【英语时差8,16】影评：终结者T4（上）（在线收听）

 Terminator: Salvation I’m gonna plant a flag and say that the fourth film in the “Terminator” series is not science fiction. Furthermore, that’s exactly its problem. Arguing about whether something is science fiction is probably self-defeating – but that didn’t stop us from trying to do it for seven years, once a month, two hours a shot, during which time I attended the venerable Bloomington, Indiana Science Fiction Discussion Group. And if you think a political or religious argument can get heated, just put a dozen hard-core science fiction fans in a circle and ask them to define their passion. In fact, maybe SF IS a religion. Then again: nobody in the science fiction field itself has ever proposed even a workable definition of the genre that didn’t get shrugged off or burned to the ground. When we start splitting hairs, things get slippery, and more and more works can be filed in numerous places. Hence, terms are coined, such as “hard SF” (the science is rigorous) and “soft SF” (like the so-called “soft sciences”, perhaps social issues or psychology are inventive, but at the expense of cutting edge physics). But again: there is no room in SF for “Terminator: Salvation”. That’s because SF is primarily a field of ideas; and “Salvation” doesn’t have any of those – not about science, not about fiction – other than “let’s keep things moving”. At least one facet of the “Terminator” series hasn’t gone straight downhill: and that's the special effects. The first film was down-and-dirty (though the night photography was pretty nice, and makeup by Stan Winston, turning Arnold’s face into half robot, worked well). The second film did its part to push the movies into the computer graphics age. The third “Terminator” we can skip. And now this new one, with effects by ILM, is cutting edge again (if, last year, you thought “Transformers” was cutting edge).