WARNING: This review will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the film yet, you may want to hold off on reading this!
Okay, two things before I begin this review. First, it's a fact that Terminator: Salvation director McG(We Are Marshall, Charlie's Angels) has publicly admitted that when he was first approached by Warner Brothers to do this film, he was uncertain if he was the right man for the job. The Terminator franchise(with the exception of the much-reviled Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) is one of the most revered science fiction series in cinematic history. After all, the Terminator character was named by the American Film Institute as both one of the top 100 heroes and villains in movie history, and the first film in the series was chosen by the Library of Congress for preservation in its vaults since the movie is deemed of "cultural, historical or aesthetic" significance.
Second, it's a fact that Christian Bale(The Machinist, the upcoming Public Enemies) refused to sign on to play John Connor, until the script was brought up to snuff, such as to the point where it would be so tight it could be played out as a drama on stage, without having to use special effects as a crutch.
All of which brings us around to my firm belief that A)McG was definitely NOT the right man for the job, and B)If Bale thought this script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris(both writers on T3 and Catwoman--CATWOMAN, for f*#k's sake!!) was good enough, what in the world was the original script like?
Let me state this again, because I'm still reeling from the shock: McG brought in both writers from the Terminator film most fans hated, who happen to have also worked together on CATWOMAN, one of the worst movies in the 121 years of film history.
Is it any wonder people doubted McG's vision?
The story doesn't begin in the long-awaited future war fans have been clamoring for; it begins in a California prison in 2003, where Marcus Wright(Sam Worthington) is on death row for an undisclosed(and subsequently never-disclosed) incident where he was somehow responsible for the death of both his brother and two police officers. He's visited in his last hour by Dr. Serena Kogan(Helena Bonham Carter), who hopes to have Marcus sign away his body for medical science. Dr. Kogan is dying of cancer, and hopes to use Marcus' healthy body to extend the lives of others. As Marcus is given his lethal injection and dies, we shift forward to 2018, post Judgment Day, where humanity is deeply entrenched in its war against Skynet, the intelligent computer intent on wiping out every last human.
At this point in time, John Connor(Bale) isn't yet the leader of the human resistance; he's only a commander of a well-trained military unit. As the pre-credit opening crawl tells us, some believe him to be a man of destiny, prophesied to lead humanity to final victory, while others feel he is a false prophet. John leads a group of his men into one of Skynet's production facilities where they discover humans are being held captive and that plans are underway to build a new model of Terminator--one far deadlier than anything before it. The recon becomes a suicide mission when John's team are beset upon by HKs and Terminators, with John the only one surviving. I have to say that the stunts in this film are mostly first rate--especially viscerally thrilling in the scene where John flies a helicopter and has to survive its crashing. Also, both the CGI and live-action animatronics for the Terminators(the latter constructed by the late, great Stan Winston, to whom the film is dedicated) are absolutely top notch, and with only one exception later at Skynet HQ itself, are completely believable. Unfortunately, as filmgoers(yet oddly, never production studios or directors) have discovered time and again, great CGI and stunts aren't the only things necessary to make a great film...or even a plain old enjoyable one. And Terminator: Salvation is neither.
For one thing, McG has gotten the focus of his movie completely wrong. Throughout all the previous installments, the driving focus of the series has been to keep John Connor alive because he must survive in order to save humanity from extinction. In the first Terminator, the focus was to make sure Sarah Connor lived so she could give birth to John, who is for all intents and purposes, humanity's last messiah. In Terminator 2, the machines realized they failed and tried to kill John as a teenager, so a protector was sent back to keep him alive, because he's our savior. Even in the rightfully hated T3, Schwarzenegger's Terminator had to get John underground to safety to make sure he lived, because without him, humanity falls. One thing that McG gets right is to show why John is necessary; because the true leaders of the Resistance, led by General Ashdown(Michael Ironside) and General Losenko(Ivan G'Vera) are pig-headed and possess only tunnel vision to achieving the goal of disabling Skynet, whereas John, who has always been more fully aware of what the future holds, is the only one who can see alternate paths and readily adapt to them.
Note that the tv series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles--the first of the post-film series to carry on--has now been cancelled. Is it because the stories weren't good? No, not really...unfocused perhaps, but never disengaging. The problem is evident within the title: The Terminator series is about John Connor's necessity to humanity more than his mother's. Although Sarah Connor had to survive to show John the way, the arc of the film series is ultimately about getting to the end goal of John Connor becoming humanity's savior...not about his mom.
