Review of Terminator Salvation (2009) by Doron S — 28 Aug 2012

The Terminator series is quite a behemoth. How do you continue the pre-Matrix saga of sentient machines after you complete a trilogy spanning nearly two decades(and a tv show), when your money ticket erm.. goes into politics? Terminator Salvation got mixed reviews but personally, this was the film I had been waiting for ever since I saw those war sequences from the first film as a child. I was pumped for this film, and it did not disappoint,.

Terminator takes place years after the bombs go off at the end of Terminator 3, and focuses on the story of John Connor as he leads the humans in the perennially foretold war against the machines. Ditching the family-friendly approach of Terminator 3 and the overused time-traveling Schwarzenegger scenario of, well, all previous Terminator films, they return to the accessible-but-grim demeanor of the first two and aside from Worthington's experimental bioteriminator, made terminators scary again, or at least in the face area.

I thought the film felt much less silly than Terminator 3, I was excited by the the giant robot/bike sequences, was creeped out by the admittedly familiar use of voice mimicry, and it was a fun surprise to see Michael Ironside pop up in the film as well, to give it that extra 80's action movie flavor. I was not expecting that. And as I said before, it is the only Terminator movie that does not deal with time travel. I'd say I consider it rather fresh!