There's entertainment, and then there's epic entertainment. What's the difference? Regular ole' television series, films and games give us, at best, a night's worth of amusement, heck maybe even a weekend. But the kind of series and franchises we're talking about here have provided decades worth of nerdy indulgence! Your kids' kids will be playing these games, watching these movies and television series for years to come. One could spend a lifetime devoted to devouring the hours upon hours of sci-fi action, fantasy adventure and the quirky other-worldly antics of the awesome series highlighted here. Lucky for you, we've distilled them down to a brief yet lively discourse coupled with high points you should seek out, low lights to avoid and the next big releases coming down the pipe. So clear your schedule, take the phone off the hook, warm up your consoles, flat screens and DVD players and prepare to immerse yourself in some of the greatest and longest running epics in entertainment history!
Terminator
Bah-bah-bah. Bah-bah. To bang your fist on your desk like so is like a call to arms for fans of epic entertainment. Those five percussive beats mean three things: time travel, cyborgs and thick Austrian accents.
When James Cameron begat The Terminator in 1984 it was the perfect marriage of artist and repertoire. A dizzying mobius strip of mindbending sci-fi logic mixed with high-intensity action. The special effects in T2 were unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, making it one of the all time great summer action flicks. I personally saw T2 in the theater at least seven times - and I still can't exactly make the baffling timeline make sense. But here's something I can tell you: it is totally awesome when Schwarzenegger says, "Hasta la vista, baby!"
The underrated third film had the cojones to (SPOILERS!) end with most of humanity being destroyed and "Skynet becoming self-aware." If that last phrase means nothing to you, you really owe it to yourself to dig into this epic franchise.
How epic is Terminator? It has its own "theater experience" at the Universal Studios park. It involves lasers, smoke and strobe lights.
The high point: Tie. Arnold's machine gun march through an office in The Terminator or the T-100 hijacking a helicopter in T2.
The low point: TV's The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The show is decent but it a) takes place between film 2 and 3 (making it kinda pointless) and b) exists in its own pocket universe anyway. Lame.
Next big release: Terminator Salvation kicks off a second trilogy of films. It is a sequel to Terminator 3 but, if you want it to be, you can consider it a prequel. Far out, man.
