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| Terminator Salvation (2009) |
Okay, let's talk about this film's biggest flaw: the very premise of the movie itself. For, you see, this is not a film in which a Terminator travels into the past to kill John Connor. This film is set in the middle of the war against the machines that kept being alluded to in the previous films. Let me just break down for you why this was a stupid concept. The main hook of the Terminator films was always the time-travel gimmick, so removing that turns this film into basically just your average action movie, but let's look past that for a second. I never wanted to see extensive action from the war in the future. I was happy with the brief glimpses we were given in the previous films. In fact, there was a word I used in my Judgment Day review that described these scenes perfectly: bleak. The future looked bleak. Here, however, I can't say that remains the case. The main problem it finds itself with is that in order for the film to last as long as it does, the humans need to be outmatched, but not too outmatched, and the result is that we get several instances of the humans easily being able to destroy the Terminators. The same Terminators that were famously the most unkillable villains in cinema history. In my Aliens review, I mentioned that this is the sort of thing that can happen when you multiply the number of threats in a movie: they have to be weaker so the result isn't a bloodbath. By doing this, the Terminators themselves are essentially nerfed, and the resulting war that we see isn't nearly as interesting.
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| Christian Bale as John Connor |
In fact, it's downright boring. Oh, my God, this film drags on and on in parts. At about the 30 minute mark I actually had to take a break, it was that bad. If I wasn't watching this film for the purposes of a review, I probably would have turned the movie off there and then. Just a little reminded that I've sat through the Twilight franchise this month, and this was the first film in which I had to take a moment to rejuvenate myself. It's not even that nothing happens, because it does. Stuff happens in this movie, it's just not interesting stuff. I'm not even sure what it is that's so sleep-inducing here. Is it the action? Sort of, I mean the film never reaches the action heights of any of the previous films, but it's not awful. The last 20-25 minutes are actually somewhat entertaining. How they get there is still stupid, but I'll get to that later. I guess it's just that the action scenes that we do get are just lesser versions of previous set-pieces we've been given in the previous films. We've had the vehicle chase, we've had the tight-quarters action, we've seen the 'Terminator relentlessly stalking it's prey and refusing to die' scene several times now. The film doesn't offer anything new, which is especially ridiculous given the change of scenery. They should have played around with this, and they kind of do. The multiple varieties of Terminator here are well-designed, at least, but since, as I mentioned in the earlier paragraph, they all go down much easier than we've seen before, it's hard for them to be threatening. There's a multi-story, laser-shooting Terminator and it didn't frighten me. Let that sink in.
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| The giant Terminator |
The problem isn't even the acting, because it's... fine, I guess. None of the actors do a particularly bad job, I suppose it's more that I didn't find the characters interesting. Christian Bale plays... Batman. He's meant to be John Connor, but all I can see and hear is Batman, which is a problem, since Bale was at his best in the Dark Knight trilogy when he was Bruce Wayne. Sam Worthington is solid, and I think his character was the most interesting overall. They actually pulled off a semi-decent twist with his character but even that was ruined, more on that later. Bryce Dallas Howard is great as Kate, but Kate herself didn't really do much. Moon Bloodgood did okay as Blair, but I can't get on board with a character who falls in love that quickly. She spends at most an afternoon with this guy, and that's enough for her? I think the highlight for me was Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. It would have been very hard to reach Michael Biehn levels, but he came pretty close. The bottom-line is that Yelchin looks like the only person who's genuinely having fun with the role, and I'll say this about the movie: it does a good job of making you like him.
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| Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese |
But, Kyle Reese brings us into the biggest problem I have with the movie overall: Skynet is an idiot. A proper idiot. They have Kyle Reese at their mercy, and they just lock him up? They know by this point that he's John Connor's father, aka the father of their worst enemy. If they just gun him down like they did with that guy who tried to escape, John Connor would just blip out of existence, and that would be it! Why they keep prisoners in the first place is another story, especially since Skynet's whole deal is to destroy humanity, so I have no f***ing idea why they would keep prisoners. But, no, Skynet instead has this convoluted plan to get John Connor into the Skynet HQ so that a T-800 can take him out instead of those giant laser-shooting Terminators that would be far more effective and... God, it's so stupid! The entire point of Sam Worthington's character is useless because Skynet could just kill Kyle Reese and be done with it! The final 20-25 minutes which were somewhat entertaining should never have happened! I'm sorry, this is supposed to be the genius computer program that nuked the planet? This is what the resistance has spent years fighting? What the hell happened?
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| Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright |
I'll tell you what happened: Terminator Salvation (2009) happened, and believe me when I say that this movie almost ruins the previous films. I'm that serious. It goes against everything that made the original movies so good, and if this is where thins are headed, then I'm dreading what's coming next. 1/10.
Tomorrow: Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome.
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