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