Terminator Salvation

(2009)

Directed by

McG

Review by Todd Plucknett

The Terminator franchise continues with the long-awaited (personally at least) Terminator Salvation. It had been in development for quite a while, and not until last year did Christian Bale sign on to play the iconic John Connor, and McG (of Charlie’s Angels fame) signed on to direct. After seeing the first two films in the franchise by the great James Cameron, I always said that they should make a movie about the Machine Wars. Finally that movie is here, after a third film that was critically disliked as a whole, but still did justice to the series. Could Salvation provide salvation for the franchise that started 25 years ago?

Well, if the script has anything to do with it, I would say not a chance. In 2018, long after Judgment Day, John Connor (Bale) is fighting to save the human race from Skynet and the terminators with the rest of the Resistance. He holds pictures and listens to recordings of his mother Sarah Connor and his father Kyle Reese that were taken when Reese went back to 1984 to save Sarah from a terminator trying to kill Connor before he was born. All he knows is that he needs to find Reese, because if he doesn’t, and Reese ends up dying, John Connor can never exist.

Meanwhile, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is on death row in 2003. Dr. Serena Kogan (a bald Helena Bonham Carter) convinces him to sign his body over to medical research. Suddenly, he is in 2018 in the middle of the war. He has no idea where he is or what is going on. He meets Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who ends up taking him in. He tells him all about Judgment Day and the ensuing wars, and following hearing Connor’s voice on the radio calling to all humans, they head out to find the Resistance. Connor nearly gets removed of his command because he is so adamant about finding Reese, someone who only Connor and his wife (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard) know the importance of.

The movie’s execution is commendable. There really is not too much plot here. The whole idea of Marcus Wright is really quite ridiculous, but he was probably the best part of the film. His character was the most interesting and menacing, but how he got there is just somewhat of a turnoff. Bale does his best Batman screaming throughout the movie and is surprisingly the weak link in the film (maybe that audio clip of him going berserk on the set carried over to his performance). Nick Stahl was pretty unspectacular as Connor in Rise of the Machines, but he was better than Bale here. Bryce Dallas Howard cannot give a good performance. Granted, she has little screen time here, but after seeing her in stuff like The Village and Manderlay, I cannot stand when she gets cast in an important role. Veteran Jane Alexander is wasted in a tiny role. Common is ok. Helena Bonham Carter has a very minor role that was poorly attempted. Anton Yelchin was very good. They were trying to get someone who would look like Michael Biehn, and they succeeded. I would have loved to see Jamie Bell take that spot, however.

McG does his best with the lacking material. He definitely knows how to choreograph action scenes, something that I had no idea he was capable of after the Charlie’s Angels flicks. The movie is very loud, though. It is really a nonstop action fare, which isn’t always a bad thing, but in the case of this particular franchise, the story is so fascinating and complicated, that it can really be ruined by excessive distractions. The movie has a really cool look to it also. It is darker and probably takes itself a bit more seriously than the previous ones in the franchise. McG is definitely a fan, and he wanted to take the franchise to a new level. If only he had been blessed with a better script, then that would have been possible. It tried to incorporate some of those classic, cheesy lines into it also, which didn’t really fit, given the atmosphere that had been created thus far in the film. Essentially, it was the same misstep that Quantum of Solace had.

The problem that this movie runs into is the same problem that the last three Star Wars films ran into. Everyone knows what is going to happen; they just do not know how it will happen. The writers need to put enough surprise and uncertainty into the material to be able to make a truly great addition to the successful series. It wasn’t until Revenge of the Sith that this happened for Star Wars, and hopefully that will happen with at least the third one in this planned trilogy, when they eventually discover time travel and start sending people and terminators back.

The movie is a lot of fun, though. Seeing these characters that we have become accustomed to at different times in their lives is interesting and refreshing. There are also several treats for Terminator fans, such as Reese’s first line being, “Follow me if you want to live.” The CGI of Schwarzenegger also brought some gasps in the theater. It is a very entertaining ride, and with all the times it tries to relate more to the first films, it succeeds. I think that the people involved know that they are walking on thin ice, though. The story is getting stretched pretty thin, and it is becoming more ridiculous than mind-blowing. This movie seems fairly content with where it is at, though. Someone must have a plan. Either way, I will keep watching, no matter how bad the screenplay attempts get. I’m a fan (I always kick myself for not watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles). That isn’t true for everyone, though. They need to get better.

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