Review: Terminator: Salvation

May 22nd, 2009 by Clark Douglas · 18 Comments · Reviews ·

Terminator: Salvation

Terminator: Salvation: OPENING: 05/21/2009; STUDIO: Warner Bros.; RUN TIME: 115 min; TRAILER: Trailer; ACCOMPLICES: Official Site; SOUNDTRACK:

The Charge
The end begins.

Opening Statement
There are many things that would seem to indicate the Terminator franchise is dying. Director James Cameron is done with the series. Star Arnold Schwarzenegger is busy serving as the Governor of California. The television series The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled days before this film was released in theatres. And the director of this latest picture, McG, is best known as the helmer of the kinda-terrible Charlie’s Angels movies. So does Terminator: Salvation re-energize a lackluster brand (much like the recent Star Trek film) or simply put another nail in the coffin?

Facts of the Case
The film begins in the year 2018. Human resistance forces are at war with a super-intelligent organized network of deadly machines, also known as Skynet. At the moment, the humans appear to be losing the war. They are outnumbered and outmatched by their ferocious metal enemies. Even so, resistance leader John Connor (Christian Bale) does not give up hope. He believes with enough resolve and resourcefulness, the war can be won. Also playing key roles in the resistance are an ex-convict named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) and an intelligent soldier named Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). Can these men save what is left of humanity, or will Earth soon be ruled by Skynet?

Terminator: Salvation review

The Evidence
Let’s start by focusing on the positive. Terminator: Salvation is a slick, professionally-crafted adventure that provides all of the adrenaline-filled action sequences and lavish special effects that one expects from a summer blockbuster. The film also wins points for not being entirely stupid. There are a lot of things that blow up in this film, but as explosion-filled films go, this one is reasonably realistic and well-organized. The continuity and plotting are fairly tight, the technical aspects are impressive, and most of the new machines seem to fit reasonably well within the established Terminator universe. There’s just one major problem: I didn’t care about anything.

The first two Terminator films are tremendously well-made action movies, but they are action movies with a soul. I cared a great deal about Sarah Connor, her son John Connor, and Arnold’s monotone robotic killer. I was interested in them, I liked them, and the first time I saw those films I invested genuine emotion in the fates of those characters. I wanted to see Sarah live and Arnold die in the first film. I wanted John and Arnold survive in the second film. But watching Terminator: Salvation, I simply didn’t care. I didn’t care about John or Marcus or Kyle. I didn’t hate any of the machines enough to yearn for their destruction, but it didn’t matter to me who won the war. It’s a soulless exercise in action that can’t manage to present a better excuse for its existence than the obvious desire to milk whatever money is left in the Terminator brand.

Terminator: Salvation review

The film honestly doesn’t feel much like Terminator movie, coming closer to resembling a mash-up of The Road Warrior and Transformers. Whatever the unique aura Cameron had created in the first two films was missing in the third installment, and it’s definitely missing here. It should be noted this is the first Terminator film to be rated PG-13. If you’re wondering why, just take a visit to the toy section of your local Wal-Mart and see for yourself. I did just that a couple of hours before seeing the film, and it really felt wrong to see Terminator action figures sitting on the shelf next to figures based on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. The rating forces a somewhat non-threatening quality on some of the action scenes, and unintentional laughs during moments that require mud or smoke to blur body parts which dangled freely in earlier installments.

The performances here represent a large part of why the film didn’t work. I’m a huge fan of Christian Bale (I even think his much-maligned Batman/Bruce Wayne is awesome), but this is easily the least interesting performance I’ve ever seen from the actor. He growls and shouts a lot, but there isn’t anything that allows me to connect to him in any way. The performances from Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin are similarly gruff and underwhelming. Yelchin seems to be failing miserably at doing a Michael Madsen impression, while Worthington comes across as a second-rate Russell Crowe. To be fair, the latter is given a somewhat touching subplot that came close to involving me in the movie a couple of times, but alas, it just wasn’t enough. Character actor Michael Ironside plays the 1,293,392nd military commander role of his career, and does the same thing he usually does, well enough. The females arguably fare even worse. Moon Bloodgood (Blair) and Bryce Dallas Howard (Kate) have absolutely nothing interesting to do, while Jane Alexander (Virginia) and Helena Bonham Carter (Dr. Kogan) give terrible performances in brief, poorly-conceived supporting roles.

Terminator: Salvation review

The lackluster acting is backed up by a similarly lackluster score from Danny Elfman, a composer I generally love. Elfman chose not to employ the famous Brad Fiedel theme (other than briefly using the rhythm portion during the opening and closing moments), a decision which only furthers the feeling that this isn’t a Terminator film. Say what you want about the previous scores by Fiedel and Marco Beltrami, at least they each had a distinct identity. This one just offers a lot of rehashed motifs and rhythmic devices from Elfman’s score for the Planet of the Apes remake.

