Terminator Salvation
Directed by McG
Warner Brothers Pictures
By Brian Last
The McG Unit in action.
James Cameron set out to create something great, an epic tale about what would happen if machines got too smart and too sophisticated. Who would or could stop them if they turned against us? It was a classic futuristic tale that lives on in pop culture lore. That tale has since been taken off course and derailed in a big way. Why? Perhaps McG felt the story was unfinished and he needed to do justice to what Cameron began, or perhaps it was his best bet to make a buck blowing stuff up since Charlie’s Angels was hot garbage.
In T4 Skynet is still kicking strong and has launched a nuclear holocaust wiping out a great deal of humanity. The survivors have been forced into an underground life of military resistance led by John Connor (Christian Bale). They are struggling to keep the machines at bay when their perception of this reality is altered by the arrival of a man named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington). Connor must determine whether Wright is from the past or the future and moreover, if he can be trusted. Together they try to infiltrate Skynet and save the West coast resistance.
If memory serves, didn’t they prevent judgment day? Or is it inevitable? Either way I don’t really think there was a need for the third and especially not the fourth instalment. Still, they went ahead and hired McG who went to his playbook: big explosions, fast chases, and stylized camera work. Most of the action scenes were big and over the top, but admittedly pretty cool. The concentration camp scenes were interesting but disturbing as thoughts of World War II came screaming back to me. The sleek look to the terminators has only gotten better since the first film, a kudos to the graphics crew. However the plot holes were plentiful and the acting was sub par. Bale was pretty much reusing the universally maligned batman growl and Sam Worthington was also quite wooden. The bright spot was the performance of Anton Yelchin who shone as the interestingly reintroduced Kyle Reece.
When I did a preview for this film, I said that it was dumb to be dragging this out when they ought either save us or kill us already. With T5 and T6 apparently in development, they are really going to beat the story to death. We get it, machines are the enemy and the Internet and technology will be the downfall of civilization. We do not need two more presumably quite similar movies to tell us this. I am not expecting great things from 5 and 6. T4 was entertaining enough, but shut your brain off before you go in if you want to get anything out of it.
