Terminator: Salvation

Director: McG

Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood

Review:

First off, yes, I'm a Terminator fan. Constant readers will not be altogether surpised. I still have great memories of watching the first two Terminators. I also liked elements of the third (not the Transformer-like TX) including the ending in the bunker. It gave me goosebumps.

Nothing in Terminator Salvation gets close to the feelings that I got from the first three films.

I must confess that I also like McG. The Charlie's Angels films were just a bit of fun, one of my guilty pleasures. McG showed that he has an eye for action and is great at using music to excite the audience during action scenes. He was also responsible for producing Supernatural, one of the best genre TV shows on US TV. Yes, like other similar directors ("Damn you, Michael Bay!") he is an easy target to criticise because of the very nature ofthe films he makes. He would not have been my choice as director of a Future War Terminator film.

Over time, I followed the production news and liked what I saw. The production designs were,and are, fantastic. A huge amount of work has gone into the look of the movie and can't be faulted. Except they seem to be designed for a full range of toys which have been released in their thousands. Yet again, we're faced by the distilliation of a franchise.

I imagine that you're familiar with the story. It's 2018 and there is a fragmented world-wide resistance commanded by a force circling the Atlantic in a sub. John Connor is seen by some as a prophet and by others, a false prophet. When not on missions, Connor spends his time teaching the world wide resistance, tips and tricks on how to defeat the machines, via CB radio. Strange that Skynet hasn't found a way of jamming the signal.

A weakness in the machines has been found and Connor exploits it.Out of nowhere comes Marcus Wright played by Sam Worthington. He turns Connor's world on it's head by showing him a new twist on the war between man and machine and a "final battle" ensues.Had this not been an expensive hollywood blockbuster, I suspect that there would have been more focus on character and what it means to be man or machine. It's only paid lip service in the finished movie.



The leaked rant by Christian Bale suggested an intensity in the performance that just isn't there. I normally like Christian Bale. There is too much introspection in Bale's approach that isn't articulated through the screenplay. It's smouldering behind Bale's eyes but doesn't get to come out enough. His gravelly tones echo his performance in The Dark Knight, and in another strange parallel his performance is trumped by Sam Worthington.Worthington puts 110% into his performance. He proves that he is well suited to deliver a deeper action role. Sadly, he can't carry the movie but his efforts stop from making the whole movie into a 3/10. Not even Worthington can inject the movie with an emotional core despite his attempts.

Neither can Anton Yelchin. This young actor proves once again how good he is. Not that long ago, I enjoyed his perfomance in Star Trek, as Checkov. In this he plays a young Kyle Reese, who is Skynet's priority target. Now, unless I missed something, how did Skynet learn of Reese's significance? Yelchin plays the part well and is very convincing. It felt natural that he would grow up to be the Micheal Biehn Kyle Reese that we know from T1 and T2.Moon Bloodgood also does wonders with very little, portraying a Sarah Connor replacement in Blair. She befriends Wright and appears to understand what he is and what he is capable of.

What's right about the film? As mentioned above, the look of the movie and the design elements of the vehicles and Terminators is excellent! Stan Winston would be proud of what is on screen. The special effects are seamless. The CGI is not intrusive and I found myself enjoying a certain "cameo" in the last act of the film. McG captures the essence of what made the first two Terminators special, in the climatic one on one battle. It's a pity that the human side is lost.

It was good to see Michael ironside in a big budget role again. I've always liked the actor, ever since seeing him in Scanners back in the early eighties. He puts in a solid performanceWhat's wrong with the film?I didn't feel any empathy towards any of the characters. The movie felt like a painting by numbers, that has no emotional core. This is frustrating as there was plenty of scope with Kyle Reese being Connor's Dad. The handling of the trust between Connor and Wright seems hamfisted too, never convincing. Bryce Dallas Howard seemed to have been cast purely to have a normal female role in the movie as opposed to a female soldier. Her pregnancy is never explored. i wondered if the conceit was to explain it in a further film, because why would you show her as pregnant unless there was a reason to it.

The movie suffers similarly to the recent Wolverine film where the trailer is superb but the finished movie doesn't deliver what is promised. The story lacks a sophistication for those of us who vividly remember James Cameron's T2. At least the CG elements were fully rendered.

Another major issue, that also parallels the Wolverine film is the score. When I read that Danny Elfman was scoring the film, I groaned. I associated the composer with Tim Burton's quirky creative movies where his style works very well. Apart from a Lalo Schiffrin inpired score for Mission Impossible, I'd never associate Elfman with action movie scoring. Sadly, I was right to be cautious. The score doesn't do much for the film and the notes referencing Brad Fiedel's excellent Terminator scores seem redundant.

Whilst the look of the future is a joy to look at, there's no real feeling that the Resistance are fighting hordes of Terminators. Sure, we get a number of models, but they never arrive en masse. I put this down to the fact that Skynet has been doing more experimenting than production on soldiers, but the images of armies of Terminators as shown in T2 and 3 still linger in the memory.

Last but not least; the ending. Some time ago, the ending was leaked. Admittedly, that was a lot worse. It was a pitiful twist that would have killed the franchise dead had it been allowed to be filmed. Perhaps that would have been best. The movie's ending is why the movie is called Salvation, I guess, but the emotional impact of it is zero. It's ludicrous.

Verdict:

Another waste of time that could have been so much better; another film that I wanted to love. Instead, it comes across as another soulless sequel generated by a company that wanted to use the newly accquired rights to a successful movie franchise. At least Fox pictures was nowhere in sight and the film at least looked good and showcased the talents of a handful of actors. Sam Worthington won't be harmed by the movie's superficiality and I look forward to seeing him in more features, especially Cameron's Avatar.

I hope that if Bale gets the Roland Deschain role, in the proposed Dark Tower movies series, he does a bit more than growl his way through it and remembers how good an actor he has been in movies like Harsh Times, and Rescue Dawn.

The war between mankind and machines was handled so much better in The Matrix Trilogy. It's a pity that the T-S film makers couldn't have, at least, learnt somethig from the The Matrix Revolutions despite the obvious differences in plot.

5/10 (Wayfarer)