In the seemingly endless waking nightmare that is our existence with the Star Wars and Marvel “Cinematic Universes,” we have been treated to a lot, a lot of talking about Star Wars, but it’s not exactly a critical discourse. It’s more akin to a nonstop ejaculation from—what I can only assume Disney’s horde of marketing people would condescendingly refer to as—the “enthusiast” demographic.
Saints Row: The Third should be, by all accounts, an unremarkable game. Most everything about it is “competent” and nothing more. The gameplay, running around and shooting with no cover, is fine. The missions are fine. The open world is mostly lifeless and small. Yet it was easily one of my favorite games of 2011, one that I plugged around 100 hours into over multiple playthroughs, and the entry of the Saints Row franchise that put the series on the map as more than a Grand Theft Auto clone. Why? What is so damn special about this also-ran open world crime game?
So, in case you haven’t heard, James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Linda Hamilton are working together again on a new Terminator film. They’re saying all the right things: they’re returning to the roots of the original two films; they’re resetting the franchise, essentially; they’re pretending the films Terminator 3 onward do not exist. And I was on board. Until they said, “…and we want to make it three movies.”
…and then I was very much off board.
