue have been overdubbed in post-production. And in the screening attended by Exploding Helicopter, a couple of Linda’s angry, gun-totin’ “Die, Metal Motherfucker!’ lines were met with open guffaws, which is never a promising sign.

But things truly fall through the floor when Arnold the Reformed T-100 starts waffling on about his wife and kid, and finding ‘ver beauty in hoo-man liiife’. It’s a monstrously misjudged scene, which the Teutonic Timber is not close to being able to deliver. You can almost picture Tim Miller sat behind the camera, head in hands, while Arnie rote-reads his moving soliliquy with all the delicacy and touch of a Speak-Your-Weight machine. It may well be the worst individual scene you’ll see on screen this year.

Exploding helicopter action

Two thirds of the way through the film, our heroes make their way to a military base to collect an incredibly powerful macguffin-I-mean-weapon, handily packaged in a case small enough to qualify as carry-on baggage with RyanAir. But wait: here comes Mr Liquid Metal in a helicopter! Arnie and pals board the tailgate of a lumbering C-130 military plane, and as it takes off they shoot at the pursuing chopper. The evil terminator leaps from his damaged chopper on to the tailgate of the plane, eager for some metallic mayhem. Meanwhile, the now pilotless helicopter explodes, hitting the runway and rolling over multiple times.

Artistic merit

As you might expect in a movie that cost $185 million, everything looks fairly realistic and exciting. But there’s so much other stuff going on during this sequence – speeding vehicles, falling masonry, speeding terminators – that not enough time is devoted to relishing the true glory of the helicopter explosion.

Interesting fact

Terminator: Dark Fate was originally planned as the first offering in a new trilogy. But the cataclysmic box office showing (even the famously undiscerning Chinese audience, so often the saviour of mediocre Hollywood movies, has turned its collective nose up at it) means that it may finally be time for Arnie to say Hasta le Vista, Baby.

The Expendables 3

It had to happen eventually: the Frankenstein of Hollywood has gone and made a big lurching Franken-movie.

Little Sylvester Stallone has always looked a bit cartoonish, and in recent years it’s become increasingly hard to tell him apart from his own Spitting Image puppet.

That sloping, strokey mouth. Those freakish, pumped-to-the-point-of-bursting muscles. (Thanks, human growth hormone!) The surgically smooth, semi-melted-waxwork face. Whatever’s going on with that tar-black blanket on his head we’re supposed to think is his hair. The platform shoes so stacked they’d make Bono blush. He’s an absolute riot.

And with The Expendables 3 (2014), he’s finally made a film that is as odd, over-stuffed and unlikely looking as himself.

Bursting at the seams with a parade of famous faces in a mind-frazzling array of cameos, this bloated sequel to a sequel becomes swollen to the point where it no longer resembles a normal film. The movie’s poster alone features 17 – yes, 17 – stars. That’s not so much a movie poster as a committee meeting. Or, given the result is such total wank, a bukkake party.

At heart, the first two Expendables movies worked because they followed a simple formula – build an ensemble cast, then add a carefully chosen smattering of guest stars.

But one gets the sense that ‘less is more’ possibly isn’t a dictum by which Sly leads his life. Thinking mathematically (and counting on his fingers), the old boy probably really did think that having literally twice as many characters in the new movie would make it twice as good. As opposed to shit.

The plot

Sly and his gang are getting old. At a certain point, all the hair dye and face lifts in the world can’t hide the fact that half this doddering lot are older than the cast of Last of the Summer Wine. So, after sacking the original Expendables crew, our ageing action star recruits a bunch of young, fresh-faced whippersnappers to take their place. (Cue a crazed, carousel-like introduction of new ‘characters’).

The first mission for the new team is to kidnap a notorious arms dealer (Mel Gibson) who also happens to be Stallone’s arch nemesis. Naturally, the assignment goes tits-up: the Italian Stallion barely escapes with his life and all his eager pups are captured.

With no time to introduce yet more characters, Stallone is forced to reunite with his old buddies (Statham, Lundgren, et al) in order to rescue the newbies who made such a Horlicks of their very first mission.

Will Sly save his kindergarten comrades? Can he settle his grudge with Gibson? Have all the elder Expendables taken their daily aspirin? Oh, the tension…

Who’s in this?

Frankly, with a cast this size, it’d be quicker to tell you who isn’t in this film. But here goes. First, the usual gang of Expendables are all in attendance: Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Crews, Li, Schwarzenegger and Couture. Tick.

