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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Approximately nine months ago, my wife brought up an interesting proposal: “Why Don’t We Go to San Diego for Comic Con?” This was without virtually any prompting on my part; I had no horse in the race, so to speak. I’m not that big of a comic book fan, but we were looking for something to do. So why not go, right? And if you’re going to go, go in style; I booked a room at the newly opened Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, which seemed like a pretty cool status symbol. Aside from an experience at the franchise’s New York restaurant years ago, I did forget that the Hard Rock plays music. All the time. But, compared to other places, it was rock music. The merchandise shop played Black Flag in there, so booyah bitches!

Anyway, the film lineup was pretty good, and I’ll be sharing those here after the jump of the films I managed to sit in on. I’m sure the webs have the footage somewhere, so feel free to search on your own time. On with the opinions!

The Day The Earth Stood Still: Fox was the first to the show, and Keanu Reeves (The Matrix), Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) and Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) came out to pimp the remake of the 1951 classic to be released in December. It was discussed, sometimes at great length, with a couple of shots from the film, and an extended trailer. No, we didn’t get to see Gort, but WETA is doing the work on him now, and things are still very close to the vest. Aside from Connelly being VERY much out of place, barely talking, I’d come in fresh to this, and personally am still wondering why it’s being remade to begin with.

Max Payne: Mark Wahlberg (The Departed), Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Chris Bridges (a.k.a., the artist formerly known as Ludacris) and John Moore (The Omen) discuss the film which is coming out in October. Wahlberg clearly had fun and played up to the crowd, and everyone talked about how fun it was to do it, meaning how cool it was to fire weapons all day. Moore talked about their own little version of “bullet time” that was employed for the film. Aside from an extended trailer cut to a live version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” this was a bit of a yawner.

Wolverine: Ole Wolverine himself Hugh Jackman came onstage as an unannounced surprise to throngs of delirious hysterics. After shaking the hand of Len Wein, the creator of the comic book icon, Jackman was happy to finally actually be onstage, as he’d apparently missed the X-Men presentations that occurred in previous Cons.  I’m going to rattle off the cast here; Ryan Reynolds (The Nines) as Deadpool, Liev Schreiber (The Sum of All Fears) as Sabretooth, Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights as Gambit, to name a few who appear in the trailer. And it’s loaded with action too, which doesn’t hurt. Definitely the one people will be looking forward to in ‘09, unless the GI Joe teaser comes strong.

As a side note; what was particularly interesting about the Fox presentation was that a lot, and I mean A LOT of people got in early so they could be ready for Summit Pictures’ presentation of Twilight. Everyone around my wife and I was there in their “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” shirts, whatever that means, but unfortunately I was called away for other events. I’m told though that the Twilight footage was essentially an extended version of the second trailer with the climatic ballet room sequence, and everyone ate it up. As they should I suppose. But I thought it was a little funny that the Fox gang seemed to trot out their products to hordes of Twilight fans, without knowing what they were getting into. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Watchmen: Try as I might to stay away from the masses, I snuck in for a second, where Zack Snyder (300) and the cast were discussing the film. Aside from an extended trailer, more shots of the heroes were shown which really illustrated Snyder’s vision and faithfulness to the source material, and since this is being released in March, expect some more mad money on a Snyder production.

The Spirit: Frank Miller (Sin City) might be an influential comic book figure, but he needs to lay off the liquor or something. At times he seemed to ramble, and cast members Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Jaime King (Blow) seemed to notice. Still though, the footage that was shown of the film looks good, done visually much in the same way that Sin City was. While there’s humor, there are also a couple of required action sequences that look impressive as well. A concern I have a little with this film is that it might not seem to possess the spark of similar comic book films that possess a similar visual style, but I hope I’m proved wrong in this because at least from what I saw, The Spirit could potentially be a good film.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Showed up a little late to the game on this one, as I was drinking with some of the cast of ABC Family’s Samurai Girl, which appears to be a Buffy-ish show, except without some of the wit and wisdom. But I will say this about Kevin Smith, he’s got some fans in the biz, for sure, and now in this film, he’s got a couple members of the Judd Apatow stock company in Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Justin Long (Accepted) together in this film that looks pretty funny. Bonus points for Long’s, er, “moment” with Brandon Routh. Yes, that Brandon Routh, from Superman Returns. Aside from listening to Rogen’s kind of funny Ian McKellen joke and Jason Mewes looking very impressive all cleaned up from addiction, Zack and Miri comes out in October hopefully, and should be worth the hubbub, even if they might have to change the title.

Terminator Salvation: You know, Christian Bale and Bryce Dallas Howard(?) aside, McG seems to carry himself as a bit of a pompous arse. Why exactly would we want to see a film about a battle with first-generation terminator robots? Why would Arnold Schwarzenegger even consider appearing in this? Ugh. To be fair, McG (Charlie’s Angels) likes paying homage to the previous three films, even including attendees who dressed like Robert Patrick and Linda Hamilton from T2 on stage with him, along with an Asian kid whose Arnold accent seemed to venture into Walken-esque territory. He showed an extended teaser of sorts, without any CG shots in it, and the results? Meh. I counted nods to The Road Warrior and The Great Escape in there, along with something that looked visually a little like Charlie’s Angels, right now to the hot chick almost taking her top off. I’ve got to say I liked the teaser in front of Dark Knight more than I did this stuff, and unlike some of the buzz so far, am concerned that this “reboot” might nuke the franchise from orbit.

Pineapple Express: Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sneak into the preview screenings that apparently were going on in town, and the footage that Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin), Rogen and gang brought seemed a little to be desired. It seemed like they basically brought stuff from the website or something. One of the scenes came from the Superbad DVD. But come on, you know what this film is going to be about, you’re either going to go see it or you’re not. Oh, and Green Hornet is still on the track of getting made, so yay to that.

Well, that’s the short story on the film side. A quick note on things to come, expect a review of Tropic Thunder in the very near future, along with TV Verdict thoughts from the Heroes and Lost panels, including some teasing of Heroes 3^rd season, as the opener was aired in its entirely exclusively for the Comic Con folks. Until next time, get the funk out your minds and into your hearts people!