This is perhaps the most significant way in which McG and his horrible writers get things wrong: Once Marcus emerges from the wreckage of the prison into the post-apocalyptic nightmare, the story becomes focused on him and his attempts to regain his humanity, as he soon comes to find out that he is a cyborg, his parts having been replaced post-mortem by Dr. Kogan, who of course works for Cyberdyne, the company ultimately responsible for the existence of Skynet. John becomes a secondary character whose chief concern is to save his kidnapped father, at this point in time a teenaged Kyle Reese(Anton Yelchin), held captive by Skynet. The capturing of Reese however, produces a paradox within the storytelling itself(again: CATWOMAN?!!?)
Since John's primary goal becomes saving his future father, whose death will mean he'll never be born and humanity is doomed, and Skynet's goal in capturing Reese is to lure Connor to his death, the question must be asked: if Skynet is supposedly so smart, why not just kill Reese once he's captured? This would certainly have the desired effect of eliminating Connor from history for all time. However, McG needs to drag out the story to two hours in order to earn his paycheck and keep calling himself by his stupid nickname, so having his writers think of another way to place the two characters in jeopardy won't work for him. A false jeopardy is the way McG rolls, which is one of the many stupid things about the film.
One perennial joke about science fiction films is that the acting is always wooden. While James Cameron(The Abyss, Aliens) was able to get excellent performances out of his actors in his two T-films, again McG simply isn't up to the job. One of the few reasons many fans wanted to see this film is because they knew that failing all else, Christian Bale would deliver a solid performance as always. For the very first time since I've been a Bale fan, I have to say this isn't the case in this film. The role of John Connor may have simply been too similar to other dark and brooding figures he's played lately, but this turns out to be the exceptionally rare uninspired Bale performance that you'll be telling your grandkids about. "Yes, I remember where I was when..." is what you'll be saying. Sam Worthington(Somersault, Thunderstruck) is decent yet not exactly spellbinding as Marcus Wright, the mechanical puppet who wants to be a human boy. Moon Bloodgood(Eight Below, Pathfinder) is worthless as Resistance fighter Blair Williams, who is supposed to be a hard-ass who ends up being saved by Marcus from being raped, and in turn betrays the entire Resistance by helping him escape captivity when it's discovered he's a cyborg and a potential enemy. Yelchin(Huff, Star Trek), sadly, may be the best thing in the movie, and that's not saying incredibly much. There's the pathetic addition of a mute child(Jadagrace, making her "acting" debut) who serves no purpose whatsoever for being in the story at all. Seriously...she's as useful as porn films are to a eunuch. The rapper/actor Common(Street Kings, Wanted) is Common...you're only going to get so much out of him. Bryce Dallas Howard(Spider-Man 3, Lady in the Water) has virtually nothing to do as Connor's wife Kate except be the devoted wife who listens patiently to her husband's doubts and fears, and carry his unborn child, which never becomes a plot point at all within the film. Why even bother making her pregnant if the two characters aren't going to talk about their hopes for their child in a Terminator-free world? In fact, this is supposed to be a world where women are equal to men as warriors...so why not have her on the battlefield instead, sans pregnancy?
And as far as McG's "vision" of the post-apocalyptic world goes, it is a far cry from the brilliance of Cameron. Having rewatched both Terminator films(I refuse to include 3), it is completely evident that in less than 10 minutes combined between both Terminator and T2(it's just over 9 minutes... yes, I did time it out), Cameron managed to immerse us in a fully believable world with its own set of rules, adhering to its own logic, and gave us a view of humanity on the brink, which fans have been clamoring to see in full for years. McG's version has none of the flavor, full believability(aside from the Terminators) or common sense of what Cameron set up for him to follow so easily. In Cameron's reality, humanity and the Resistance operated out of makeshift headquarters they could abandon at a moment's notice if Terminators infiltrated them or Skynet found where they were hiding. In McG's reality, Connor's people operate out of fixed positions with grounded machinery and other tech, essentially making them sitting ducks! For some reason, Skynet can't find them and doesn't go to the trouble of consistently pumping out HKs to search day and night(since it is a machine and wouldn't require the rest a human worker would), while the Resistance can easily track Skynet's movements, even predicting how they'll react to decoys and other distractions. And how in the hell can a 50-foot, two-ton metal monstrosity SNEAK UP on a gas station full of people and surprise them? Did it use a hundred gallons of WD-40 to oil its joints in advance to catch them off guard? And I didn't realize that Sony would still exist post-Judgment Day, or that they'd be making a PDA capable of picking electronic codes. Bad economy, my ass--buy your Sony stock now!