Wesley Snipes: Keeping the receipts this time

They’re joined on this outing by Nineties action also-ran Wesley Snipes, for whom this movie was something of a comeback effort following an unfortunate two-year spell in Sing-Sing for tax evasion. In the hi-larious opening scene, our Wes is – nudge-nudge, wink-wink – sprung from a top security prison by our jowly heroes. Ho, ho. See what they did there? Snipes really was in prison in real life, and now they’re showing him locked up in the movie and…oh, you did get it. Sorry.

Also relishing the opportunity of a little light career rehabilitation is Mel Gibson. Work has understandably been a tad scarce for Mad Mel in recent years, due to him being so busy with his alcoholic, wife-beating, anti-semitic and homophobic commitments. (Incidentally, if we’ve left anything out, forgive us; it’s hard to keep up with Mel’s misdemeanours).

And the additions don’t end there. There are walk-on roles for a clearly bored Harrison Ford, a mugging Antonio Banderas, a redundant Kelsey Grammer and walking Clearasil advert Robert Davi as the uber-villain. Phew!

Mercifully, there is one noticeable absentee: Bruce Willis. Despite appearing in the previous two entries, the chrome-domed diva was promptly dropped after demanding $1m dollars a day to work on the movie.

“Where’s Church?” asks Stallone in a pointed reference to Bolshie Bruce’s character. “He’s out the picture,” replies Harrison Ford, winking at the camera. It says a lot that this is not even close to being the crassest line of dialogue in the movie.

Excess all areas

While that outline of the cast may have been exhausting, it wasn’t exhaustive.

Human punching bag Rhonda Rousey

As brighter readers will have noticed, Exploding Helicopter hasn’t yet mentioned the baby Expendables – which includes Twilight heart-throb Kellan Lutz and MMA badass Rhonda Rousey (these were the days before too much lounging around movie sets transformed her from an undefeated cage marauder into a human punch bag).

As you may have guessed by now, there are a lot of ‘main’ characters. And therein lies the film’s problem. There are simply too many people on screen, waiting around to deliver their one line of unconvincing dialogue. There’s no plot to speak of, just a succession of scenes crowbarring another actor into the action.

At times The Expendables 3 feels like watching a Royal Variety show. A succession of famous faces take centre stage for a couple of minutes, perform a potted version of their most famous act, then gladly disappear off into the wings. Had Bruce Forsyth suddenly come tap-dancing across the screen, it wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. And he’s probably younger than half of them.

Exploding helicopter action

Given the film’s whole-hearted commitment to excess, you won’t be fazed to learn there are no fewer than three exploding helicopters to report.

One chopper bites the dust early in the film, always a cheering sign for aerial conflagration groupies. Having completed the daring Snipes rescue raid, and with no further use for the whirlybird, Stallone gives the viewer a cheap thrill by triggering an explosive charge and blowing it up.

The next chopper fireball scene, which takes place during the climatic action sequence, admittedly comes as quite a surprise. When two enemy choppers close in to take out our heroes, who should suddenly appear expertly piloting a helicopter but, er, Harrison Ford. Before you ask: Yes, that is the same Harrison Ford who, in real life, crashed a plane onto a golf course two years ago and, earlier this month, almost hit a commercial airliner carrying more than 100 people. Was this really the best casting decision? Maybe in the next instalment, Mel will be playing a gay rabbi who volunteers at a women’s shelter.

Step away from the controls Mr Ford

Luckily, contrary to popular rumour, fiction is way, way stranger than the truth. Because once the cameras are whirring, it turns out our Harrison is an excellent pilot. First, he effortlessly shoots down one whirlybird using his machineguns.

Then, pursued by the second baddie, old Han Solo deftly weaves in-between the giant chimney stacks of an old industrial factory – going perilously close to certain death – until his opponent loses control and crashes explosively into one of the vents.

And at no point during this scene does Harrison crash onto a large open green space nor almost fly into a crowded Boeing 737. Aren’t movies wonderful?

Artistic merit

A definite case of quantity over quality. The chopper fireballs are done with embarrassingly poor CGI. In a film with a near $100m budget, it’s inexcusable. Having said that, chopper fireball cliché fans will enjoy the classic hero shot of the Expendables coolly walking away from an exploding whirlybird.

(Note: The movie’s final conflagration once more brings up a perennial bugbear of this website: why are movie chopper pilots incapable of avoiding entirely observable buildings?)

Favourite line

When Schwarzenegger turns up in a helicopter to evacuate our heroes, he gets to rather predictably yell: “Let's get to the CHOPPA!”

It’s a groaner, but you can’t help but enjoy it.

Review by: Jafo

The Expendables

After a run of box office duds in the early Noughties (Get Carter, D-Tox, Driven), Hollywood decided that Sylvester Stallone was himself expendable and consigned him to the movie scrapheap.

