Terminator Salvation reviewed
Terminator Salvation is a disappointment, no doubt about it. Everything that gave the Terminator franchise its distinct flavour and interest has been clumsily excised and substituted with mediocrity and clichés. War of the Worlds, Mad Max, Cloverfield, and especially The Matrix Reloaded, are just some of the movies that director McG and his screenwriters (who wrote Terminator 3 and Catwoman incidentally), have liberally borrowed from to kick off this new science fiction trilogy.
For me the essence of a Terminator film is that it’s about a small band of people who come together, essentially as a family unit, to flee a relentless killer opponent. It’s the stuff of nightmares – an endless chase – but it’s nonetheless still exhilarating and good fun for the cinema audience. Even Terminator: Rise of the Machines understood the need to stick to these principles.
Terminator Salvation isn’t much of anything. Least of all, fun.
A large part of the problem is the film’s highly fragmented approach, as it cuts between humanity’s “saviour” John Connor (Christian Bale), the surprisingly well equipped leaders of the resistance, teenager Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) who is desperate to prove his mettle as a fighter, and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a former death row inmate who signs his body over to science in 2003 and wakes in post-apocalypse California. Eventually all these story arcs converge but it’s a tedious process getting to that point, as the audience has to endure all kinds of generic situations and derivative characters.
Over and over I found I was watching The Matrix Reloaded again – and I hated that sequel! Forget for a moment that Salvation and Reloaded have the same basic premise of man battling machine against a ruined backdrop. Other similarities include the fact that there’s the reluctant saviour figure who the official leadership distrust. There’s the ambitious teenage rebel who wants the approval of humanity’s great hope. There’s the mystical, sweet old lady. There’s the badass pilot in leather who’s actually a hot chick. There’s a big motorcycle chase. There are squid-like hydrobots. There are characters whose hearts are started and stopped. There’s a “human face” for the machines and it lives in a crisp, white Apple fortress and loves to monologue. Hell, there’s even a “Kiss me” sequence. Actually, the only Matrix Reloaded elements missing from Terminator 4 are albino ghosts and orgasm cake.
Terminator Salvation’s other major problem is its cardboard characters. I didn’t care about them at all. John Connor, despite being the saviour of mankind, is a remarkably unsympathetic character. This is not the fault of Christian Bale’s performance, but rather the way the character is written. The only reason Connor seems to have the support of the human population is because evidently he’s the only person with a radio transmitter who bothers broadcasting to them. His desire to save captured people is not to bravely “save the future” as he yells into his microphone, but rather to save his own ass, as his father Kyle Reese is among the prisoners.
There was an interesting snippet of dialogue in the (deceptively excellent) trailers that failed to make it into the finished film. It had John Connor expressing his great concern that, having changed history so much in the past, he’s altered the timeline to the point where he’s no longer sure humanity can defeat the machines. This is an intriguing point, and it would help to explain Connor’s behaviour in the film as stemming from uncertainty, not cowardice. This scene, however, was chopped from the final theatrical cut, leaving a massive missed opportunity.
Intense Aussie actor Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright is one of the film’s few positives – the only character badass enough to convincingly rival the Terminators. Even here, though, interesting concepts are ignored and potential squandered. Without giving too much away, it becomes evident early on in the film that Marcus is capable apparently of anything, from brutal hand-to-hand combat to repairing radios with a tiny coil of copper. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t so skilled back in 2003, yet he doesn’t seem to wonder at all about his new enhanced abilities.
So what then are the redeeming features of Terminator Salvation? Worthington’s Marcus Wright, as already mentioned, and the Terminators of course. The killer robots remain beautifully conceptualised, and simultaneously unnerving. Otherwise that’s it. Everything else in Terminator Salvation veers between the utterly forgettable and laughably bad.
Personally, I’m done with the Terminator franchise now. I’m no longer funding the series by purchasing cinema tickets in the hope that the next movie will be better. This movie relationship has grown too one-way for my liking, and I’m over it.
