This review has some spoilers...Remember I warned you.
Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor(Christian Bale), is the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to prepare for isn't quite what it seems. Connor still has yet to meet his father and has encountered something his mother never warned him about, Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.
Let's get right to it then, Terminator Salvation is bad...real bad. McG has promised us brownies and delivered us a warm plate of fecal matter. He has taken everything you have known and loved about the Terminator franchise and he violated it like a drunken college kid at a frat party. To be fair maybe McG isn't fully to blame--they did get the guys who wrote Catwoman and Terminator 3 to write this thing, so the only thing MCG is guilty of is not knowing a good script. But really all it would have really taken is ANYONE speaking up at ANY POINT through production and going, "Umm...McG? Doesn't that totally not make any sense at all?" To which McG would have responded, "Put some more blow on your chest honey, I got a long shooting day."
Seriously, even the presence of Marcus Wright is a violation. The trailers have made no point to conceal this, so I don't know why I will, Marcus Wright is a human Terminator hybrid. He gave his body up for science in 2003 and, in 2018, he wakes up completely oblivious to everything. So while Skynet has been fully capable of producing something this advanced, it has relegated itself to simply making T-600 and T-800. Oh, and apparently in the 2018 future, which is the past from the future in the Terminator movies we know, everything is way more advanced. Robots have other robots in them, and Skynet has a human interface, because I remember when the last computer system became self aware it thought, "maybe I should put some doors in and keyboards...you know...just in case I have company over." But these are all just tips of the iceberg problems.
The visual effects are really awesome, and some of the action scenes are really fun to watch, but the problem is that, in addition to a non-sensical script, McG went ahead and took every character development moment out of the film. And because of this, you get no sense of importance, no weight to any of the action scenes. You never see John Connor dumbfounded he actually meets his dad after 35 years of hearing about him on audio tapes. When John is confronted with the T-800 for the first time, there's no sense of, "Oh man, we use to be friends way back in the day." There's nothing. You don't even get a sense that John Connor really cares about his wife or the resistance. But that could also be Christian Bale's failing, as he and his character are pretty much reduced to tough guy eyes and screaming. Newcomer Sam Worthington seems like he's capable of more, but he's given little to work with and his charms can only take him so far into a clunky script. Common is downright awful, and Moon Youngblood is pretty silly.
In the end, McG tries to erase your memory of his terrible movie by tying parts of his franchise to the first two, by having John Connor get his scar, and having him team up with Kyle Reese. But even that can't salvage this emotional void of a picture.
--Greg MacLennan
Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor(Christian Bale), is the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to prepare for isn't quite what it seems. Connor still has yet to meet his father and has encountered something his mother never warned him about, Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.
Let's get right to it then, Terminator Salvation is bad...real bad. McG has promised us brownies and delivered us a warm plate of fecal matter. He has taken everything you have known and loved about the Terminator franchise and he violated it like a drunken college kid at a frat party. To be fair maybe McG isn't fully to blame--they did get the guys who wrote Catwoman and Terminator 3 to write this thing, so the only thing MCG is guilty of is not knowing a good script. But really all it would have really taken is ANYONE speaking up at ANY POINT through production and going, "Umm...McG? Doesn't that totally not make any sense at all?" To which McG would have responded, "Put some more blow on your chest honey, I got a long shooting day."
Seriously, even the presence of Marcus Wright is a violation. The trailers have made no point to conceal this, so I don't know why I will, Marcus Wright is a human Terminator hybrid. He gave his body up for science in 2003 and, in 2018, he wakes up completely oblivious to everything. So while Skynet has been fully capable of producing something this advanced, it has relegated itself to simply making T-600 and T-800. Oh, and apparently in the 2018 future, which is the past from the future in the Terminator movies we know, everything is way more advanced. Robots have other robots in them, and Skynet has a human interface, because I remember when the last computer system became self aware it thought, "maybe I should put some doors in and keyboards...you know...just in case I have company over." But these are all just tips of the iceberg problems.
The visual effects are really awesome, and some of the action scenes are really fun to watch, but the problem is that, in addition to a non-sensical script, McG went ahead and took every character development moment out of the film. And because of this, you get no sense of importance, no weight to any of the action scenes. You never see John Connor dumbfounded he actually meets his dad after 35 years of hearing about him on audio tapes. When John is confronted with the T-800 for the first time, there's no sense of, "Oh man, we use to be friends way back in the day." There's nothing. You don't even get a sense that John Connor really cares about his wife or the resistance. But that could also be Christian Bale's failing, as he and his character are pretty much reduced to tough guy eyes and screaming. Newcomer Sam Worthington seems like he's capable of more, but he's given little to work with and his charms can only take him so far into a clunky script. Common is downright awful, and Moon Youngblood is pretty silly.
In the end, McG tries to erase your memory of his terrible movie by tying parts of his franchise to the first two, by having John Connor get his scar, and having him team up with Kyle Reese. But even that can't salvage this emotional void of a picture.
--Greg MacLennan
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