Terminator Salvation
I will not apologize for giving this movie a strong Matinee with Snacks rating. I came out of it all pumped and gleeful and satisfied, and if anyone wants much more than that from a Terminator movie, well it also has some freaking great sequences and effects.
When I think of director McG, I think of the Charlie’s Angels movies and the pilot of the beloved TV show Chuck (PS watch it!). Action with a hearty dose of sexy and laugher, a little tinge of Michael Bay overthetoptitude, without going overboard. In Terminator; Salvation, McG exhibits a much more sophisticated, dark, and hard-core sensibility. This is the movie 1980’s James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven would have been afraid to make because it’s too dark and fervent (yet miraculously, PG-13). At different times I was reminded, possibly on purpose, of Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, War of the Worlds, and I Am Legend (well, the good first part).
It’s 2018. John Connor (previously played by Edward Furlong, Nick Stahl, Thomas Dekker, and briefly Michael Edwards: told you we had seen older John!) is now about 33 (hm…age of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion) and he’s the de facto icon of the Resistance, fighting Skynet’s self-aware network of malevolent killing machines. So, we know he met the Arnold Schwartzenegger model (T-800) and the groovy morphing T-1000 when he was a teenager, but that model is not yet in use during the time of this movie. If you can get past that vexing discontinuity (we’ll forgive all forgetfulness of T3’s 20-something John and the foxy T-X), you will have no problem with this movie. Christian Bale is intense-screaming mode, violent and impatient and furiously focused. Rarely do off-camera antics float into view when watching a movie, but you can pretty easily visualize Mr. Intensity jumping all over a crew member if he had to sustain this level of vein-popping energy for so much of filming. He’s got to have an ulcer the size of Los Angeles.
Salvation concerns itself with keeping the timeline on track: If Kyle Reese (1984’s Michael Biehn) dies, Furlong and Bale and Stahl never get born. It’s taken as read that this would be immeasurably disastrous since Connor is the salvation (get it?) of the human race – but, spoiler alert, we don’t get to see that in this movie. If Connor wasn’t forearmed with this knowledge, he would have screwed his own pooch but good. Fate, destiny, saving the future to preserve the past, which saves the future, etc. I’m glad to live in a time when this narrative trope is actually so common – saves a lot of time. Imagine Groucho Marx explaining this to his fans.
This story shares focus (It takes too much, I think) with a more interesting storyline, which isn’t Connor wrestling with his destiny. It’s the story of Sam Worthington’s ex – well, late – convict Marcus Wright. He plays a role so pivotal and so much more fate-y and salvationey and redemptiveish than Connor that Bale’s screaming exhortations fade into the apocalyptic background. With this unexpected (though preview-spoiled) psychological terpsichore of irony and redemption, we also get some serious woo-hoo summer movie action, complete with big, solid score, crazy awesome camera work, and exciting sound design. If you get the right seat in the theatre (you really must see this in the theatre), you may explode with the viscerality of it all.
We get a few fan morsels tossed at us with equal aplomb as Star Trek’s integrated moments – winks from the earlier movies that tip the cap without ruining the moment. My favorite was a nod to1984 and the 1984 Macintosh ad, which was too evocative not to be an homage. Very McG. The machines in this movie are improbably stealthy and stationed in strange places, but the ass-kickeryness of it all forgives these minor shrugs. A scene in a lake starts out epic and ends up a little silly, but it felt necessary to keep things hopping.
I wanted to see it again, and did! This may be the first movie since Tropic Thunder where I wanted to ride it again: it’s hard-core, relentless, and surprisingly bloodless. It’s pretty scary and the photography is sometimes so immediate that I would not take anyone too young to it, but I would definitely go with all my friends. It’s a worthy cap to the franchise; like Star Trek, a reboot to be proud of (and end the series on!) rather than a franchise over-extender. Unlike Star Trek’s rosy, lovey-dovey adventure with a dash of comedy, Terminator Salvation is all business, and all enjoyable.
This may sound a little familiar but it’s as true now as it was then: Please, Warner Brothers, don’t succumb to the temptation to push this perfectly restored old classic into the molten steel. Again. And you other studios: this was an exception that proves the rule. Prequels of old franchises are to be discouraged. This is an anomaly in the space-movie continuum.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 5/21/09
Time in minutes 130
Director McG
Studio Warner Brothers
