Terminator Salvation

I can't begin to describe where this movie started to FAIL. When I heard McG was directing, I already lost a real hope for it. I don't care that Christian Bale would star in it, because these days I don't blame him for capitalizing on his Batman success, but he's not exactly stretching his acting legs for this installment into his resume. Then, I walked up to the box office at 11pm on Tuesday night to see for the first time that it is rated PG-13. This is not a rating for a Terminator movie! If Terminator 3 was almost a complete failure, at LEAST it had an "R" rating (which was rather bland and tame from what they could have done with it). I still did my best to keep an open mind, but the cards were stacked against its' favor.

I had every right to be hesitant about thinking this movie would be any good. It wasn't. John Connor is not really the star of this movie; it's Sam Worthington's Marcus that takes most of the screen time. They try to play off that he's not a cyborg (human with robotic parts - a 1st-gen Terminator) for nearly the first half of the movie. The big problem is that the opening scene is him on death row signing off his life to Cyberdyne systems, allowing them to take his body after his death. That only tells anyone that has more than an I.Q. of 12 that he's to become a Terminator. So after an hour of him getting more and more beat up after each tacked-on action scene, it becomes more obvious that he's more powerful than a human. Yet they STILL try to play it off as a "twist" when everyone finds out he's a cyborg. Bad call on their part to start a movie with a spoiler to a major "twist". Also, the previews showed him with a metallic face, so...
After the opening scene, they cut to 20 years later, and he's a wandering rogue that just woke up from an unexplained stasis/cryogenic sleep or something. He stumbles upon Kyle Reese, and the adventure is apparently about to REALLY begin.
The only real positives that I can emphasize with Salvation is that Sam Worthington did a decent job as Marcus, and... uh... I was happy to see Michael Ironside in a movie again, harking back to my V and Total Recall admiration. I only wished I was watching those instead of this!

For the story's faults, there are a shitload. My main argument is John Connor's complete lack of trust in Marcus after finding out he's a Terminator. This must be a Connor who has NOT experienced a past with two Terminator models that saved his life countless times, and even played a father figure role for him at some point. He has no sympathy for anything that resembles "The Machines". Of course it's a war, but darnit this John Connor has forgotten his past that we have seen two times before.
For the Marcus Wright story arc - which is the main character more than John Connor - it's a sad attempt at the whole robot vs. humanity theme that's been dealt with in smarter sci-fi books and movies. "I think, therefore I am" was almost uttered out loud, but was constantly emphasized in every other way for the final 20 minutes. Free will vs. determinism is another failed theme that would only seem deep for those who have not seen tons of movies or read dozens of books that have done it better.

When it comes to their attempt at action, once again Salvation falls short. I could barely focus on anything, considering that it's all crappy phoned-in CGI 95% of the time. I guess McG thinks it's cool to show a sweeping external shot of John Connor in a CGI helicopter, only to zoom-in mid-flight to close-up on Connor from behind while INSIDE the cockpit. I noticed that the last 5 seconds of the interior was no longer CGI, but he was in a greenscreen cockpit looking out at a digitally inserted outside. That's what the whole movie felt like. Terminator motorbikes spinning around in a blur, or flying Hunter-Killers (HKs) floating in their own digital world while a few human actors stand on their greenscreen pad as the camera zooms around them. All of this does nothing to get me immersed in the action. Many times it felt like they threw in another action scene merely because it was about 10 minutes of just dialog, so they had to spice up the movie. It didn't really flow into one like good action movies can do.
I was impressed with the Ah-nuld cameo. They did a good job with THAT. Even though it was very brief.
Leave your brain at the door BIG TIME for this flick. Don't think about the stupidity of detonating a nuclear explosion directly below the helicopter you're flying in. Yes, waiting a few minutes would be safer - and in this case it would not have made things any more or less dangerous from the enemy if they waited a few minutes - but it sure does LOOK (unrealistic) cool. That must be why they did it. Plus, it was like an homage to the big explosion in Aliens.
There are many nods to the previous installments, but just because someone says "I'll be back" doesn't mean that I will be happy about it. It also doesn't make this feel any more or less like a Terminator knockoff. Sure, it has Cameron's creations, but they sure missed the boat on how and why the first two are so good.

Walking out of the cineplex I thought that perhaps it was better than Terminator 3. In some ways it is, but that's not saying much because I pretty much hated that movie. Salvation is bad in ways that T3 wasn't able to be. At least the Terminator in THIS movie wasn't turned into a parody of himself like they did with Ah-nuld in part three. He didn't turn into a punchline full of retarded in-jokes that only lessened the strength and serious dominance of the T-101 or T-800 or whatever number model he was.
I guess if you're looking for a brainless PG-13 "money grubbing franchise installment" of Terminator vehicles and stuff with character names that relate to James Cameron's classic movies, you might be satisfied with Terminator Salvation. I thought it was just too dumb to be fun and too tame to really be considered a worthy Terminator movie.

GRADE: D+