Terminator: Salvation also seems to be designed strictly for those who have actually seen the previous three films. Newcomers to the franchise may find themselves lost in a hazy sea of futuristic techno-jargon and some slightly odd mumbo-jumbo about Kyle Reese being John Connor’s father despite being younger than Connor. The film begins and ends in the middle of a raging war, offering very little in the way of a proper introduction and not much of a satisfactory resolution. It’s just a slice of action seemingly ripped out of the mid-section of a vast story that evidently has more interesting things happening on either side of it.

Terminator: Salvation review

Closing Statement
On a purely technical level, Terminator: Salvation gets the job done. It’s a considerably more well-oiled machine than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But at least Wolverine had characters that interested me. This feels like it was made by a machine attempting to mimic the sort of action movie humans like. It gets the nuts and bolts right, but has no heart or soul. Ctrl+Alt+Delete – End Terminator Program.

The Verdict
4/10

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Tags: Christian Bale·McG·review·salvation·sam worthington·terminator

18 responses so far ↓

1 Ricky // May 22, 2009 at 1:01 pm

I wonder if this movie seriously lives up to the expectation. Cause I quite did not find it.
2 adam arseneau // May 22, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Good review Clark. I kind of had a feeling about this one.
3 Duane Dibbley // May 23, 2009 at 12:00 am

Best line in the review: “This feels like it was made by a machine attempting to mimic the sort of action movie humans like.”
4 Melissa Hansen // May 23, 2009 at 12:41 pm

“Hey Guys, let’s wash out some footage of shit blowing up and Christian Bale using his Batman voice but yelling, and see if it’ll be a hit.”
“Don’t we need a script?”
“I guess. I bet I can get my 13-year-old brother to do it.”
“Cool!”
“Should we have chicks in it?”
“Yeah, but we don’t really need to give them anything to do.”
“Perfect!”
“I’m telling ya, no one will know it’s soulless crap until after we get their cash.”
5 Clark Douglas // May 24, 2009 at 2:41 am

I’m not quite so sure, Melissa… you may be overestimating the amount of thoughtful conversation that went into greenlighting this film.
6 G_Vinny // May 24, 2009 at 4:39 pm

I like it when a reviewer can transcend his partisanship. Also, I wanted to thank you for not shoving “Star Trek” down my throat like just about everyone else.
7 Brett C // May 25, 2009 at 6:05 pm

Clark – I am cracking up because I thought the same thing down to marrying THE ROAD WARRIOR with TRANSFORMERS! LOL! I thought this was better than CYBORG, but less interesting than the other TERMINATORS. But all in all for a movie made by machines and soulless corporations it was pretty good.
8 Clark Douglas // May 26, 2009 at 2:48 pm

“…for a movie made by machines and soulless corporations it was pretty good.”

Perfect DVD packaging quote!
9 Mark // May 31, 2009 at 7:48 am

Good review. I also like the closing paragraph’s sentiment; sums up this movie exactly.
10 Robert Gartner // Jun 7, 2009 at 7:20 pm

What I find in all of these postings are, in my opinion, the soundings of many people who wish they were actors and producers/directors, and to that extent envious. As to the plot of the movie, its a futuristic war, as to what anybody expects about it, the future war had many past changes by the past being revisted three times prior to SALVATION and anyone who expects certain continuities in the 4th installment, these are not continuous as each time someone/something returned to the past, the future war/timelines were altered as a result, so anybody using the first three movies as a basis for continuity in SALVATION will be disappointed, the only continiuty can be is the caractures involved, the dates and types of machines had to be different due to all the past time alterations, so as others have criticized that Kyle Reese said the t800’s come much later than shown in SALVATION, noting that the past left pieces of destroyed t800’s as they went, the future story line must be different, it is to be expected. As for people critisizing poor acting and lousy script writting, McG and all the producers/ writers and directors did an excellent job piecing together this future war by researching all paradoxes created in the 3 prior movies. Arnold is OLD now, and his current job hasn’t afforded him the timeto keep the muscular build we knew him to have, so there is no way to script him in, so of course the CG image is about all we can expect to connect him to the past installments. McG took the ball and ran with it. The movie makes sense, I feel the connection with John Conner, I felt the connection to Marcus Wright, who was deactivated prior to judgement day, and I see the connection from CYBNERDINE at Marcus Wrights execution, that its secret military connection/ was destroyed when Sarah Conner, John Conner, Miles Dyson, and The Terminator decimated Cyberdine in T2, as their interests went from defense to medical, thus creating Marcus Wright prior to T3 or Savation, and I get how Skynet would know about it in Salvation. Bottom line is, if you expected more of the same as in previous installments, well Salvation isn’t the movie for you, but if you were expecting and awaiting the future war and knew that changes would be evident due to all of the future visits to the past, you realize that this is an excellent prodution, and you all as in I anxiously await the 5th installment, this war is not over, and expecting it to be wrapped up in Salvation would not only be a mediocre try at best, you critrics would realize the best is still yet to come. Lastly, I don’t know where anybody has heard that TERMINATOR, THE SARAH CONNER CHRONICALS has been cancelled, as I watched it both seasons, and the last episode was the end of the season finale, as addressed, not end of the series finale, anybody who has a link to attach to that statement feel free to email it to me, or post a link on this forum. As for my rating, this movie is a 4 out 4 star production for me and well worth the wait!
11 Mark // Jun 8, 2009 at 3:14 am

