Retro Review: Terminator Salvation

As penance for failing to blog for 3 months I am going to post another review I wrote last May, in a series of retro reviews in which I post reviews of films released around this date in history. So here follows a "Retro Review" of Terminator Salvation (Released May 2009).



While enjoyable The Terminator films have always been popcorn-fodder part of the burgeoning box office tradition of the 1990s, an innovation in the delivery of cyber-punk theology in the cinema, many would argue that without The Terminator there would be no Matrix. While not having the perceived depth of The Matrix, or the ground-breaking effects and fight scenes, The Terminator delivered a tense action film, akin to Duel, merely replacing a big truck with a giant German, whose requests for clothing and machinery aren't to be taken lightly.

While the original's 80s fashions seem dated, Terminator 2 was a more glossy affair, with an interesting twist on the original's premise. What Terminator 2 is remembered for though is the effects; audiences were blown away when the T-1000 rose up from a pool of liquid metal.

T3 was the cash-in giving the movie-going public a plain action film, loosely bridging us to the point where Terminator 4: Salvation begins.

The events foretold in Terminator 2 and shown in T3 appear to have taken place as told, we rejoin John Connor as the leader of a group of soldiers, who are part of a worldwide resistance against the machines. Connor learns that his time travelling future/past father (this area of time travel is classically difficult to define in writing), Kyle Rees (Anton Yelchin) is being targeted by the machines, threatening John's very existence.

Meanwhile in the early 21st century a man called Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), is condemned to death is given the chance to donate his body to science, a chance he takes, he then awakes in the post-apocalyptic world, seemingly unchanged and soon comes into contact with the aforementioned Rees, as they battle to survive against the menacing machines.

The benefit of the Terminator films is that there is so much time travel, each film can redefine what happened and how it has affected the world. The resistance are a well supplied army in this film, and there is seemingly quite a large human population. To this extent the choice of the film-makers was wise, the weapons are fairly conventional, and recognisable, the machines aren't the shape-shifting monsters of T2 and 3.

Many of the post-apocalyptic clichés are present, overtures of Waterworld and Mad Max are abundant, the coveting of oil, and small mute children that represent just how bloody terrible the situation is that even the kids aren't whining constantly about ice cream.

The film is really struggling between two stories, one is an interesting study of what it is to be human and issues of redemption, and how someone from our time would react to this dystopian future, with some juicy fighting thrown in, nothing too original, but enjoyable nonetheless. The other story is Christian Bale yelling in your face ">
In the original draft of this story the John Connor part was far smaller, focusing on the more interesting story, with the Connor part very much peripheral to the central story, however when they hired Bale there was a drastic re-write, which crow-barred his character in and tried to make it the focus, when it was clear that what they had before was so much better.

Christian Bale comes fresh from his performance in last summers' smash success, The Dark Knight, and is seemingly still doing the Batman growl, which was so distracting in that film. Every line is growled or yelled, and all delivered as if it were the most important thing in the world, and while in the context of the film they are important the audience simply don't care. Bryce Dallas Howard is under-used as Connor's girlfriend, and subsequently the audience doesn't know what to think of her, so when she tearfully kisses John goodbye as he goes on a mission it falls flat. She was clearly told she would have a more substantial role, most of which was probably left on the cutting-room floor.

There isn't a good performance to pick between them, the film plods along to its inevitable conclusion, going through all the beats in a very conventional fashion, and often detracting from the story we want to see about the Marcus Wright character. Director McG, doesn’t even offer the audience an interesting camera shot.

Thoroughly uninspired directing a conflicting script and poor performances have made this film a huge disappointment, given the pedigree of its star and the first two films. The main problem is that unlike T1 and 2, we've seen it all before, the squid-like robots from the Matrix, the conflicts with leadership which could almost have been lifted directly from every cop film from the 1980s, with the exception of no badges and guns being requested. We're left with characters we don't care about, playing out a story that we all saw coming a mile away. It’s a pity that the focus fell on John Connor again, there are other stories to tell in a post-skynet world, many would have been more interesting than this.

Overall a poor sequel to such a seminal sci-fi film, this could have been so much better, there’s no salvation for this film.