Simon and Jim discuss Jonathan Mostow's TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, a pivot from interesting and distinctive Terminator films towards generic early 2000s action films. They discuss this film's wild tonal whiplash and the great disservice it does to the film's more ambitious plot points, the casual laddish misogyny and voyeurism expressed through the T-X and the Kate Brewster characters, how terrible and generic the film looks including a stunt superficially similar to the famous truck flip from THE DARK KNIGHT, Arnold's small distraction during this film of running for Governor of California, and the naming conventions of blockbuster franchises after the third film.

Content warnings: misogyny and patriarchy; nuclear war and apocalyptic destruction; casual homophobia; murder and violent death including the shooting of children; body horror and removal of skin.

Our theme song is Terminator Theme Song (32Stitches Remix) by 32Stitches available on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/32stitches/terminator-32stitches-remix

Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/MA22Y4VE/collection

We continue our Terminator series with one of the most successful films ever made, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Simon and Jim discuss what this film does to develop as a sequel, the film's production through some very James Cameron stories, the many various readings of this film in the research literature including some dubious political and racialised readings, modernism and postmodernism as embodied in the two Terminators, the shifting of genre and tone between this film and the first film, how masculinity and femininity are presented and subverted through the characters of Sarah Connor and the T-800, how the film represents and undermines authority figures, and what it means to make a violent film about peace and the value of human life.

Content warnings: casual homophobia; carceral psychiatry and mental health issues; US police and institutional racism; murder and violent death; misogyny, patriarchy, and sexual assault; racism and Orientalism; nuclear war and apocalyptic destruction; body horror and removal of skin.

Our theme song is Terminator Theme Song (32Stitches Remix) by 32Stitches available on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/32stitches/terminator-32stitches-remix

Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/QJSNUUXT/collection

TAKE ONE Presents... is back for a new series covering the Terminator franchise. In this first episode, Simon and Jim discuss James Cameron's THE TERMINATOR. We talk about how the film came about through Cameron's dogged and occasionally dickish persistence, "tech-noir" as a genre, the film's situatedness in the 1980s and how that lends the film an interesting sense of temporality, how this film is a great example of good pacing and immediacy, sexual politics and the representation of feminism through action heroines, and nuclear anxiety against AGI anxiety.

Content warnings: murder and violent death; nuclear war and apocalyptic destruction; body horror and removal of skin and eye stuff; the Holocaust; abortion; pessimism about the future.

Our theme song is Terminator Theme Song (32Stitches Remix) by 32Stitches available on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/32stitches/terminator-32stitches-remix

Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/KFB8CEB2/collection