Terminator Salvation (2009) Movie Review
Another Sci-Fi Reboot - But This One's Redundant.
Jul 11, 2009
By the third installment of Terminator, James Cameron had left the franchise - and it showed. Not without merit, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines failed to really add anything new, although it certainly wasn't short of excitement. It didn't really suggest room for a further installment.
But then someone had an idea. What if we saw beyond the events of the third movie, where 'Judgment Day' - a nuclear holocaust, unleashed by a petulant Cyberdine artificial intelligence against it's creators - finally happened? The previous Terminator movies offered glimpses of an atomic wasteland (all ashen skies and skull-strewn horizons), yet these scenes were set in 2029.
So, that bright idea was to look into that middle ground - the period after the fallout, but before 2029 and the creation of those sleek cyborgs seen in the previous films.
And therein lies the first, most fundamental problem. The future we saw in the trilogy was always the least interesting aspect - it served as counterpoint the present-day setting, showing us the consequences of allowing the machines victory, yet offered little else beyond pyrotechnics and gun-play. Unfortunately, that is all we get from the clumsily entitled Terminator Salvation.
Illogical Plot, Hammy Performances
Christian Bale grunts his way through the role of John Connor, a character spoken of only in mythic terms in the first movie - the apparent leader of the future resistance and mankind's best hope against the machines. Only now, he hasn't yet earned the status - he's seen as a hot-headed renegade by the superiors running the emerging resistance forces.
Given Connor's ability to spectacularly crash helicopters (he does so twice in the course of the movie), they might have a point.
Sam Worthington gets a better role as Marcus Wright, an ex-convict from present day who wakes up to the post-apocalypse future with no memory of what happened. He meets other human survivors, who in turn set him on a journey that will ultimately cross paths with Connor.
Big On Explosions, Small On Subtlety
There's some fairly interesting ideas going on - most significantly, the issue of identity and self. But the movie isn't concerned with such heady concepts. After the first bombastic half-hour, it's clear that director McG is most interested in blowing stuff up. Sixty minutes in, this becomes tedious; one unimaginative set-piece after another, heavily reliant on CGI effects.
What starts out feeling very similar to Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior eventually - bizarrely - turns into a retread of Cameron's other great Sci Fi, Aliens. What it doesn't feel like is a Terminator movie; it exists as it's own concept, branching away from the previous endeavours. Gone is the scary intensity of the initial trilogy, replaced with Transformers-style action.
Toybox Terror
So caught in the design process of these new robot creations, the team behind production must have lost sight of common sense. Just why does the giant 'harvester' robot deploy two bikes ("Moto-Terminators!" yells one cast member) from its thighs? Why do these 'Moto-Terminators' have a handy USB port that allows a hardware override from a memory stick - or a saddle for a human rider to take command of it?
There are more concerning lapses of logic - as more is explained, less makes sense. The future, as seen in previous installments, was vague, dreamlike; trying to expand this and offer explanation here merely holds up inadequacies with the whole time-travel paradox. We learn that 'previous attempts' to kill Connor (the crux of the trilogy) had failed... but weren't those killing machines sent back from 2029, eleven years away from when this film is set?
Conclusions
By the end, it's apparent that this is a franchise re-brand, pitched to a younger market. It avoids heady intellectualism in favour of crashes and bangs; even the movie's best surprise - a sort-of cameo referencing the earlier films - falls flat after about a minute.
Most alarming of all is Bale, an actor of considerable promise in films like The Machinist, delivering such ham. That his performance isn't the worst speaks volumes for the wasted talent; Helena Bonham Carter gets that distinction for a dreadful cameo.
2009 will prove to be something of a golden year for Sci-Fi, thanks to the sheer wealth of movies released. But as it stands, Terminator Salvation has been the most disappointing of the bunch so far.
The good news is, it sits so squarely outside of those previous films, it's easily forgotten.
 |
