Terminator Salvation (McG, 2009): USA / Germany / UK

Reviewed by Byron Potau.  Viewed at Festival Cinemas in Arroyo Grande, CA.

The refreshing news is that Terminator Salvation is more story-driven than most action films these days, not simply relying wholly on its special effects to carry the film.  The bad news is that it does not create the sense of plausibility needed to buy into the story or the characters, and there are too many moments that will have your eyes firmly rolled in the back of your head.

Death row inmate Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is moments away from execution and he is convinced by Cyberdyne to donate his body to them.  Marcus then finds himself in the year 2018 where he is rescued from one of the T-600 terminators (an early terminator model) by a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who is the future father of John Connor when he gets sent back to the past to protect Sarah Connor.  Of course, at this time, he is completely unaware of what is to come.  Meanwhile John Connor (Christian Bale) and the resistance have found a frequency signal that appears to immobilize the machines and they plan an attack on the Skynet headquarters in San Francisco.  However, John, who is ever on the lookout for his future father Kyle Reese, receives information that Skynet is on the hunt for Kyle.  After Kyle is taken prisoner on one of Skynet’s prisoner transports, Marcus finds his way to the resistance and John Connor only to discover that except for his heart and his brain, he is now a machine.

In the first half of the film it seems like director McG (yes, that it is what he really calls himself) tries to blow up everything he possibly can in an effort to keep the film action-packed, but this gets repetitive very quickly.  However, there are some good action sequences that come out of this, and enough creativity used that it is easy to forgive him for getting a little carried away.  The film really has its problems in the second half when it digs too deep of a hole for its heroes to get out of.  We cannot help but wonder why the terminator insists on repeatedly throwing John Connor from side to side whenever it gets its hands on him rather than simply snapping his neck.  Of course, I know the the film cannot have the terminator kill John, but if that is the case than it also cannot give the terminator countless golden opportunities to kill him…not to mention that John seems to be made of steel as he takes hit after hit from the terminators, and seems to get up time after time with little to no damage.  This, and the relative ease with which John is able to carry out his mission, fly in the face of plausibility.  McG could at least make an effort to make it believable.

The film’s most interesting and well developed character is Marcus, well-played by Sam Worthington, who could be looking at a promising career as an action star.  Lead characters Kyle and John, however, do not live up to their status from the other Terminator films.  Anton Yelchin fails to channel the persona that would eventually become Michael Biehn in the original The Terminator, and Christian Bale as John Connor barks out orders with ferocity, but comes across more like any other soldier than the leader of humanity and the resistance.

While the film tries to have an interesting storyline, it also tries to incorporate a message, and this turns out to be its real Achilles heel.  There is a lot of schmaltzy talk of what it means to human, which comes off as preachy and obvious.  It also results in some painfully ridiculous moments that have little impact on the film other than inducing laughter at the film, not with it.  We get some new machines and a lot more terminators, but it is not enough to overcome the film’s faults.  It might finally be time to put this series to rest, especially since, despite all the technological advancements, the latest film still does not manage to outdo the original.

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Published:
05.21.09 / 3pm
Category:
Films