Or at least I think it's 5. Is the one that;s just been released 4?

Only I got talking recently and the subject came up of the Terminator franchise. Now I've not seen Terminator 4. I've not seem Terminator 3, assuming there was one, and the one that's just gone isn't 3(1). My general lack of filmgoing is partly that there are relatively few films I'm keen to see, but more that, having small children about the place tends to limit your opportunities, if one's spouse is adverse to being abandoned on a regular basis(2). T1 and T2, on the other hand, I did see, way back(3) and they were, as Sellar and Yeatman would say, Good Things.

Anyway, we reckoned it was about time, as the pendulum of film franchises swings, for a reimagining of the original terminator, the iterations having surely played themselves out. Anyway, if a Hollywood mogul happens to be reading, the trailer goes like this:

(John Connor and Rhys holed up in a bunker)

JC: They’re sending a robot back in time to kill me.

Rhys: They can send things back in time now?
JC: Don’t make me go through this again, Rhys.

Rhys: Why not just send back a huge bomb?

JC: Apparently you can only send living things back through time.

Rhys: And the robot is…

JC: Covered in flesh, look, you know they can do that-

Rhys: Why not send a huge bomb back in time, covered in flesh.

JC: That’s disgusting.

Rhys: It’s Skynet, why should it care?

JC: And besides, they don’t know where I am, exactly. It has to hunt me down.

Rhys; So put the huge bomb in a robot.

JC: They can’t, the bomb’s too big. Unless…

Rhys: You mean…

JC: Yes…

(cut to modern day New York (or whereverthehell T1 was set, I can’t honestly remember))

Enormous shadow is cast Trumpeting noise is heard. Silhouette with one red laser eye, enormous ears, tusks and a trunk. 

Arnie’s voice (for it is he): I’ll be back, and this time I won’t forget.

Logo:

TERMINATOR 5: “This time it’s an elephant”

Perfect way to breathe life back into a well-loved genre, no? There was another version of this where the elephant ended up riding a unicycle, but we deccided that was just a little bit too "blue sky" thinking.

(1) In which case I still haven't seen Terminator 3. If the film just gone was actually  Terminator 5 then this post should be titled Terminator 6, and I've missed more Terminator films than I realised.

(2) Seriously, in 2008 I got to see Stardust and The Golden Compass around the start of the year (or it may have been the end of 2007, come to think of it), and that was it. Not a single other trip to the cinema between them and Watchmen a month or so ago. DVDs are the way to go, I'm afraid, and even then, it seems a rare evening that I can put together the time to sit down and watch something full-length. No, I haven't seen either of the 2 new Batman films. Yes, I know they're terribly good, please stop going on about it. No, I haven't seen Star Trek. No, I won't be seeing Transformers: The Search for the Crystal Skull or whatever piece of mythical chicanery is the tagline for the new giant-robot-merchanising movie, but that, I suspect, may be less of a loss.

(3) Criminy, I remember taking a girlfriend to T2 on a first date. That was not a Good Thing.