For the record everyone I saw Terminator Salvation thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t. Make of that what you will.
For me the essence of a Terminator film is that it’s about a small band of people who come together, essentially as a family unit, to flee a relentless killer opponent. It’s the stuff of nightmares – an endless chase – but it’s nonetheless still exhilarating and good fun for the cinema audience. Even Terminator: Rise of the Machines understood the need to stick to these principles.
Terminator Salvation isn’t much of anything. Least of all, fun.
A large part of the problem is the film’s highly fragmented approach, as it cuts between humanity’s “saviour” John Connor (Christian Bale), the surprisingly well equipped leaders of the resistance, teenager Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) who is desperate to prove his mettle as a fighter, and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a former death row inmate who signs his body over to science in 2003 and wakes in post-apocalypse California. Eventually all these story arcs converge but it’s a tedious process getting to that point, as the audience has to endure all kinds of generic situations and derivative characters.
Over and over I found I was watching The Matrix Reloaded again – and I hated that sequel! Forget for a moment that Salvation and Reloaded have the same basic premise of man battling machine against a ruined backdrop. Other similarities include the fact that there’s the reluctant saviour figure who the official leadership distrust. There’s the ambitious teenage rebel who wants the approval of humanity’s great hope. There’s the mystical, sweet old lady. There’s the badass pilot in leather who’s actually a hot chick. There’s a big motorcycle chase. There are squid-like hydrobots. There are characters whose hearts are started and stopped. There’s a “human face” for the machines and it lives in a crisp, white Apple fortress and loves to monologue. Hell, there’s even a “Kiss me” sequence. Actually, the only Matrix Reloaded elements missing from Terminator 4 are albino ghosts and orgasm cake.
Terminator Salvation’s other major problem is its cardboard characters. I didn’t care about them at all. John Connor, despite being the saviour of mankind, is a remarkably unsympathetic character. This is not the fault of Christian Bale’s performance, but rather the way the character is written. The only reason Connor seems to have the support of the human population is because evidently he’s the only person with a radio transmitter who bothers broadcasting to them. His desire to save captured people is not to bravely “save the future” as he yells into his microphone, but rather to save his own ass, as his father Kyle Reese is among the prisoners.
There was an interesting snippet of dialogue in the (deceptively excellent) trailers that failed to make it into the finished film. It had John Connor expressing his great concern that, having changed history so much in the past, he’s altered the timeline to the point where he’s no longer sure humanity can defeat the machines. This is an intriguing point, and it would help to explain Connor’s behaviour in the film as stemming from uncertainty, not cowardice. This scene, however, was chopped from the final theatrical cut, leaving a massive missed opportunity.
Intense Aussie actor Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright is one of the film’s few positives – the only character badass enough to convincingly rival the Terminators. Even here, though, interesting concepts are ignored and potential squandered. Without giving too much away, it becomes evident early on in the film that Marcus is capable apparently of anything, from brutal hand-to-hand combat to repairing radios with a tiny coil of copper. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t so skilled back in 2003, yet he doesn’t seem to wonder at all about his new enhanced abilities.
So what then are the redeeming features of Terminator Salvation? Worthington’s Marcus Wright, as already mentioned, and the Terminators of course. The killer robots remain beautifully conceptualised, and simultaneously unnerving. Otherwise that’s it. Everything else in Terminator Salvation veers between the utterly forgettable and laughably bad.
Personally, I’m done with the Terminator franchise now. I’m no longer funding the series by purchasing cinema tickets in the hope that the next movie will be better. This movie relationship has grown too one-way for my liking, and I’m over it.
For the record everyone I saw Terminator Salvation thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t. Make of that what you will.
Comments
I miss having Arnold in the movie... without him its just another lame action film.
man this is such a better T4 movie.
Also, I was horrified to discover on Saturday a ton of Terminator Salvation toys at Toys R Us - a whole wall of action figures and stick-on cyborg metal/flesh! Just goes to show how neutered and kiddiefied the franchise has become.