Title: Terminator: Salvation (2009)Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin
Directed By: McG
The Terminator franchise really hasn't been the same since T2. One thing's for sure though, you always know what you're going to get from a Terminator movie: big action sequences, graphics that rival any other film released at the time, and "Aaahhnold". This one doesn't disappoint in any of those categories.
This fourth entry takes place in the foretold future, with John Connor (Christian Bale) engaged in a war against the machines. It seems as though this is supposed to be a launching point for another series of Terminator movies, as we see the development of the T-800 (Schwarzenegger) and we see a lot of bulkier robots, but we never get to the scenes of an army of robotic endoskeletons fighting against the human resistance that were shown in the first movies. Presumably that hasn't happened yet. We are, however, introduced to Anton Yelchin as a young Kyle Reese and a confused convict from the past played by Sam Worthington. Their story parallels Connor's as the film progresses until they are eventually thrown together by fate to fight back against the evil Skynet.
McG handles the action here quite well. Aaaand that's about it. The performances are stale and wooden, with some of the cast wasted (Bryce Dallas Howard, Anton Yelchin, Helena Bonham Carter), some of them clueless and lost (Common, Jane Alexander), and some of them thinking this is another Batman movie (Bale). Also, there is virtually no style or atmosphere in the picture at all. It's all pretty straightforward action followed by a dramatic beat and then more action. The material is handled well enough, but nothing special is brought to the table.
I'll give it this though, it's better than T3.
Score: 7/10
I actually watched this one a second time just last night and actually find myself looking at a few more details. The nods to the previous movies were nice, but I do agree that there was just a lot of wasted potential. It was better than T3, but parts of the story didn't gel too well. I mean, first the mediocre TV series and this as the follow-up doesn't do the franchise a whole lot of favors, but compared to the series, the movie is actually pretty good, so I was a bit more biased going in after seeing that.
ReplyDeleteNever got into the series, though I hear it got a LOT better near the end of the 2nd season.
ReplyDeleteIt did, but unfortunately it went out with a real whimper IMHO. I loved parts of the first season, and actually like it overall better than the second, generally speaking. The second season started off great and dipped severely into a black hole for about five episodes; it was really disjointed and really a mixed bag. It was unfortunate that the writer's strike caused trouble for this series, as I directly blame that as one of the reasons that the series didn't last very long.
ReplyDeleteSeeing how it was actually the first live action TV series I had literally seen in years (mainly admittedly from the Terminator name attachment, read: branding) I was actually pretty floored and really impressed with the special effects. It's definitely not easy to do big budget movie effects scaled for the small screen, but great special effects can't make up for poor writing (well, sometimes). The series sort of has a direct to DVD mini-series movie feel about it, and some of the writing was really creative, but overall I felt let down by the end of it. Still, it was more entertaining than T3 itself, so it definitely had that going for it. It was also a nice segue into Salvation.
Compared to Cameron, though, the parent company Halcyon just seems to be going in a different direction for the series. I don't think we'll ever see anything in the series surpass the success of T2.