Terminator Salvation
Warner Bros. Pictures
PG-13
115 Minutes
2009
Please note: The following review contains MASSIVE SPOILERS. If you do not wish to know major plot details of Terminator Salvation, do not click the link below.
I'll just get this out of the way right now: Terminator Salvation is not a good movie. It's an even worse Terminator film, but it's just not a good movie all around. From the wooden performances, gaping plotholes, and flat out awful story decisions, there is hardly anything redeeming about it. Ironic, isn't it?
The film will undoubtedly be remembered more for Christian Bale's now infamous on-set, profanity-laced tirade than for being a memorable or worthwhile entry into a classic sci-fi/action franchise. It may not be the worst of the Terminator series, a dubious honor that still belongs to its dreadful third incarnation, Rise of the Machines, but Salvation feels more like a generic action movie with a Terminator facade that a true attempt to revive the ailing franchise.
Terminator Salvation opens with a short segment involving a cancer-plagued Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Serena Kogan, bald from chemotherapy and with an ashen complexion. She is trying to convince convicted criminal Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) to donate his body to Cyberdine Systems for "a second chance on life." Marcus reluctantly agrees in exchange for a kiss, spewing forth one of the many would-be memorable lines with all the emotion of an athlete doing a television commercial - "So that's what death tastes like."
A ham-handed, clumsy, and completely superfluous text briefing fast forwards us to 2018, recapping the events of Judgment Day for the three people in the theater who haven't seen the first two Terminator films. It is this type of pandering to the audience that plagues Terminator Salvation from start to finish. We're treated to needless exposition such as this, meanwhile several characters' backstories - not to mention names - are barely (if at all) mentioned.
After a band of resistance soldiers storms a Skynet base and are wiped out, soldier John Connor (Christian Bale) is sent to test out a new weapon that could turn the tide of the war against the machines. Meanwhile, Marcus Wright barely escapes from the exploding facility and wanders the wasteland, eventually bumping into a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) and the two of them fight for their own survival while attempting to reach the resistance.
Even Christian Bale's exceptional talent cannot save Terminator Salvation from its truly terrible writing, and in fact, Bale's abilities are completely wasted here. He barely speaks above a whisper for the duration of the picture with little to no inflection or emotion. Under normal circumstances, Bale is one of the most extraordinary actors working today - a dedicated individual who gives himself completely to his craft - but here he seems to be collecting a paycheck. He never struck me as the maturation of Edward Furlong's young John Connor from T2.
Several times during the film, Connor listens to the tapes recorded by his late mother Sarah, as seen at the end of the original Terminator. Though the dialogue is the same and Linda Hamilton's picture is shown briefly, the recording is clearly not her voice and it sounds like someone reading a script straight off a page.
To make matters worse, Bale has no one around him to play off of. With the exception of Sam Worthington's Marcus, there isn't a memorable performance to be found. Bryce Dallas Howard plays an older, now-pregnant Kate (as seen in Terminator 3), but is hardly used at all. Rapper-turned-actor Common plays resistance soldier Barnes, who has as much personality as a brick wall with an angry face painted on it and about as much to do. Evidently, his brother was one of the soldiers wiped out in the film's opening scenes, but that's about the extent of his backstory. Lastly, Michael Ironside, best known for his work as the voice of Sam Fisher in the popular Splinter Cell video games, has a small on-screen role as General Ashdown that explains why he is best known as a voice actor.
Perhaps worst of all, Anton Yelchin's younger version of Kyle Reese, the essential Terminator character in my opinion, is beyond awful. I never once bought that this scraggly kid became the fearless, battle-hardened soldier Michael Biehn played so well in 1984. Even the utterance of Reese's classic line "Come with me if you want to live" holds absolutely no wait and just comes across like cheap pandering.
The fun doesn't stop there. To top it all off, Reese is given a sidekick in the form of a mute girl, Star (played by Jadagrace Barry). Her only role is to occasionally hand a character a useful item at a moment of dire need. It may as well be right out of the movie tie-in game. She's little more than a cheap prop herself and doesn't serve the story in any way.
There are numerous other throwbacks to the glory days of Terminator's past. Before he attempts to infiltrate Skynet, Kate asks John "What do I tell your men when they notice you're gone?" Bale turns around and rasps "I'll be back," but without Schwarzenegger's thick Austrian accent the line has no gravitas at all.
The film's biggest moment is undoubtedly the all-too-brief appearance from a CG Arnold himself. Using stock footage and digital matting, they were able to effectively recreate Arnold's square-jawed look on a body double and the end result is impressive, if a little shiny and plastic-like. It may be a cheap bid for audience applause, but it's still satisfying when what appears to be Arnold Schwarzenegger steps into the light to the classic percussive Terminator drum pattern. Unfortunately, it also creates one of the film's largest anachronisms.
During this sequence, Connor eventually finds Kyle Reese, who had been captured earlier during one of the film's more exciting chase sequences. Reese gets a clear look at the T-800 before Connor blows the fake tissue off with a rocket, begging the question why he explains to Sarah that he had to wait for it to make a move on her before he could spot it in the original film.
Though this lack of attention to detail is irritating, nothing compares to the direction taken with Skynet itself. In the past, Skynet has always been an omnipresent, evil entity but in Terminator Salvation it is given a face - and that face is apparently Helena Bonham Carter. As it explains in the film, it's merely an image that would be easy for Marcus to process, but the decision to make Skynet "talk" is nothing short of ridiculous. We all know it became self-aware, but the attempt to give it a personality is just another in a long line of poor decisions made by director McG.
At the heart of it all, I suppose the blame should fall squarely on the director's shoulders. It's a director's job to get the most out of his actors, but most of the performances seem like first takes. McG may have been more interested in creating large action setpieces, including a few mildly entertaining chase sequences, but the storytelling suffers greatly.
Terminator Salvation could have been the first blockbuster of the season, but questionable decisions, silly plot devices, and some truly terrible performances, even from one of Hollywood's leading actors, drag the series' once good name through the mud even further. It's becoming abundantly clear that we may have to stick to watching our old DVDs and blu-rays of Terminator and T2 from here on out, because Salvation is everything but the reboot the series desperately needs.
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