Unable to get an acting gig, Sly licked his wounds for a few years before rebooting his career with sequels to the two franchises that had established him as a star in the first place. And while critical reaction to Rocky Balboa and Rambo was lukewarm, both films made handsome returns at the box office.

Counting purely on his own firm resolve – and some industrial-sized injections of human growth hormone – Sly proved, against all expectation, that there was indeed a market for watching pension-age action stars creak arthritically through the butt-kicking moves of their youth.

No surprise then that, for his first venture into ‘original’ material since the great comeback, Stallone opted not to stray too far from the profitable formula. If nothing else, The Expendables (2010) has no shortage of ultra-violence dispensed by doddery old folks.

The token plot (and let‘s be honest, this isn’t a story that invites scrutiny) has Stallone as the leader of a bunch of mercenaries for hire. They’re paid to assassinate a military dictator who is running a massive drug operation. Other than the obligatory rogue CIA agent, that’s about it.

Technically, this is an original work. However, despite his dopey features, Sly is much too sharp to have not recognised that the success of Rambo 4 and Rocky 6 lay in their nostalgic groove. Audiences don’t want him to move with the times, so much as go back in time. Retro, therefore, is the order of the day.

The style, mood and even cast – action stalwarts Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and Gary Daniels are exhumed from their DTV careers to co-star – are all classic vintage. The film couldn’t be more Eighties if you permed it’s hair, dressed it a shell suit and made it dance to Kajagoogoo.

Despite all the snapping bones and non-stop fighting, a warm, feel-good vibe permeates the film – one that trades heavily on the audience’s affection for these grizzled old bears going through the motions all over again. After all, besides baddies and grenades, they also now have to contend with lumbago and the possibility of losing a bit of wee mid-action scene.

In many ways, with its familiar cast of ageing reprobates getting up to no good, it’s like a peculiarly violent episode of Last Of The Summer Wine. At any given moment, one almost expects the Stath to slip on a woolly hat and start eulogising about Nora Batty’s saggy tights. (As it is, he instead opts for repeatedly pummelling someone’s face into a scarlet mush, but you get the general idea.)

Cheap bon mots aside, there is a serious point to be made. The Expendables works because Stallone understands why people love Eighties action movies – because they featured larger than life characters who visibly enjoyed their ass-kicking antics.

Compare, let’s say, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando (1985) to the po-faced seriousness of the Bourne films, where Matt Damon blankly beats the bejaysus out of everyone with the bored indifference of a supermarket checkout worker. It’s easy to admire the Bourne films, but pretty hard to love them.

The Expendables may be full of genre clichés, but they’re delivered with love and affection rather than being cynically trotted out as a tick-box exercise. As such, it’s no surprise to see the movie delivering on the ultimate genre staple: the exploding helicopter.

At the end of the film, Stallone and his men launch a huge assault on the villain’s HQ. Realising the game is up, Eric Roberts attempts to make a getaway in a helicopter. And with Sly prevented from reaching him by a wall of fire – and the whole base going up like a fireworks display – it’s looking like he’ll succeed.

Fortunately, Old Stroke Features comes up with an inspired piece of improvisation. One of his unfeasibly musclebound cronies throws an artillery shell (that conveniently happens to be lying around) towards the chopper and, as it arcs through the air, Stallone fires his pistol at the shell. Ba-boom! One flambéed helicopter coming right up.

Artistic merit

The explosion is a whopper, big enough to satisfy every red-blooded chopper fireball fan, even if the CGI is a trifle too noticeable.

There’s also a good shot of Stallone diving away from the explosion in classic action movie style as he‘s nearly dismembered by a piece of flying shrapnel.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The ‘MacGyver style’ improvisation with the artillery shell and the pistol is a nice touch. While helicopters have been destroyed in more unusual ways, it’s rare to see a character being so intellectually creative in the execution of his plan. (And of course, having the words ‘Sly Stallone’ and ‘intellectually creative’ in the same sentence is a novelty in itself.)

Still, such ingenuity is not unprecedented. That renowned intellectual heavyweight, Steven Seagal, once used only a knife, paint-stripper and some advanced cub scout skills to blow up a chopper. (The film was Under Siege, fact fans). But then, you can tell Big Steve really clever by the way he almost says his lines.

Positives

The plot is commendably simple: kill the baddie and rescue the girl. At some point around the late Nineties, filmmakers started worrying that this formula had become exhausted and started throwing in lots of arsey sub-plots involving double and even triple crosses.

One day, Exploding Helicopter will get its protractor out and draw you the graph showing the inverse relationship between plot complexity and audience interest.

