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Salvation is wasted on 'Terminator'

'Terminator Salvation'

In Terminator Salvation, the future is finally here. Set in 2018 in a post-Judgment Day world of blight and derelict buildings (like Detroit) from a nuclear attack made by the Machines, its landscape mimics  Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. The future is grim and lifeless. John Connor (Christian Bale) is a squad leader in the resistance but is truly looked to as the prophesied leader of the human resistance. When not listening to tapes from his mother Sarah, he's busy squabbling with his chain of command which is sheltered, symbolically, in an old Russian submarine. His squad follows his word as if he's the Messiah, and in this world, he truly is.

 

Mysteriously, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) wakes up from an extensive nap to see a world he doesn't remember. The last thing he recalls was that he donated his body for use by Cyberdyne before a lethal injection for crimes alluded to but never fully disclosed. After walking into scenic bombed-out L.A., Marcus avoids being killed by a terminator with the help of a teenage Kyle Reese (played by Star Trek's Anton Yelchin). Together, the L.A. branch of the Resistance travel to find John Connor's base while avoiding giant robots looking to capture human specimens for their grisly terminator tests. It doesn't happen. Instead, Reese and his little buddy are dropped into a transport headed to SKYNET Headquarters in San Francisco. When Marcus befriends Blair (Moon Bloodgood), a pilot who ejected herself during the melee, our duo travel back to camp on foot which, in theory, should provide audiences some connectedness with two heavily used characters in the movie. It doesn't happen either.

 

From here, the story drops itself into obscurity with plot devices used on top of themes that are new to the Terminator franchise. Like weak women and emotional authenticity. Everything that made the Terminator series one of the most fascinating stories in sci-fi is missing from McG's Salvation. Like action and jaw-dropping effects with a sense of purpose and a storyline based in a united belief in the human spirit.

 

The Terminator storyline has captured not only the hearts, but also the minds of millions of fans around the world.It's unfortunate, in retrospect, that the series peaked so early with Terminator 2: Judgement Day because all that we're left with in Terminator Salvation is a Sci-Fi Channel movie special. Though filled with fantastic and vivid special effects, with the help of George Lucas' Industrail Lights and Magic, its faux-intensity crossed into sappy melodrama. Christian Bale, complete with gravely Batman voice, is surrounded by a cast that does little to advance the story; a story that's filled with too many contrived moments and coincidental logic (how many misplaced helicopter crashes must we endure? A major surgery in a make-shift camp in the middle of a desert?). The storyline is unsupported by its cast. The required suspension of disbelief was pretty easy to come by with the first two films in the series and, possibly, with the third film, largely viewed as the weakest of the series. In Terminator Salvation, viewers will be rolling there eyes so far back, they'll be watching Edward Furlong's instructions on how to be cool. It's fitting that the film's highlight was "The Cameo" from a circa '84 Schwarzenegger, because this is the only aspect of the film that pays off: nostalgia.