Superficially, Terminator Salvation seems like an archetypal summer action flick success story. It’s a big-budget, star-studded, effects-laden sequel steeped in movie history and its own franchise mythology.
But watching it, it’s obvious that something is missing.
Terminator Salvation
Directed by McG |
For starters, Terminator just isn’t the same without Arnold. The series’ fourth installment charts a bleak course through post-apocalyptic landscapes – “Mad Max by way of The Matrix” pretty well sums up both the narrative and the visual aesthetic – almost completely sans Schwarzenegger, except for one all-too-brief confrontation on a Terminator assembly line.
Another major culprit is the writing. Screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris (and there are a whole host of uncredited script doctors whose contributions noticeably fragment the story, but that’s a whole other gripe) are the people response for the embarrassing Catwoman and 2007’s crocodilian Anaconda rip-off, Primeval, in addition to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
But as much as T3 could be forgiven for breaking out of the series’ dark tone in favour of glossy action scenes and “talk to the hand” jokes, now that the same writers, teaming up with director McG of Charlie’s Angels fame – and not much else – have decided to take things back to the ominous tenor of Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it becomes painfully obvious that their collective forte lay in T3’s buoyant, popcorn-munching temperament.
Terminator Salvation continues to chart the life of John Connor (Christian Bale), whose mother Sarah Connor was the target of the original terminator and who was himself targeted twice more in sequels. But the assassinations failed, and after sentient machines annihilated half the human population in the nuclear holocaust of Judgment Day and took control of the world, Connor became one of the leaders of the human resistance.
This time round, the focus is pulled back to encompass the lives of a number of other characters: Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who wakes up again 15 years after his 2003 execution without any idea why; Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), a plucky teen destined to be sent back in time to father Connor – but not in this movie; and Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), a hardened warrior woman in the tradition of Sarah Connor.
The plot focuses on Wright’s confrontation with the nature of his reincarnation and a possible love interest in Williams, as well as Reese’s capture by the machines who want to prevent him from siring Connor. Meanwhile, Connor spearheads the resistance (supposedly troubled by allegations that he is a “false prophet,” but this is not explored the way the Matrix sequels delve into Neo’s nature) to save Reese after the discovery of a radio signal which appears to render terminators inert.
Bale, who has been a rising star in Hollywood over the last few years, cementing himself with The Prestige, 3:10 to Yuma, I’m Not There, and, of course, The Dark Knight, is a zero-dimensional character here – something for which he will have to make up in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies later this summer. Worthington does justice to the character of Wright but doesn’t realize its full potential, while Moongood and Yelchin make the most of their characters’ limited arcs.
The best that can be said of Terminator Salvation is that it features great special effects and finally fills out the entire terminator arsenal, including giant human-gatherers (whose design seems to have taken a page or three from Transformers), flying hunter-killers and even aquatic lamprey-like attack bots. The action scenes are neat, but even while they are more than passable but they don’t raise the bar one iota. And the rest of it vacillates somewhere between mild interest and boredom.
Aggravating the general mediocrity on display is a huge accumulation of clichés, including one last little plot point which tries far too hard for poetry at the expense of plausibility.
To be fair, it could be worse: Terminator Salvation could be an abominable sequel in the style of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle – also a McG picture. But ultimately, while it’s generally watchable, this isn’t the movie it deserved to be. (If James Cameron had passed away, the critics would surely have him “spinning in his grave.”) And if it really does bear the fruit of another two sequels, their prospects are looking just about as dim as mankind’s in the wake of Judgment Day.