Negatives

As much as we love the ensemble cast it does create a problem: how to squeeze everyone in?

Eric Roberts, ostensibly the main villain, has to share too much screen time with David Zayas’ inferior evil General and his character feels a bit undercooked as a consequence. Roberts’ henchman (played by Gary Daniels and Steve Austin) are also left with little to do other than scowl in the background before becoming human punch-bags in the film’s extended showdown ending.

Still, you can’t say Sly isn’t a learner. In The Expendables 2, which has a similarly sprawling cast, everyone is given a suitably memorable moment in the spotlight.

Favourite quote

In a movie that celebrates action cinema, it’s pleasing to hear Randy Couture utter perhaps the genre’s ultimate cliché: “We got company”.

Interesting fact

Dolph Lundgren’s character was originally killed off, but audience reaction to the blonde lunk in test screenings was so positive that scenes were re-shot to show he hadn’t died.

Review by: Jafo

True Lies

Looking back, we can see True Lies (1994) as the zenith of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 30-year career.

A deft blend of entertainment and action, the film was a critical and commercial success. Moreover, it was the culmination of Arnie’s efforts to become a genuine box-office star rather than a simple purveyor of violent action thrillers.

Here, Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, seemingly a dull office equipment salesman living out a bland suburban life with his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) and daughter. In reality though, he’s a top secret agent out to stop Art Malik’s terrorist group setting off a couple of stolen nuclear bombs.

Unfortunately, Arnie’s personal and professional lives become messily entangled after he is forced to reveal his double life to Curtis. It’s then up to Arnie to save the world and his marriage – a feat the maid-bothering philanderer was sadly unable to repeat in real life.

True Lies was the Governator’s third film with James Cameron. Unable on this occasion to cast him as a monosyllabic robot – and no doubt aware of the potential embarrassment that might ensue when Arnie attempted to ‘act’ like a human being – Cameron was confronted with a problem: what to do with the lumpen one’s ungainly presence?

His solution was both genius and admirably simple: stuff the film with cartoon-ish supporting turns and hope to God no-one notices him.

And so we have Bill Paxton’s loony sleazeball, Jamie Lee Curtis’ awkward housefrau persona and Tom Arnold’s motor-mouthed sidekick – all of them smokescreens to distract you from the Austrian word-mangler’s presence at the centre of the film.

Top that off with a surprisingly foul-mouthed Charlton Heston, a vampish Tia Carrare, and Art Malik’s pantomime terrorist and the overall assault on the senses is almost enough to distract you from the lumbering beefcake’ performance. Almost, but not quite.

Arnie is so wooden, watching him leaves you tugging splinters from your eyeballs. It’s lucky that his role requires so much running and jumping around since, if he stood still too long, someone might be tempted to sand and varnish him.

That said, I don’t imagine anyone in this film ever imagined they were going to be troubling the acting nominations at the Academy Awards. True Lies aims to be nothing more than an unashamed piece of entertainment and in that regard it‘s a rip-roaring success.

The film’s two major action set pieces are superbly handled. The extended opening is a thoroughly enjoyable Bond pastiche, as a tuxedo-wearing Arnie infiltrates an embassy soiree and steals some computer files before escaping with a small army on snowmobiles in hot pursuit.

However, Cameron saves his best work for the film’s final act – an almost continual action sequence, complete with shoot outs, car chase, and crucially an exploding helicopter.

With his scheme unravelling fast, Art Malik absconds to the top floor of an under-construction skyscraper with some stolen nukes and Arnie’s daughter, who he’s kidnapped as a little extra insurance. With the deadline for detonation fast approaching, Arnie borrows a fighter plane and jets off to halt Armageddon and rescue his daughter.

While the terrorists are temporarily distracted, Arnie’s plucky progeny steals the trigger for the nuclear bomb. With nowhere to flee, she clambers onto the girders of one of the cranes constructing the skyscraper. Pursued by Malik, it looks like she’s about to meet a sticky fate, either at the end of Malik’s machinegun or courtesy of a hundred storey fall to the street below.

From here, the precise sequence of events would be fiendishly difficult to explain so I’m going to hit the fast-forward button. Suffice to say, Arnie arrives in time-honoured nick of time style and, before you can say ‘Aaaah’ll be beckkkkk’, his daughter is clinging to the jet’s cockpit and Art Malik is left dangling from one of the fighter jet’s missiles.

If this wasn’t enough jeopardy for the former Mr Universe to contend with, Malik’s henchmen turn up in a helicopter and fire at him before darting round the back of the partially built skyscraper. Spying the chopper through a gap in the building, Arnie hatches an ingenious terrorist two-for-one deal to extricate himself from the situation.