By now of course, everyone on planet Earth and the International Space Station is aware of Christian Bale's famous rant against director of photography Shane Hurlbut for walking through a crucial scene where Connor and his wife are sharing a powerful moment. I was expecting to at least be blown away by the scene when viewing it, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell which one it was, since the movie overall is so devoid of worthy protagonists and situations for us to care about and devote our emotions to. It might have been the scene where they're saying goodbye as John's about to leave on a perilous mission. It might have been the scene where Kate has to do her best to save John's life after he's nearly killed by a Terminator. Honestly, McG's direction is so damn flat, I just couldn't tell. Hell, even the film score by Danny Elfman(Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the upcoming The Wolf Man) is all wrong, utilizing virtually nothing of Brad Fiedel's relentless, menacing theme.
Terminator: Salvation is supposed to be the cornerstone of a new trilogy, but it doesn't deserve one second of your time, and not one thin buck of your hard-earned paycheck. Yes, it's an easy joke, but it's time to take McG's grimy mitts off of serious films, and retire him back to the $1 menu.
Okay, two things before I begin this review. First, it's a fact that Terminator: Salvation director McG(We Are Marshall, Charlie's Angels) has publicly admitted that when he was first approached by Warner Brothers to do this film, he was uncertain if he was the right man for the job. The Terminator franchise(with the exception of the much-reviled Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) is one of the most revered science fiction series in cinematic history. After all, the Terminator character was named by the American Film Institute as both one of the top 100 heroes and villains in movie history, and the first film in the series was chosen by the Library of Congress for preservation in its vaults since the movie is deemed of "cultural, historical or aesthetic" significance.
Second, it's a fact that Christian Bale(The Machinist, the upcoming Public Enemies) refused to sign on to play John Connor, until the script was brought up to snuff, such as to the point where it would be so tight it could be played out as a drama on stage, without having to use special effects as a crutch.
All of which brings us around to my firm belief that A)McG was definitely NOT the right man for the job, and B)If Bale thought this script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris(both writers on T3 and Catwoman--CATWOMAN, for f*#k's sake!!) was good enough, what in the world was the original script like?
Let me state this again, because I'm still reeling from the shock: McG brought in both writers from the Terminator film most fans hated, who happen to have also worked together on CATWOMAN, one of the worst movies in the 121 years of film history.
Is it any wonder people doubted McG's vision?
The story doesn't begin in the long-awaited future war fans have been clamoring for; it begins in a California prison in 2003, where Marcus Wright(Sam Worthington) is on death row for an undisclosed(and subsequently never-disclosed) incident where he was somehow responsible for the death of both his brother and two police officers. He's visited in his last hour by Dr. Serena Kogan(Helena Bonham Carter), who hopes to have Marcus sign away his body for medical science. Dr. Kogan is dying of cancer, and hopes to use Marcus' healthy body to extend the lives of others. As Marcus is given his lethal injection and dies, we shift forward to 2018, post Judgment Day, where humanity is deeply entrenched in its war against Skynet, the intelligent computer intent on wiping out every last human.
At this point in time, John Connor(Bale) isn't yet the leader of the human resistance; he's only a commander of a well-trained military unit. As the pre-credit opening crawl tells us, some believe him to be a man of destiny, prophesied to lead humanity to final victory, while others feel he is a false prophet. John leads a group of his men into one of Skynet's production facilities where they discover humans are being held captive and that plans are underway to build a new model of Terminator--one far deadlier than anything before it. The recon becomes a suicide mission when John's team are beset upon by HKs and Terminators, with John the only one surviving. I have to say that the stunts in this film are mostly first rate--especially viscerally thrilling in the scene where John flies a helicopter and has to survive its crashing. Also, both the CGI and live-action animatronics for the Terminators(the latter constructed by the late, great Stan Winston, to whom the film is dedicated) are absolutely top notch, and with only one exception later at Skynet HQ itself, are completely believable. Unfortunately, as filmgoers(yet oddly, never production studios or directors) have discovered time and again, great CGI and stunts aren't the only things necessary to make a great film...or even a plain old enjoyable one. And Terminator: Salvation is neither.
