Review of Terminator Salvation (2009) by Michael D — 19 Jan 2015

Well could this movie possibly live up to the enormous hype and excitement I had for it going in? Probably not, but it should have and almost did. When I first heard about this project 2 years ago I could barely wait. Especially after I heard that Christian Bale was cast as John Connor. After I saw T3 I thought to myself, "we've had a whole trilogy leading up to Judgement Day, so why not a trilogy in the future after JD?" And sure enough Hollywood's insatiable greed gave me what I wanted...sort of. Granted it would have one major flaw and that's not having AH-NULD star in it, but Christian Bale is a solid choice.

Unfortunately in this Terminator film I had zero emotional connection with any of the people in it, except for maybe the Kyle Reese character. What that means is when a giant Transformanator robot plucked people up from the ground and crushed them to death, all I could think of was, "AWESOME." I didn't really care if future Messiah Connor saved everybody back in the future. What? My brain hurts with the time travel circle/paradox this mythology has created. I figured the movie WANTED me to care. Which means that on one level it fails in a spectacular way. However, if cold mechanical death, megadestruction, nuclear blasts, humanoid battles, helicopter crashes and hellish fiery peril are what you care about, if sensation alone makes a movie for you, then this one succeeds every 15 seconds.

After the first 30 minutes I got a little worried-there were several cheesy lines. I started thinking, "oh crap." But the rest of the movie wasn't like that and it had a good pace. Despite all the intense action, everything was very clear and easy to follow (unlike Transformers) and the cinematography had this cool metallic gray look to everything. The world looked perfect. Apparently the director (McG-what a lame ass name) modeled the look from the movie The Road Warrior (one of the greatest post apocalyptic movies ever) and the best selling book The Road (which is just got turned into a movie with Viggo Mortenson-check out the trailer online).

The first Terminator film was a great science fiction story, great action movie, chase movie and horror flick all rolled into one. The second was a great...make that epic sci-fi/action adventure movie and the third was a good action/adventure movie with lots a funny sight gags and one-liners. T4 is none of those things, but it is a good war movie. That's what the made...a war movie, no question. Not an epic one like Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now, but a good one. The Marcus character was a nice addition to the Terminator universe and like the recent Star Trek movie it had a good use of some of the classic lines from the old movies. And there was however, one scene that might have been the coolest thing i've ever seen in the movies. T4 cost 200 mil and after seeing that piece of movie magic it was worth every penny and the price of admission. I wish if they were going to show us the world before Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to save Sarah Connor, why didn't they spend more time showing us how John Connor became this inspirational leader. I mean, he didn't just pop out of the bunker after the bombs dropped and say, "hey follow me, i'm the Messiah of the future." I did like how he used radio transmissions to speak to the survivors. Personally I would have tacked on 30 minutes to the movie and would have used the first 30-45 minutes NOT showing Connor-just show the survivors listening to him and him inspiring them. Oh well, they can always show this in flashbacks in the sequels. That is IF it makes enough money to warrant a sequel. Yeah, fuck you Night of the Museum 2! And why the hell didn't they have Sarah Connor do the opening narration?!

I know this might be the most negative "good" review you've ever heard, but I still enjoyed it. It was a nice start to what is hopefully a trilogy. But again, if you're looking for something satisfying story wise, humanity-wise, logic-wise, or any other wise, then you'll be bored after the 36th thing explodes in your face. Then there are like a hundred more after that.

Final Analysis: good not great.