With Malik still hanging from the jet’s missiles, Arnie fires the rocket – complete with the sometime Casualty doctor – at the enemy chopper. Stuck to the missile, Malik is sent whizzing through the under-construction building towards his cohorts, who are only briefly able to register their surprise at the sudden and unexpected reunion with their leader before the helicopter explodes.

Artistic merit

A bravura helicopter explosion. Elaborate, inventive, and executed with verve and panache. Truly superb.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Helicopter destroyed by rocket-propelled terrorist: if you weren’t already sure, I can confirm this is unique in the annals of helicopter explosion.

Negatives

True Lies is as much a comedy as an action film. While most of the jokes still tickle the funny bone, the passage of history has rendered the gags at the expense of Art Malik’s Islamic terrorist group the equivalent of comedic tumbleweed.

Clearly, the mid-Nineties were a simpler political age for America and the idea that a bunch of religious fundamentalists could hurt Uncle Sam in his own backyard was, well, laughable. Unfortunately, the events of 9/11 and the consequences of two subsequent wars have dispelled that notion. Were it proposed today, it’s hard to imagine True Lies getting made.

Favourite quote

“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Yes, but they were all bad.”

Interesting fact

There’s a few. True Lies is actually a remake of French film La Totale! (1991).

To many admirers of the female form, the highlight of True Lies will no doubt be Jamie Lee Curtis’ sexy dance scene. Supposedly a demure housewife, Curtis is initially slow to get into full pole-dancing diva mode. But just as she seems to be getting into the swing of it she makes a misjudgement and falls over, much to the viewer’s amusement. Possibly the funniest moment in the film, this was actually a genuine goof which James Cameroon decided to leave in because it worked so well.

I also had a moment of déjà vu while watching the helicopter explosion in True Lies. It was done so well that the makers of straight to video actioner Executive Target re-used a brief shot from it, of the helicopter wreckage crashing to the ground onto a police car.

Review by: Jafo

Listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast on True Lies. Find the show on iTunes, Stitcher, Podomatic or YourListen. 

The Expendables 2

If The Dirty Dozen and Cocoon had ever had a drunken one-night stand, this is what the baby would have looked like.

The Expendables 2 (2012) is such a bizarre mash-up of styles and demographics – oh-my-aching-sides oldie gags and uber-violence – that it frequently leaves the viewer perplexed: “Aw, look at all the old people, still so sprightly and full of zest. Wait no, what’s he doing? Oh god no, he just shot somebody in the face!”

Following the respectable box office of The Expendables (which proved the adage: it’s never too late to put old dogs through exactly the same tricks), old stroke-features Stallone here rounds up the boys again.

Eschewing a state pension, the 66-year-old has gathered Schwarzeneger (65), Willis (57), Lundgren (55), Van Damme (52) and junior partner the Stath for another medley of tongue-in-cheek heroics and stomach-churning blood spillage.

(To fully appreciate just how downright weird all this is, just consider that cameo assassin Chuck Norris, at a coffin-brushing 72-years-old, is a full 20 years older than Cocoon actor Wilford Brimley was when he starred as a pensioner in that film.)

The ‘plot’, in which the team rescues some plutonium, blasts the baddies and saves the obligatory village, is so by-the-numbers we need not go into detail here. What really impresses is the gusto with which the screenplay (co-written by Sly) embraces every possible action movie cliché.

What, the team has to do an impossible mission or GO TO JAIL? You mean, the young buck who’s doing ‘one last job’ to raise enough money to marry his sweetheart ACTUALLY DIES? You’re kidding me: the glamorous female who’s foisted on the reluctant team turns out to be so kick ass and gutsy she eventually WINS THEIR RESPECT?

It sounds awful, but it actually works. The whole movie is essentially one gigantic wink to the audience, a cinematic karaoke of old action movie favourites. This can become wearing when the action pensioners repeatedly blurt out self-reverential soundbites (‘I’m back’, ‘Yippee-ki-yay’ etc) but it’s mostly cartoonish good fun.

In fact, the film only really falters when it tries to up the drama and get serious. Chief villain Jean Claude Van Damme’s opening soliloquy – a rambling, four-minute homily to ‘respect’ – is literally incomprehensible, and there’s a palpable sense of relief when he finally shuts up and kung-fu kicks a dagger into someone’s chest. (Yes, he really does.)

Despite all the guns, bombs and crashing planes, the most fascinating view on display – especially on the big screen – is the cast themselves. Stallone, arrested several years ago for smuggling his personal supply of human growth hormone into Australia, scarcely even looks human anymore.

