King Psyz wrote:I'm sure this will all be forgotten in the series, an I'll let it pass. The whole point is this was being held up as sticking to the story bible better than heroes ever did when in fact it's been making shit up as it goes in the first two hours alone.
I find both entertaining, but by no means is terminator sticking to it's "rules" so far.
See, but aside from that one small maybe-gaff, which I'm sure they will address once Sarah & Co. come across the '99 Terminator in '07, I still say Terminator is better about respecting its own continuity.
First, the way they've introduced their key rules has been straight, to-the-point, and still driven by the story. Take the way they were able to neatly and cleanly set up the key elements of the show--which carry over from the movies--inside of five minutes in the opening action/dream sequence: 1) Sarah and John are on the run from the law; 2) a Terminator is in pursuit; 3) Sarah is trying to protect John from the Terminator so he can save the future; 4) the Terminator is nigh-invulnerable to modern weaponary. Everything else stems from that. And all of the other necessary information was conveyed in a way that felt natural to the story, while keeping a nice balance between character and high-intensity action.
Secondly, the way they play on those existing rules in their action sequences is pretty impressive. 1) When the Terminator attacks John in the school and follows him out into the parking lot, he knocks over a school bus so he can get up high for a better vantage point. 2) When Sarah is attacked in her home in Ep. 1, she pulls out a shotgun from a hidden cache in the wall and takes cover behind a chair she's lined with kevlar. 3) In Ep. 2, when Cameron is fried in that Resistence apartment (already a play on a rule established in the first episode) and they can't get her back online fast enough... they dump her out the window. Awesome. 4) At the end of the pilot, when the Terminator approaches the bank vault door, he tears it apart, piece by piece, never flinching, never pausing. 5) And then you take a non-action element like the barcode which was tatooed onto Reese's arm in the first Terminator film. It's now a sign of the Resistance fighters in the past. (Sure, that's a bit of a stretch to include this whole other group fo time-travelers, but, hey, it's a series so they have to stretch somewhat.)
I just think the way the show embraces its continuity, to a point where they're not afraid to give you specifics (e.g. 120 second until the Terminators reboot, SkyNet goes online on X date), is more confident and assured than the vague cryptics we get on Heroes. It's not a definitive comparison by any means because they
are very different shows, but so far Terminator, to me, is following a better template than Heroes.
