Review: ‘Terminator Salvation’
by Mike LongA Terminator mega-robot is fun to watch only if he (it?) is making his (its?) marauding way toward its target; generally, that’s the good guy in the movie who, by superhuman strength and unprecedented cleverness, will dispatch said Terminator in the last reel. Every Terminator movie has been defined by this simple conflict: man versus super-machine.
Not this time. And that is why, despite spectacular visual effects, a brooding and hyper-popular Christian Bale in the lead role, and marketing that pretty much stamped the title across my kids’ foreheads, Terminator Salvation is not nearly the success that the other three movies were.
John Connor and his mom (and his friends and pretty much everybody else with whom they ever come in contact) become instant targets for future-born Terminator robots. The setup is pretty straightforward. The time is present day.
I’m talking about the other pictures, not this one.
This picture is the dog that caught the car: finally we are carried into the future where the post-nuclear dystopian world is filled with killer robots on a constant hunt. This is what we have been (well, I have been) curious to see since the very first of these pictures. Turns out, though, that a bunch of anonymous killer robots aren’t much more interesting than a bunch of trees in the wind or a bunch of cars in traffic. You gotta have a personal story to make the movie take off—you gotta have a conflict so clear it bats you in the head, for instance, the marketing campaign for a big summer movie about killer robots from the future.
In this picture, John Connor is… umm… I think he’s trying to save a guy long enough for that guy to go back in history to impregnate Connor’s mother-to-be so she can give birth to him (Connor) so he (Connor again) can grow up to—save the life of his father so he can go back in time to impregnate Connor’s mother to give birth to him? Maybe? Wasn’t this supposed to be about a killer robot? Ah, well. I wish it was just John Connor and his mother-du-jour on the run from a Terminator, in a series of hair’s-breadth escapes that make mayhem and carnage of and around the lower-billed actors, each of who should enjoy a nifty/gross death scene that they can put on their reel.
This picture needed a bad guy, or a bad robot (which might make it a job for J.J. Abrams, haha) to chase the good guy around—and this good guy didn’t come off as particularly likable, by the way, or even particularly good.
Oh—and the final cheat is that after spending two hours hearing that this is the decisive battle against the evil Skynet, we learn in an end-of-movie voiceover that—surprise!—this is actually just one more battle in the apparently eternal march against Skynet. Can they never be defeated? Only by relatively bad box office, I guess. Maybe this time.
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52 Comments
I just realized this will be the first Terminator film I don't bother to see. I just have no interest whatsoever.
I'll wait for the DVD. It'll cost the same as tickets, but with the home theater set up, it'll look and sound as good, there's no shambling zombies in the queue to put up with, and drinks and snacks are free, and with the pause button I don't miss anything to get a refill .
Seeing this film was like opening the Halloween bag and finding that most of the swag is healthy fruit snacks instead of candy. I too expected the final battle. The impressive Skynet designed time machine, where is it?
This franchise is starting to remind of the Aliens series. It's lost it's way. Next stop = Terminator vs Predator.
Agreed. Looks boring as hell. McG is a crappy filmmaker and Christian Bale is a highly overrated actor. I have no idea why people slobber all over that guy.
From you're review, Terminator has just turned into Jaws: The Revenge…
It'll be fun to look at some of the scenes in this movie and go, "Hey! That's so and so!", "I've seen that!" and "Wow, I've been there!".
But I'll do it at the dollar second run theater with bootleg sodas and backpack chips smuggled in.
They jumped the shark on T3; should have stopped there. TS- an okay, but overall unmemorable flick.
"This picture needed a bad guy, or a bad robot (which might make it a job for J.J. Abrams, haha) to chase the good guy around"
Not just that, it needed a bad robot to chase the good guy around in our own time, not in the future, where the good guys have endless supplies of anti-robot weaponry. This installment betrayed the formula: future killing machine is dropped into the present, regular present people resist it. I don't know what they were going for, exactly, but this wasn't a Terminator film.
It was crap. The way SkyNet fought didn't make sense, the way the characters acted didn't make sense and the technology didn't make sense. Oh yeah, and the story was crap.
I wanted my money and two hours back.
Anything that reminds me of Arnold is void
"and drinks and snacks are free"
There ain't no such thing as a free snack.