He alternately wears a thick, black woollen beret and his own hair, but you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. The bulging veins on his forearms are just terrifying, and those HGH injections haven’t quite reached down to his legs, which are now comically old man skinny. It’s like there’s two different bodies waddling across the screen – Tom Hardy on top and Steptoe at the bottom.

Arnie, meanwhile, looks like a semi-melted waxwork of his younger self, his face tight and surgical-shiny in places, but hanging off his jowls at the sides. Van Damme wears sunglasses for 95 per cent of the time – even while underground – presumably because there are bags under his eyes you could carry your shopping in.

Of the others, Bruce Willis merely looks even more like a smug testicle, while septuagenarian Chuck Norris – with his magnificently white teeth and lustrous brown beard/hairdo combo looks like a human beaver. It’s like he’s accidentally strayed into the action from an Island of Dr Moreau set next door.

At a sprightly 45-years-old, it’s left exclusively to the Stath to provide all the actual action in this action movie. Director Simon West shows a good sense of the ridiculous for the most part with this movie (he made Con Air, after all), but his choreography of the fight scenes is lamentable. The clunky edits make abundantly clear that the baddies are obediently queuing to get biffed one at a time; I’ve seen queues in Lidl’s with more sense of danger.

Still, that’s a minor gripe about a largely entertaining yarn which, in its eagerness to please, throws us an exploding helicopter in the very first scene. Our crew, armed with all kinds of armoured vehicles, bust into a walled compound to rescue Arnie.

Before you can say human growth hormone injections, Sly’s somehow on a low rooftop with his tanky vehicle, which has a motorbike strapped to the back. A chopper swings low, ready to fire, so Sly revs up the bike and sends it blasting into the helicopter cockpit, causing an inevitable crash and, yes, explosion.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The driving-a-moving-automobile-into-a-chopper gambit has been used before (Willis in Die Hard 4 provides a worthy demonstration of the form) but the good thing about this example is that it doesn’t make a meal out of things. There’s no Michael Bay multiple-cut, slo-mo, shite CGI business going on: it just happens. One minute Sly’s shooting someone repeatedly in the chest, then he throws a motorbike at a helicopter, then he punches someone else to death. Simple.

Positives

I love how, with each movie, less and less of what Sly says is comprehensible, especially when he’s angry. There’s a whole scene where he castigates Bruce Willis down a walkie talkie that I didn’t catch a word of.

You can picture the director asking him to go through it seven times before just throwing his hands into the air. In the latest Batman film, Tom Hardy often can’t be understood because he’s wearing a big mask: Sly now achieves much the same effect with just the burden of his own slopey mouth.

Negatives

The gutsy woman character is – probably deliberately – neither that young nor that glamorous, presumably to avoid providing too sharp a contrast with her doddering co-stars. However, she is one cack actress. When you’re in a scene with Sly where he’s stutteringly growling out some half-baked ‘backstory’ and YOU’RE the one whose acting is noticeably bad, it’s time to start worrying.

Favourite quote

Van Damme’s colossally nonsensical: “Without respect, we are just people.” What?

Interesting fact

The collective age of the main cast a very high figure indeed that would have impressed you if I could have been bothered to work it out.

Review by: Chopper

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on The Expendables 2. Listen via iTunes, Stitcher, Acast, Spotify or right here.

The 6th Day

In the wrong film Arnold Schwarzenegger is like a raisin in a bowl of milk.

You may like milk. You may like raisins. But no matter how long you ponder the contents of your bowl you’re only ever going ask yourself what the hell is that doing there?.

Put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the right film, let’s say Predator, Commando, Red Heat or The Terminator, and he’s an effective actor. Put him in the wrong one and he sticks out like a pork sausage at a Jewish buffet.

Sometimes that ‘cock in a hen house’ casting can work. Much of Kindergarten Cop’s comedy comes from the fact Arnie was the world’s most unlikely children’s teacher. Unfortunately as Arnie’s star rose he found himself too often in settings utterly unsuited to his skills.

The 6th Day is one of those films. It requires us to believe Arnie is a normal Joe. A guy with a job, family, and who’s main worry in life is when he’s going to be able to get some hanky panky with his wife (Not something we now know Arnie ever worried about in real life, but hey let’s not go there).

In the finest traditions of Hitchcock, fate and circumstance conspire to put Arnie at the centre of a gigantic conspiracy. Banned technology is being used to clone wealthy and important people effectively offering them the prospect of immortality.

