Movie Review: Terminator Salvation
Terminator Salvation is not a very good movie.
The Terminator premise is simple yet brilliant: murderous cyborgs from the future come back in time to kill the leader of the future human resistance. Terminator Salvation breaks that premise by showing the audience what becomes of the future, and the protagonist of T2, John Conner. Despite its worthy pedigree, in the end Terminator Salvation proves itself not a terrible movie, just a disappointing one.
The original 1984 Terminator immortalized the hulking Arnold Schwarzenegger as an ice cold killing machine in his most famous role to date. The film was followed by the 1991 smash hit Terminator 2: Judgement Day, once again directed by James Cameron. T1 defined what an action movie was in the 80s, and T2 did the same for much of the 90s. The films weren’t simple action eye candy money grabs, they were pop culture phenomenon’s. The phrases “I’ll be back,” and “hasta la vista baby,” transcend their utilitarian cinematic beginnings, and have become part of pop culture consciousness.
Ravenous cyborgs from the future sent back in time to kill the leader of the future resistance army; it’s exciting just to type those words.
Albeit the Terminator franchise is not without its black mark: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The inclusion of a female Terminator hardly brought the series anyplace new. The real selling point of this feature lies in the fact that it was Schwarzenegger’s final film before entering into California politics. Overall, the film didn’t leave much of a benchmark for Salvation to live up to.
Yet somehow Terminator Salvation falls so short of that mark.
First off, the film is riddled with logical inconsistency and unbelievability. I accept that in a movie I’m going to be asked to willingly suspend my disbelief and embrace utterly impossibility, but despite a willingness to accept the impossible, I still expect those impossible acts to make sense. Characters have to think, talk, and act like actual humans. If I can understand why you wouldn’t want to tell a captured enemy Terminator who I am and the fact that Terminators killed my father, why wouldn’t John Conner? And in the same breath, why would Skynet only send one Terminator to kill John Conner and his Father when there are clearly dozens shown available? Why not send a thousand? Because he couldn’t possibly survive? EXACTLY.
Logical inconsistency aside, the post apocalyptic world Terminator Salvation inhabits felt, at places, little more realistic than a high school play. The Resistance head command operates in the least believable submarine I’ve witnessed on film in recent times, and the Resistance headquarters itself came across as a series of uninhabitable metal tubes. Do people in the future have absolutely no lives? McG, the films director, did a horrible job of establishing this world. Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and The Matrix all wholly establish the worlds in which they exist. In LOTR you see where hobbits grow their crops, what they think about Pipe weed. If you didn’t feel the presence of ancient Rome in Gladiator you weren’t watching. These films needed to establish a connection with the audience and their respective worlds or they wouldn’t work. Terminator Salvation fails at this task. Skynet headquarters appeared as little more than a factory work yard and a steel refinery warehouse. Is this really the highly advanced fortress of Cyborgs in the future? Can’t they even build somewhat adequate defense systems? I certainly don’t understand what Terminator thought it would be a fantastic idea to make a T-800’s face the default video transition for their home movies. At least the T-800’s exoskeleton face has an embodiment of terror, unlike most other future Terminator’s.
When I see two black computer generated motorcycles driving after me, I might think “cool,” for a few minutes, but I certainly don’t think “oh no, I hope the black CG motorcycles don’t hurt anyone!” as Terminator Salvation seems to hope the audience will feel. In fact, nearly all of the Terminators in this film lack any real presence or fear inducing trait, resulting in little or no tension during the film. Schwarzenegger’s Terminator was a death bringer, and even the performance of Robert Patrick’s T-1000 had an violent intensity and subdued rage that just never found it’s way into this movie.
The effects look great, and the color pallet is spot on for a post apocalypse world, but the world itself falls flat, the story makes little sense, and the movie fails to control it’s audience resulting in a resounding meh.
This movie is fun enough, and I’m sure it’ll end up on many DVD shelfs in years to come, but it’s a disappointment considering how grand a scale the film seemed to be selling itself as and how faint in comparison it lives up to the first two in the series.
6/10 (Not recommended)
One of the great things about NAB is the amount of gear you get to see that will never, ever be practical for another 5-10 years. Think of it as a concept car show, except less sexy design and more calculators. This camera you see above me is made by evolution, a Japanese company that has its sights set on creating the most beautiful hi-resolution images and having a product that absolutely no one in their right mind would buy.
I wonder what Microsoft thinks when they purchase booths at tradeshows such as NAB. None of their products really are of any broadcast use (even the pathetic silverlight) so I always amuse myself with wondering what sort of angle their reps would take: “the same groundbreaking creative minds that brought you WORD, EXCEL and POWERPOINT are hard at work creating the next generation of software packages that will bring your content to every home in the world!” -It’s just not gonna happen. When you share the same aisle with someone like autodesk whose products have been used in every feature film since computers became useful… sometimes its best just to shut up.