For one thing, McG has gotten the focus of his movie completely wrong. Throughout all the previous installments, the driving focus of the series has been to keep John Connor alive because he must survive in order to save humanity from extinction. In the first Terminator, the focus was to make sure Sarah Connor lived so she could give birth to John, who is for all intents and purposes, humanity's last messiah. In Terminator 2, the machines realized they failed and tried to kill John as a teenager, so a protector was sent back to keep him alive, because he's our savior. Even in the rightfully hated T3, Schwarzenegger's Terminator had to get John underground to safety to make sure he lived, because without him, humanity falls. One thing that McG gets right is to show why John is necessary; because the true leaders of the Resistance, led by General Ashdown(Michael Ironside) and General Losenko(Ivan G'Vera) are pig-headed and possess only tunnel vision to achieving the goal of disabling Skynet, whereas John, who has always been more fully aware of what the future holds, is the only one who can see alternate paths and readily adapt to them.
Note that the tv series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles--the first of the post-film series to carry on--has now been cancelled. Is it because the stories weren't good? No, not really...unfocused perhaps, but never disengaging. The problem is evident within the title: The Terminator series is about John Connor's necessity to humanity more than his mother's. Although Sarah Connor had to survive to show John the way, the arc of the film series is ultimately about getting to the end goal of John Connor becoming humanity's savior...not about his mom.
This is perhaps the most significant way in which McG and his horrible writers get things wrong: Once Marcus emerges from the wreckage of the prison into the post-apocalyptic nightmare, the story becomes focused on him and his attempts to regain his humanity, as he soon comes to find out that he is a cyborg, his parts having been replaced post-mortem by Dr. Kogan, who of course works for Cyberdyne, the company ultimately responsible for the existence of Skynet. John becomes a secondary character whose chief concern is to save his kidnapped father, at this point in time a teenaged Kyle Reese(Anton Yelchin), held captive by Skynet. The capturing of Reese however, produces a paradox within the storytelling itself(again: CATWOMAN?!!?)
Since John's primary goal becomes saving his future father, whose death will mean he'll never be born and humanity is doomed, and Skynet's goal in capturing Reese is to lure Connor to his death, the question must be asked: if Skynet is supposedly so smart, why not just kill Reese once he's captured? This would certainly have the desired effect of eliminating Connor from history for all time. However, McG needs to drag out the story to two hours in order to earn his paycheck and keep calling himself by his stupid nickname, so having his writers think of another way to place the two characters in jeopardy won't work for him. A false jeopardy is the way McG rolls, which is one of the many stupid things about the film.
One perennial joke about science fiction films is that the acting is always wooden. While James Cameron(The Abyss, Aliens) was able to get excellent performances out of his actors in his two T-films, again McG simply isn't up to the job. One of the few reasons many fans wanted to see this film is because they knew that failing all else, Christian Bale would deliver a solid performance as always. For the very first time since I've been a Bale fan, I have to say this isn't the case in this film. The role of John Connor may have simply been too similar to other dark and brooding figures he's played lately, but this turns out to be the exceptionally rare uninspired Bale performance that you'll be telling your grandkids about. "Yes, I remember where I was when..." is what you'll be saying. Sam Worthington(Somersault, Thunderstruck) is decent yet not exactly spellbinding as Marcus Wright, the mechanical puppet who wants to be a human boy. Moon Bloodgood(Eight Below, Pathfinder) is worthless as Resistance fighter Blair Williams, who is supposed to be a hard-ass who ends up being saved by Marcus from being raped, and in turn betrays the entire Resistance by helping him escape captivity when it's discovered he's a cyborg and a potential enemy. Yelchin(Huff, Star Trek), sadly, may be the best thing in the movie, and that's not saying incredibly much. There's the pathetic addition of a mute child(Jadagrace, making her "acting" debut) who serves no purpose whatsoever for being in the story at all. Seriously...she's as useful as porn films are to a eunuch. The rapper/actor Common(Street Kings, Wanted) is Common...you're only going to get so much out of him. Bryce Dallas Howard(Spider-Man 3, Lady in the Water) has virtually nothing to do as Connor's wife Kate except be the devoted wife who listens patiently to her husband's doubts and fears, and carry his unborn child, which never becomes a plot point at all within the film. Why even bother making her pregnant if the two characters aren't going to talk about their hopes for their child in a Terminator-free world? In fact, this is supposed to be a world where women are equal to men as warriors...so why not have her on the battlefield instead, sans pregnancy?
