Will Ooi » Schwarzenegger

Terminator Salvation: Review and Thoughts on the Series

Will Ooi — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Preamble, T1 and T2 I am a hardcore Terminator fan and this rant has been a long time coming. The original was one of the very first movies I ever saw as a kid of about 6, complete with all the violence and swearing and even the sex scene - none of which made any sense to my child mind, of course. Along with the Conan films which my parents also enjoyed, I suppose it's fair to say that I was born into being a Schwarzenegger fan, although only in hindsight do I realise that I was actually born into being a James Cameron fan. I was terrified by the dark vision of the future in the film, by how hard it was to destroy just that one Terminator, and how when 1991 came round all the kids raved on about how awesome the sequel was and how the T-1000 in particular was one of the scariest film villains ever, even surpassing the Arnie T-800. T2 lost a lot of its dark edge and replaced it with a more hopeful tale of the value of humanity achieving victory through their inner strength, and it was also the cementing of Schwarzenegger as a true Hollywood icon. But the real star was Cameron, the creator, writer, and director. He had raised his credibility with Aliens (as well as the tremendously underrated The Abyss) in between the two Terminator films, with a vision of exactly what he wanted his story to say. And he chose to end it with just T1 and 2, even shooting an alternate ending to T2 with an old Sarah Connor sitting in a park post-August 29th 1997 but opted instead for a black highway ending which was, looking back, a huge mistake.

The Schwarzenegger Video Game

Will Ooi — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:00:00 +0000

I am, not for the first time in my life, currently going through a phase of perpetual Arnie hypnosis after that last blog on The Running Man and the hilarity of Youtube (click for Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 – “trust me”), so here is an entry on the other movie-games he was in! Isn’t [...]

The Running Man

Will Ooi — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:00:00 +0000

It’s the Arnie movie that had everything: over the top violence, hilarious one-liners, outrageous ‘boss’ characters, Jesse Ventura, a Latino chick, satire on society and television, Yaphet Kotto of Alien fame, a distinct future influence on video games, and Schwarzenegger in possibly his finest form. It’s The Running Man (cue dodgy 80s echo sound effects)!!! [...]

Retro Review: Alien vs Predator Arcade

Will Ooi — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:00:00 +0000

Following my last blog on Schwarzenegger- related arcade games and because several people mentioned it, this new article will be on the classic Alien vs Predator arcade game. No not the rubbish movie, or the Jaguar first-person shooter, or even the recent AvP FPS. This Final Fight-like title was released in 1994 by Capcom and [...]

Retro Review: Elevator Action Returns

Will Ooi — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:00:00 +0000

I never played the original Elevator Action which Taito released in 1983 but the closest I came was when I borrowed a Game Boy version off a friend many years later but the cartridge didn’t work and I was accused of ruining it. In 1995 though, the sequel Elevator Action II (aka E A Returns) [...]