With another actor this film might have worked better. Unfortunately, Arnie come with too much baggage. He spends most of the film being pursued by villains led by Michael Rooker. Arnie though is someone you expect to take the fight to the enemy at the first sign of trouble.

And while the film is essentially an action film it does attempt some commentary on the ethics of genetic cloning. Unfortunately, giving Schwarzenegger great mouthfuls of dialogue about the morality of science is not a good idea. He delivers the lines, but they tumble from his mouth like rubble from a collapsing building.

Fortunately for us, The Governator plays a helicopter pilot. As the film is set in the future this isn’t just an ordinary helicopter. The rotors can be disengaged and jets activated so it can rocket forward like a plane.

But anyway, Rooker and his goons have taken Arnie’s family hostage. Arnie arranges to pick them up by helicopter in exchange for vital information he’s stolen. However, Rooker intends to eliminate all the loose ends in the conspiracy. When the futuristic helicopter comes in to land Rooker shoots it down using a laser weapon.

The chopper explodes and crashes to the ground where it explodes again. Unfortunately for Rooker Arnie isn’t aboard as he suspected a double cross and was flying the chopper by remote control.

Artist merit

I felt a bit sorry for director Roger Spottiswoode. He wants to deliver a decent chopper fireball but is required by the script not to blow the helicopter up to much. That’s because Rooker has to be able to see that Arnie wasn’t aboard and that he’s been double crossed. So there’s lots of flame and explosions but the chopper remains strangely intact despite all the pyrotechnics.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known destruction of a remote controlled helicopter.

Michael Rooker: Permanently strangulated

Positives

I love Michael Rooker. Maybe I’m watching the wrong type of films, but he seems to have disappeared from view in recent years. Rooker’s got this coiled intensity that he brings to every role. I also love his voice. It sounds a bit choked and emotional. A bit like he’s being strangulated.

Negatives

As if the casting of Schwarzenegger wasn’t bad enough in this film, the cloning plot requires Arnie to share scenes of dialogue with himself. Double the torture.

Favourite quote

Arnie: “I might be back.”
Shop assistant: “He’ll be back.”

Interesting fact

Kevin Costner could have been the lead in this film. He turned down the role as it conflicted with other films he was working on.

The 6th Day was originally called The Sixth Day, but was renamed to avoid confusion with The Sixth Sense. I know. They really do think we’re that stupid.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on The 6th Day. Listen via iTunes, Player FM, Stitcher, Acast or right here

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Set seven years after Terminator 2, John Connor lives off the radar to avoid detection.  

Unable to locate the future resistance leader, evil computer overlords Skynet send a new sexy Terminator back in time to hunt and kill his future Connor’s future lieutenants.  

To protect the vulnerable targets, including Connor’s future wife, a T-850 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is despatched through time to save humanity.  

With virtually the same plot as T2, this was a chance for the studio to print money by sticking to a tried and tested formula. Unfortunately, with the series creator James Cameron sitting this one out, the sly humour, pathos and originality that had been the hallmark of previous entries is sadly absent. 

Luckily for fans of exploding helicopters, the disappointment is tempered by a wonderful double chopper fireball set piece. 

Connor and his wife flee to a military base in a desperate attempt to shut down Skynet. They are pursued by the T-X which crashes through the hangar doors in a small police chopper which skids to halt against the wall without exploding. 

The T-X emerges from the damaged aircraft and is almost upon the pair when Arnie crashes through the hangar doors in a huge transport helicopter obliterating everything in its path including the smaller police copter.  

Artistic merit 

What exploding helicopter fan isn't turned on by a little chopper on chopper (Oh-er, missus!) action? 

Exploding helicopter innovation 

Despite the frequency with which helicopters blow up in movies, it's rare that you seem detonate by crashing into one another. 

Do passengers survive? 

The T-X has its legs shorn off but the pesky blighter still drags itself out fighting. Arnie emerges from his wreckage with half his face missing to give a triumphant: “I’m back.” 

Favourite Quote 

Terminator: “Your levity is good, it relieves tension and the fear of death.” 

Interesting Fact 

Perhaps one of the most interesting scenes never made the final movie and explains why all the Terminators look like Arnie. Through a promotional video Schwarzenegger plays a Texan sergeant selected as the template to which all future Terminators will be based. When his southern accent is questioned by the top brass, an Austrian scientist (with Arnie’s accent overdubbed) declares: “We can fix it.” 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back from the future as the dead-pan cyborg with a penchant for leather.

This time Arnie gets to play the good robot reprogrammed to prevent Armageddon by saving the young John Connor (Edward Furlong) from a shape-shifting T-1000 (Robert Patrick) hell bent on his termination in order to change the course of history.

