Oh Fringe… how I’ve grown to enjoy thee. When you first came around, everyone said “It’s X-Files for a new generation!” but it’s so much more character-centric and less mystery-centric than X-Files, and it took me a while to warm up to the cast. Which is kind of important when it’s all about them.

Now that it’s grown on me and I enjoy most episodes (they’re not all gems, but most are good), they finally get lazy enough to warrant a TIWTLM post.

The suspense leading up to Peter finding out he’s from the other side has been cool. Couple close calls, near misses on accidentally finding out, but when Peter ‘figures it out’, the logic behind his conclusion and his reaction just don’t lay well with me. The character isn’t always the most objective and rational, BUT he loves the man he believes is his father and it seems odd that he’d reject him so quickly after being his son for decades. So being a lifelong adopted father and being genetically identical to his real father, it seems like it would take a LOT for him to reject Walter so thoroughly, even standing on the highest moral grounds.

And how did he come to the conclusion that he was from the other side? Because someone he saw, obviously from the other universe, wasn’t torn apart and HE wasn’t torn apart. Seems like ‘luck’ on his part and ‘planning’ on the part of the guy who was doing it intentionally might have more to do with it than being from the other universe. I mean, Walter traveled to the other universe to get Peter. If Peter was under the assumption that Walter hadn’t gone over, just opened a window, then suddenly decided he HAD gone over and snatched Peter (maybe he thinks Walter used a long pair of tongs or something), then the premise that only people from the other universe can pass safely, is erroneous.

And with what looks like 2 episodes left in season two, it looks like next week is a complete punt. I don’t mind non-standard episodes from time to time, they can be fun. X-Files had plenty of them over the years, but not as a way of either avoiding or artificially drawing out the drama. All that does is make fans go “But..but.. what about Peter? You’re just going to ignore that???”

So for the last episode, we have Peter’s hissy fit and Spock’s arrival in their universe to deal with. My prediction is a bunch of Peter drama, a light peppering of side drama, then a closing shot of Spock setting up a dramatic cliffhanger for next season.

Oh Fringe.. you still satisfy my need for federal agent oriented sci-fi, but you either need to give your writers more vacation.. or less. You have so many odds and ends dangling that it’s too easy to just fall completely to tatters story-wise and that’s when you really start losing viewers.

I almost didn’t post it because what’s the point of just saying “eh.. didn’t like it”? But it has to be said. This was an awful movie. And I guess I had more to say than I thought:

Once again, for the record, I *like* some awful movies, and there are some bits that are worth salvaging here, but in general.. awful. I’d say a good 70+% of this movie just should have been redone completely and we might have gotten a more polished turd than what was put out.

Some people blame the fact that this was released as PG-13. I heard a TON of bitching (at least on the former Big O and Dukes show) about this fact. But it goes deeper than that. A lot of things go into the actual production of a movie and you need the strong points to carry the weaker ones. If the writing/story, direction, effects, editing or any of the other factors are kind of weak, you really make up for it somewhere, but the only thing T:S had going for it was some pretty cool robot designs and some effects here and there, but they just weren’t enough to make up for all the other badness.

Maybe it’s that “McG“, the director and producer, has worked more on TV shows and music videos than he has on movies, or maybe it was other factors. I believe that you can take a lackluster performance from your actors and a good director can make them look great by picking just the right shots at the end. Just like I can take 1,000 photographs and if I only published the handful of ones that looked great, everyone would think I was a great photographer. But I think the process worked backwards here. McG somehow took a typically fantastic and dynamic actor, Christian Bale, and just made him look ridiculous. I mean, some of the scenes HAD to have been obviously bad and maybe Bale and company thought they’d be fixed in post production, but guess not.

The dialog was shitty. I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare but not expecting dialog on par with a Dolph Lungren movie.

The acting, also shitty. Or maybe it was just edited that way. The whole thing played out a lot like an 80′s movie. I kept thinking how this would have fit right in with the Robocop franchise. Not all the movie was like that, but a good bit of it, particularly the beginning.

In general, most of the movie doesn’t fit well with the Terminator franchise. It tries hard to fit in while trying something different than the usual terminator/good guy/person-in-distress all going on a long chase to visit someone, destroy something, prevent person-in-distress from being killed. I mean, it sort of does that because that’s just kind of how the franchise goes, but it does it in a more round-about way.

If you’re a fan of Terminator or sci-fi action flicks, then there’s something in there to enjoy. But this won’t go down as a memorable representation of the sci fi genre.

McG should be ashamed of making Christian Bale look bad, although that may be his biggest talent as a filmmaker.

BTW: Thanks to Warner Brothers for offering a free DivX copy of Terminator Salvation. I somehow feel better knowing I didn’t even pay part of my monthly cable bill to watch it.