Film Review: Terminator Salvation

Posted by: – May 21, 2009

I’ll just get this over with, like tearing off a band-aid. Terminator Salvation is a terrible disappointment. All the promise of finally seeing a post-Judgment Day Terminator film, of seeing an actor of Christian Bale’s caliber take on the role of John Connor, of seeing the war with the machines in more than thirty second flashbacks; the film just cannot reach the glory of the first two movies in the series. Sadly, it is not even as enjoyable as the sub-par third film. Hopefully, James Cameron will never watch this movie to see what has been done to his original work.

Anyone who has seen the preceding films in the series knows the story. Skynet, a global defense network, becomes self-aware and begins producing killing machines to exterminate humanity. Only through the leadership of John Connor is mankind able to fight back. That is all there is to it, and that is what the filmmakers forget. John Connor becomes a side character to make room for a new terminator with a human mind. This character’s identity crisis becomes the focal point of the film.

There is some excitement to be had, though John Connor spends the majority of the film sitting at a desk inspiring the resistance fighters over his radio. The human terminator, Marcus, battles a couple of the evil machines, including a two story high robot that looks like it was directly lifted from Transformers. Unfortunately, as the terminators prove nearly indestructible, the film degenerates into repetitive chase scenes as the heroes run away on motorcycles, in cars, or in planes. We also see the return of the character Kyle Reese in the form of Anton Yelchin who played Chekov in the superior Star Trek earlier this summer. He will make himself a big star if he keeps landing these big franchises, but he needs to be a little more discriminating about the scripts. Terminator Salvation proves that a film is not made from its title.

What is really disappointing is that the last twenty minutes of the movie demonstrate that the filmmakers are capable of producing a good Terminator film. We see a terminator stalk John Connor and Kyle Reese through a factory with long paths of piping and scaffolds, with molten metal at strategically placed points. The two fight for their lives and keep running as the terminator just keeps coming. The tension is wonderful after suffering through an hour and a half of absurd action spectacle with Marcus, and Connor sitting at his radio. On second thought, this might only demonstrate that the filmmakers actually watched Terminator 2 before making this sequel, since the scene is very clearly trying to hearken back to the climax of that film.

What this movie really feels like is a missed opportunity to finally break away from the time travel formula of the first three films. Rather than the science-fiction war movie the trailers promised, we get a standard action flick with invincible villains and lackluster heroes. Where were the massive battles? Why did the resistance not behave like an actual military? Why did we not get to see a troop of humans fight an onslaught of machines? We have already had three films with one hero fighting one villain. It is time for us to experience the epic war of man versus machine that we have only gotten a glimpse of from the earlier films.

I mentioned earlier that I hope James Cameron never sees this movie, but I actually would like him to. He wrote and directed the first two Terminator films, and they were the best of the series. He also directed the phenomenal science-fiction war/horror film Aliens on the theory that if one monster is scary, then thousands are even scarier. I would like for Terminator Salvation to inspire James Cameron to take his franchise back. He knows how to make a good Terminator film and he knows how to make a good sci-fi war film. With his expertise, he could make a Terminator film that would allow us to forget this one.

By Gareth Mussen