Boasting ground breaking special effects, a superb score, an involved storyline and some terrific performances T2 is a rare example of blockbuster with as much brain as brawn.

Who didn’t have a tear in their eye when Arnie got lowered into the molten lava at the end? You had something in your eye right? Right. I emerged blinking from the local Odeon in 1991 thinking this was the best film ever made.

After escaping Cyberdyne Systems HQ, John Connor is pursued by the T-1000 who crashes through a 6th story window on a motorbike into the path of a police chopper circling the building. It head buts its way through the windscreen and pours itself onto the passenger seat. The pilot sensibly decides to take his chances with the concrete below when told to get out.

The T1000 catches up with the escaping van weaving through traffic. After an exchange of gunfire Arnie slams on the brakes and the chopper, which is at street level, plows into the back of the van, splits and then bursts into flames scattering debris as the wreckage skids across the road.

Artistic merit

James Cameron is not normally a director who does anything by halves however this explosion feels slightly underwhelming. Although it looks genuine, the stunt feels staged and the pyrotechnics are over far too quickly.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First time a van has been rear ended by a helicopter? I’m grasping at straws here.

Do the passengers survive?

The T-1000 is virtually indestructible so it’s going to take more than a minor exploding helicopter to slow it down.

Positives

Helicopter versus van? There can only be one winner. I wouldn’t like to be the insurance clerk handling that claim. Where on earth are you going to hire a courtesy helicopter from?

Negatives

Why do so many pilots decide to fly helicopters at ground level? The point of a helicopter is to give the pilot aerial superiority. Mankind is safe when computers are as stupid as this.

Favourite Quote:

T-800: “I need your clothes, boots and your motorcycle”

Interesting Fact

Arnie ad-libs the line "I need a vacation", when the T-800 is taking a battering. This line was a nod to his role in Kindergarten Cop and was not in the original script.

Predator

Arnold Schwarzenegger leads a team of elite, steroid inflated, troops into the jungle - accompanied by a pen-pushing CIA agent (Carl Weathers) - to rescue some soldiers who are being held captive.

After a failed attempt to rescue the hostages, Schwarzenegger and his team learn that they've been set-up by Weathers. They also learn the first rule of action films: never trust a CIA agent wearing a suit and tie.

Anyway, as they make their escape, the team find themselves hunted ruthlessly by "something like the chameleon".

Everyone dies, apart from Arnie who defeats the Predator by covering himself in mud and using advanced cub scout skills.

During the attack to rescue the hostages, Arnie converts an old broken down truck into a rolling bomb. As fighting breaks out across the enemies lair, one of the rebels attempts to make a getaway in a helicopter.

The doomed pilot flips switches inside the cockpit. As the rotor blades begin to slowly turn, Arnie steps forward and fires an RPG into the grounded whirlybird.

Verdict

A nicely handled explosion. For a fraction of a second the cockpit appears to contain the entire explosion and we see the pilot momentarily writhe in the inferno.

The explosion then balloons out swallowing the machine. The rotor blades continue to turn before folding slowly towards the ground.

The scene exposes one of the limitations of helicopters as escape vehicles - when they are stationary they are utterly ineffective for swift getaways.

Number of exploding helicopters

1

Artistic merit

The helicopter is consumed rather than blown apart by the explosion. The pilots doomed bid to escape and the slowly turning rotor blades add a touch of elegant fatalism.

Relevance to plot

Very little. Whilst not integral to the plot the helicopter makes a brief but plausible appearance.

Exploding helicopter innovation

None.

Postives

Helicopters play a pleasingly vital role throughout the film.

We first meet Schwarzenegger and his team arriving in a helicopter. Arnie particularly appears to savour the experience, lounging in the rear of the chopper as he languorously lights a massive cigar before getting out.

Later, Arnie’s team are flown into the jungle in a helicopter, during which we're treated to one of the greatest male bonding scenes ever filmed.

And finally, Arnie is ultimately rescued from the jungle by a helicopter after bellowing the immortal, “Get to the chopper!”

There's a lot of great helicopter related dialogue in Predator and Exploding Helicopter has actually pulled together a list of it. You can find it over on our Tumblr site.

Negatives

During the film Schwarzenegger’s men find a helicopter shot down by the Predator. Unfortunately we don’t get to see this mouth-watering incident.

Interesting fact

Jean Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the Predator. However, he quit after a couple of days filming apparently unhappy that he would only be seen in the film as a glorified special effect.


Review by: Jafo

Still haven't had enough? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter crew discuss Predator on the Exploding Helicopter podcast. Find the show on iTunes, Podomatic, Stitcher, or YourListen.