@Robert Gartner – All the evidence points to the contrary and says that you are wrong, despite being entitled to your own opinion.

And it’s “Connor”, as any fan would know.
12 Mike // Jun 11, 2009 at 4:45 am

I think if you go expecting to see Terminator 1 and 2 you will be dissapointed and to be honest you should be because you would be niave to think that this film is in anyway a ‘carry on’ from those previous movies i.e. its different directors, actors and an evolved plot line based on alterations to time (so basically anything can happen!). I disagree with the review, its too harsh. I felt the introduction of the Marcus character was important and he was convincing as a messed up lost and angry person who’s anger stems from what he did before his execution and not what has happened since his execution. I like the fact they dont shed too much light on what he did, you are left to wonder what kind of things he has done for all his hurt and anger to be focused away from the apocolypse he has woken up to because in his character, his world appeares to have been destroyed anyway regardless of Judgement Day. His involvement mixed the story and plot up a bit which was needed because the Terminator plot was definately getting same old and T3 was just a dire add on to T2. The Kyle Reese character was brilliant in my view, a very believable younger adaptation to the charactor in T1, to me the likeness and characteristics and his way of being was a believable immature version of K Reese in T1. The down side was Bale, his character did not work and he became a complete by stander to Reese and Marcus in the film. There could and proberly should have been more role play for his character and involvment with the Marcus character. I dont think they should have seperated in the film once they had found eachother. That way they could have evolved their character differences more opening up the idea of character conflicts and tensions in what their own objectives were. The adaptation of Skynet was really poor too, it was too squeeky clean (plasma tv pent house with silly CGI Arnie’s walking around in its big play boy mansion house)….this really wasnt required. The fear factor wasnt involved with skynet as it proberly should have been. The idea of Connor and the resistance being quite willing to stroll into the Skynet facility with hundreds of terminators and blow it up was totally lost on me. It didnt seem strategic or well placed in the story line.
The film worked ok, the desert scenes were good and the characters of Marcus and Reese were the highlights. But like T3, it seems no one can get to grips with John Connor’s character, in both T3 and T4 the character is too controlled and boring and yet here is someone who is burdened with knowing the fate of everything, the guilt of knowing perhaps he could have stopped it, the guilt of knowing he will send his dad to his death, the fear of not been able to lead as he is expected to, the panick of never knowing what Skynets limits or next move is going to be…..it goes on and on and in T4 Bale doesnt come close to doing the characters potential justice. In my view the John Connor character needs to be somewhat ‘mad in the head’ to reflect what he has been through in the story, but it seems to me that this just doesnt apply to the ideas of the T3 and T4 writers?
13 john connor // Jun 15, 2009 at 9:13 pm

u idiots this movie was sick!
14 snickers // Jun 16, 2009 at 12:57 am

@13 – Wrong!
15 deltavoyage // Jun 24, 2009 at 9:39 pm

Seeing Terminator Salvation really made me miss The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Sarah Connor had a great story with brilliantly conceived and flawed characters. Salvation was just blowing up a bunch of stuff.
16 Daniel Kelly // Jun 30, 2009 at 10:33 am

I actually liked it. Not the best movie of the summer are anything of that ilk, but a robust and entertaining blockbuster. I must be getting stupid in my old age.
17 Introspective // Aug 2, 2009 at 6:56 am

Terminator Salvation is a very good movie. It is obvious that even without Schwarzenegger the movie can be good. The action scenes are top-notch.
18 snickers // Aug 3, 2009 at 4:42 am

@introspective – Sorry, but you must be retarded. Salvation was complete and utter crap. Honestly, if you’ve ever watched the original Terminator and/or the (slightly flawed) sequel T2, or any other decently-written film in the past 50 years or so you’d know T4 was a bad film. Visual effects DO NOT make a good movie.