And as far as McG's "vision" of the post-apocalyptic world goes, it is a far cry from the brilliance of Cameron. Having rewatched both Terminator films(I refuse to include 3), it is completely evident that in less than 10 minutes combined between both Terminator and T2(it's just over 9 minutes... yes, I did time it out), Cameron managed to immerse us in a fully believable world with its own set of rules, adhering to its own logic, and gave us a view of humanity on the brink, which fans have been clamoring to see in full for years. McG's version has none of the flavor, full believability(aside from the Terminators) or common sense of what Cameron set up for him to follow so easily. In Cameron's reality, humanity and the Resistance operated out of makeshift headquarters they could abandon at a moment's notice if Terminators infiltrated them or Skynet found where they were hiding. In McG's reality, Connor's people operate out of fixed positions with grounded machinery and other tech, essentially making them sitting ducks! For some reason, Skynet can't find them and doesn't go to the trouble of consistently pumping out HKs to search day and night(since it is a machine and wouldn't require the rest a human worker would), while the Resistance can easily track Skynet's movements, even predicting how they'll react to decoys and other distractions. And how in the hell can a 50-foot, two-ton metal monstrosity SNEAK UP on a gas station full of people and surprise them? Did it use a hundred gallons of WD-40 to oil its joints in advance to catch them off guard? And I didn't realize that Sony would still exist post-Judgment Day, or that they'd be making a PDA capable of picking electronic codes. Bad economy, my ass--buy your Sony stock now!
By now of course, everyone on planet Earth and the International Space Station is aware of Christian Bale's famous rant against director of photography Shane Hurlbut for walking through a crucial scene where Connor and his wife are sharing a powerful moment. I was expecting to at least be blown away by the scene when viewing it, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell which one it was, since the movie overall is so devoid of worthy protagonists and situations for us to care about and devote our emotions to. It might have been the scene where they're saying goodbye as John's about to leave on a perilous mission. It might have been the scene where Kate has to do her best to save John's life after he's nearly killed by a Terminator. Honestly, McG's direction is so damn flat, I just couldn't tell. Hell, even the film score by Danny Elfman(Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the upcoming The Wolf Man) is all wrong, utilizing virtually nothing of Brad Fiedel's relentless, menacing theme.
Terminator: Salvation is supposed to be the cornerstone of a new trilogy, but it doesn't deserve one second of your time, and not one thin buck of your hard-earned paycheck. Yes, it's an easy joke, but it's time to take McG's grimy mitts off of serious films, and retire him back to the $1 menu.
Official Archives of LanceReviews...
OBSOLETE MODEL
McG's crappy direction and story sends The Terminator franchise straight to the scrap heap...
No "Salvation" in sight: McG manages to do what only Sarah Connor did before him...terminate the Terminator.
Bryce Dallas Howard(left) plays Kate, John Connor's(Bale, center) wife, while Bloodgood(right) plays the dumbass who betrays the Resistance. Note how Opie's daughter is pregnant? This NEVER factors into the film. AT ALL!
Michael Ironside as General Ashdown, proving that old actors never die...they just start appearing in crappy movies.
"My God...! I came out of the movie theater, only to find the entire world's destroyed itself, rather than sit through a sequel to this film!"
"Aw, crap...! I took a wrong turn and ended up in the Terminator construction facility. I was hoping to find a solid plotline some-where around here!"
Okay, seriously...we're supposed to believe this 50-foot tall Transformer can SNEAK UP on anybody?!??!!!!
A sight for sore optical receptors: The CGI and animatronics which make the Terminators highly believable is one of the rare good things about the film.
"Okay, sweetie...now in this scene, Anton and I are going to try and figure out why in the hell McG chose to include your character in this story!"
Woe, woe unto the movie where Anton Yelchin is the best thing in it!
"This is Christian Bale, calling for Chris Nolan, urgent! Chris, hurry up with that next Batman script! After this mess, me and McG, we're done professionally!"
