I wish i could say it turned out better

Right now it is Monday morning and I am watching a program on TV. It’s called Musicsix Star, and I find it kinda bizarre. On the surface it seems to be a trashy celebrity TMI-type show, but it’s different than those in the States. There are a man and a woman sitting at the desk like news anchors, and they play games with callers and stuff. And they keep playing this game with a sort of fill-in-the-blanks word search or something. And every time the camera goes to this board they play the suite from Terminator 2. I’m not sure exactly why, but I find it pretty funny. And it also reminds me that I promised you a blog on this a while back. Here ya go!

The other night, on French television, I saw a “stay tuned for…” ad for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I haven’t been so excited about a single television program since I’ve been here. I think it could only be topped by an ad for Forrest Gump. Just the mention of T2 brings me back to the days when I was ten years old. My mom is at work, and I don’t know where my brother is – probably on a date. It’s just me and dad at home. I’ve never seen the movie before, so dad preps me by giving me his T2 speech. I’ve heard it so many times I can paraphrase: You see, T2 is the better film. It’s hard for a sequel to beat the original. This is one of the few that does. You have to remember though, that T1 is also important. Without T1, you wouldn’t have the setup for T2. T2 wouldn’t exist, and it wouldn’t be so heavy when Linda Hamilton sees Arnold for the first time. Something like that, and I couldn’t agree more. Terminator 2 is never going to stop filling me with nostalgia. It’s one of those films that I could watch every day and not bore of. Really, who could get tired of checking out Linda Hamilton’s arm muscles or listening to Arnold’s monotone?



Which brings me to the prime reason I didn’t enjoy the French-dubbed version of the film. I stayed up until midnight on a very tired day just to see this movie, and I was totally disappointed. Let’s be honest about the reason we all love Arnold (I won’t take that sweeping generalization back because it gives me far too much pain to imagine a world where not everyone loves Arnold). It’s that voice. That no-inflection monotone that he has even when he’s not playing a machine. It’s magnified when he’s the Terminator. It’s perfect. And it’s what the voice actor didn’t understand. I’ve only been immersed in French for a month, and I’m certainly not fluent enough to detect accents in the language, and even I could tell the voice actor was emoting. His voice had inflection. WTF, voice actor! Did anyone tell you you’re supposed to be playing a Termnator? A machine? Did you even watch the movie in its original English to get a sense of the role? Oh, it was so disappointing.

I never before realized how highly critical I could be about a movie when it means so much to me. I mean, I hate to be all gripey about a voice, but the voice is one of the elements that makes the film what it is. Even the kickass scene with Linda Hamilton shooting the bejeezus out of the bad Terminator at the end didn’t make me feel better.

I’ll have to watch some Buffy in French. I find their voice actors to be really talented, and enthused.