Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Lena Headey, Summer Glau, Thomas DekkerBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Chinese (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Thai (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 394 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-08-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- The mother of all destiny. Her son, the future leader of mankind. Their protector, a terminator from the future. Together they must take back the future as Sarah Connor (300?s Lena Headey) prepares her son to fight the war against machines determined to annihilate the human race. The clock is ticking. Can they stop Judgment Day?The man-vs.-machine tale that?s thrilled millions gets a reboot in thi
Movie Reviews of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season
Movie Review: Exceeded Expectations, Terminated All Doubts
Summary: 4 Stars
I did something with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TSCC) that I rarely do: I purchased the complete show on DVD without so much as watching a single episode during its run on broadcast television or reading even one review. The reason for such a brash move? Well I've always enjoyed the franchise in its feature film form and figured that the weekly format would be a spectacular medium in which to fill in the gaps between the films.
As such TSCC does just that. In fact the series could be viewed as Terminator 2.5 if the motion-picture timeline is one's gauge of measurement. If you'll recall, Terminator 2: Judgment Day ended with Sarah Connor, her young son John (with the help of the 800 "Swartz" Series Terminator) manage to destroy both the liquid-metal T-1000, as well as the arm and chip from the first film's 800 Series Terminator. The film was set in the year 1995 with a then ten-year-old John Connor.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines jumped ahead to 2004 where a nineteen-year-old John Connor is living "off the grid" in the areas surrounding Los Angeles after the death of his mother. It turns out that Judgment Day did not occur in 1997 as had been predicted in the first film due to mankind's intervention to the timeline, which postponed the prophesied events. As is the robots of the future's way, another Terminator has been sent back in time (this time the female T-X unit) in effort to pick off Connor's future lieutenants in the human Resistance.
TSCC begins in 1999 with a fourteen-year-old John Connor still living with his mother on constant run from both destiny and evil cyborgs. Following the movie-formula, the duo finds themselves pursued by a T-888 Terminator unit but aided by Cameron, a female (800 Series) Terminator that has been re-programmed and sent back through time to protect John.
But before you go and get used to life circa 1999, the crew make a desperate escape by time traveling to the year 2007 and in the process jump right over the time where cancer should have claimed the life of Sarah Connor. The Terminator in pursuit in 1999 uses the eight years of their absence to reconstruct his damaged chassis and is quite alive and well by the time 2007 rolls around.
It gets worse still for our protagonists once they discover that that Skynet has in fact sent many Terminators back to the year 2007 for a whole variety of missions ranging from the execution of key resistance members to the physical construction of the network and facilities that will eventually become Skynet.
The bottom line is, and like the movies, our heroes have their hands full in what boils down to present day in effort to change future-history. The good news is, as an hour-long episode format, it works. The shows build with absolutely beautiful pacing, intense action sequences, and solid scientific explanations without tech overload.
I wasn't sure what to expect going in; after all, many of the films demanded an R rating to tell their tale not to mention boasted budgets that put even the ritziest television budgets to shame. I can state with confidence that producer Josh Friedman recognized these limitations and went about crafting the source material into a television effort with style and grace.
The acting is well above what's typically associated with made-for-television action drama efforts and the effects, while slightly pale compared to the efforts of the last two feature films, are easily on par with (and at times surpass) the visuals of the first two.
More impressive than the acting and visuals however would have to be the story/ plot structure itself which manages to take many of the elements that have made the films so enduring, and interweaves them with a slightly more dramatic feel than that of the movies (which were typically mass-destruction chases).
My only complaint lies not with the show in particular but rather some of the typical snafus and paradoxes that the series (and time travel in general) call to mind. Questions of predestination and multiple (parallel) existences can detract from an already difficult-to-follow timeline if the viewer allows themselves the distraction of pondering such things. As has been the case with all of the Terminator incarnations thus far, it is best perhaps to suspend disbelief and simply enjoy the ride.
The show was one of those that suffered due to the writer's strike and hence consists of only 9-episodes for the first season. Coming in at a total runtime of 394 minutes, the show spans 3-discs and contains a healthy dose of extras including staff commentaries over three episodes, audition clips, gag reels, and several deleted "Terminated" scenes. The second season was boosted to 22-episodes before ultimately meeting its untimely demise from television. A shame really, as the show managed to surpass most of my expectations. I'm working on the second season now and will review that one upon completion as well.
Summary of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season
The mother of all destiny. Her son, the future leader of mankind. Their protector, a terminator from the future. Together they must take back the future as Sarah Connor (300's Lena Headey) prepares her son to fight the war against machines determined to annihilate the human race. The clock is ticking. Can they stop Judgment Day? The man-vs.-machine tale that's thrilled millions gets a reboot in this series set after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Now the battlefield has shifted to the present. Will John Connor (Heroes's Thomas Dekker) seize his destiny? Will a cell phone salesman's chess program evolve into Skynet? Can the sweet but deadly cyborg (Summer Glau of Firefly) be trusted? Answers - and the fight for the future - are here and now.Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the weekly TV series based on the hit action/sci-fi movie franchise that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. Lena Headey (300) plays the title character, the mother who bears the burden of raising--and protecting--the future salvation of mankind, her teenage son, John (Thomas Dekker, Heroes). As explained in both of James Cameron's Terminator movies (this series considers the third film, Rise of the Machines, not part of its mythology), the computer system Skynet has taken over future Earth, and an adult John Connor is the leader of the human resistance, causing the robots to send android assassins--called Terminators--back in time to kill John before he can become a hero. John's would-be assassin--introducing himself as a substitute teacher named Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt)--tracks him down, but John gets a fighting chance with the surprise arrival of a benevolent Terminator (Summer Glau, Firefly) named Cameron (get it?), who declares, "Come with me if you want to live" (another nod to the movies).
Thus begins an uneasy partnership among Sarah, John, and Cameron, with Sarah not trusting Cameron and Cameron trying to carry out her mission (some of her deadpans are hilarious) and John caught in the middle (lucky John!). The trio time-travels ahead to 2007 but still can't escape the relentless Cromartie, and also dogged by an FBI agent (Richard T. Jones) who thinks Sarah Connor might be more than just a fugitive. And while the series' fierce action looked like it might slide into a simple Chase of the Week formula, things got interesting with our heroes' discovery of a chess machine called the Turk that might be the first incarnation of Skynet, and a surprising addition to the team (Brian Austin Green). Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles debuted on Fox in January 2008, and the midseason start and the writers' strike kept the season to a mere nine episodes. But it was picked up for a full second season in 2008-2009. --David Horiuchi
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