Consider Your Franchise…Terminated - Terminator: Salvation (2009)
Terminator: Salvation opened this weekend stateside, but won’t be hitting cinemas in the UK and Ireland (and Australia too) until the first week of June.
The Terminator franchise wasn’t necessarily something that needed such a drastic reboot: Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines wasn’t a great film, but it wasn’t exactly the nail in the coffin that, say, Star Trek: Nemesis was to that franchise.
On the other hand, Terminator: Salvation just might be that last straw that it takes for the Terminator franchise to rust and turn to scrap metal. The most forgiving of fanboys and girls might be able to see past its flaws, but if the general reaction of the audience at the screening I attended is anything to go by, the rest of the cinema-going public might not be so forgiving.
I originally thought I’d grade things on an A-F scale, little thinking I’d be using anything lower than a D: I’ve since revised that, and I’m going to work off an A-D scale, with some plusses and minuses thrown in there for good measure.
On said scale, “Terminator: Salvation” gets itself a C- with the full review below.
When you’re making a sequel to two of the best action movies of the last twenty-five years, it better be good. Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines never quite met the standards set by either The Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgement Day. It’s especially disappointing then that the fourth film in the franchise, an attempted reboot starring none other than Christian Bale, proves such a disappointment, doing more to ruin the franchise than to reboot it.
The movie takes place in 2018, where Judgement Day has happened, Skynet has become self-aware and machines now rule the world. Bale takes up the mantle of John Connor, an important part of the human resistance movement, rounded out by his pregnant wife Kate (Howard), pilot Blair Williams (Bloodgood) and a variety of generals leading the movement from a top-secret submarine (amongst them, Michael Ironside.) Meanwhile, the teenage Kyle Reese (Yelchin), the same man Connor will send back to the past to become his own father, saves Marcus Wright (Worthington) from an attacking Terminator: unfortunately, Wright doesn’t remember anything after his apparent death in 2003.
The storyline of Terminator: Salvation is exactly as awkward as it sounds, with so many different plot threads coming together that the film doesn’t take time to focus on any one sufficiently enough to make it interesting or important. With a running time of less than two hours, it’s a problem that extends to the characterisation as well. Bale’s performance is easily the most disappointing in the entire film, and much of his screen-time could easily be spliced together using footage from the cutting room floor of his performances in either of the Batman films or Rescue Dawn. Even setting aside his performance, the story itself gives us little reason to care for John Connor or recognise his importance: three films might have set him up as the future leader of the human resistance, and while “Terminator: Salvation” might show him getting there, we’ve no reason to think that Connor is anywhere near as important as we’ve been made to believe.
Even with some good actors inhabiting their skin, the supporting characters are surprisingly two-dimensional: Kate Connor’s pregnancy goes unmentioned throughout the film, leaving Bryce Dallas Howard to act around a belly; Blair Williams exists to help Marcus literally get from A-to-B; Star (the mute child that Reese is ‘babysitting’) exists purely to hand props to characters who have dialogue at the appropriate time; and even the character of Marcus Wright becomes redundant by the film’s close.
Wright’s characterisation proves especially frustrating since Worthington easily gives the best performance of the film, despite some amazingly dodgy dialogue and inconsistencies in terms of motivation (to the point where Worthington may as well be playing Marcus’ twin brother in some of his scenes.) The twists with regards to Marcus’ amnesia are so obvious that they’ve been painted clear in the film’s trailers (and the opening scenes) and while we won’t mention them here, are indicative of a plot with no surprises, no drama and no tension.
Much like McG’s previous direction of the Charlie’s Angels movies, Terminator: Salvation finds itself dragged along from one action scene to the next with little plot or reason. With a dependency on robots (both giant and human-sized), these action scenes try desperately to be effects-driven, but depend much more on reaction than anything else: taking its cue from Cloverfield and other such films, Terminator: Salvation features far more scenes of characters hiding from the bad guys than letting us see any of the bad guys themselves. It does little to create any sense of tension, rather pointing towards the obvious use of post-production effects.
For a summer action film, Terminator: Salvation may very well be acceptable to the same people that enjoyed Charlie’s Angels or want some mindless action from their summer blockbusters. That said, even the mindless action is disappointing and doesn’t deliver, since we saw more in the short flashes of the future that we got in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Even Christian Bale can’t provide the necessary drama to save the film, and it might just be the case that his highly-reported angry outburst on the set is the best thing to come from the production.
Originally published on BurnAllZombies.com May 24, 2009