I never watch Terminator 3. I will watch the original over & over again & sometimes Terminator 2.
It seems like every critic I read writes the same thing about this film.
I can't understand why people want to see another Terminator pic with the same structure: Overmatched protector against superior assassin. To me, the chain of Reese vs. T-800, T-800 (Uncle Bob) vs. 1-1000, T-800 vs. T-X has run its course.
But if that's what you want to see, fine. I just think its unfair to base criticism of a film based on what YOU wanted it it be.
There's a few things I didn't see the way this critic did:
- This film DID have an antagonist … Skynet.
- At no time was this ever supposed to be the "decisive battle." The San Francisco base was just one of many around the world, and taking it out — while being a blow to Skynet — was not going to win the war. We already knew this because in the first film, Reese says Skynet's "defense grid had been smashed — we'd won." Then Skynet sends the T-800 back in time as a last-ditch measure to kill Sarah.
I don't think this was a great film by any means, but I do give it credit for breaking off the regular Terminator template and expanding the mythos a bit.
This article explains why the movie is so hackneyed…
http://chud.com/articles/articles/19577/1/EXCLUSI...
How about an unexpected twist which Conner turns out being a Terminator?
Maybe you should have seen Up?
I havent seen this film yet, but your comment doesn't make any sense. The reason people go to a sequel is to see familiar characters in slightly new circumstances. "Breaking off the regular template" is not what people want or expect from a sequel. They might as well have just written a new film with a new concept & new characters, but I guess that would have required foresight, imagination, & a new idea.
NeoconJedi was right. Salvation was supposed to be the start of a new Terminator series (so to speak) and it was not supposed to show the decisive battle that ends with Reese being sent through the time machine, it's going to cover the rise of John Connor as humanity's leader. According to expanded history, Skynet's main base-of-operations is not the base that was in San Francisco, but was actually built into Norad. Considering how the original purpose of Skynet was to control the missiles, it really does make sense.
I don't know what everyone is complaining about. I thought it was great, and so does everyone else I know that has seen it.
Of course it's different, (they're no longer trying to stop the war, they have to win it now.)
Christian Bale overrated? Gimme a break. Every recent movie he's been in rocks.
Yep. I really wish I had. No joke.
I haven't seen a Terminator since T2, I went because friends invited me. I had no preconceived notions about what I thought the movie should be like. This was just a crappy movie.
Thanks for that, this explains a lot. And this paragraph:
"…The film's biggest weakness comes in the final minutes, which feel almost completely slapped on, as the character we've been following makes a sudden and boring sacrifice. The air just explodes out of the movie as John Connor's rescue feels utterly unearned, and the ending of the movie is so final that you walk out of the theater not caring whether or not the future war is ever again revisited."
sums up why I left the theater wishing Connor was out of the picture.
The human versus machine idea is soooo overdone. The Matrix was nice and the original T movies were fun but this one was based on the premise of more of the same, which in this genre doesn't lend itself to improvement as in the Danny Ocean movies. Nothing smart, nothing clever, just more horse race. Since the idea of a sentient AI, vis-a-vis Colosus the Forbin Project or The Matrix etc., is totally unbelieveable, I would rather have seen a story about the humans behind Skynet fighting the for their survival while Skynet fights for its survival while Connor (different actor) fights for the rebels. IMO, Bale was a poor casting choice and the story line lacked depth.
I'm not sure why anyone even bothers to go to a movie theater at all – ever.
I'm not sure why anyone even bothers to go to a movie theater at all – ever.
A terminator without the governator?
Heresy…
I went in hoping for World War Z, except against robots instead of zombies and was terrifically let down. I don't know how these people keep it together against invincible robots. I don't get why John Connor is a great leader (because he uses a radio occaisonally). This was all 'tell' and no 'show'. Great effects, poor story.
Minor trivia quibble, but Arnold's original model number was T-101, not T-800. The T-100's had rubber skin, so the T-101's were the first model to have, "living tissue over a hyper-alloy combat chassis." Robert Patrick's liquid metal model was T-1000, an experimental prototype. Not sure where this T-800 crap originated, but in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the various different – evidently individually built – Terminators were, "Triple-Eights." So they were T-888's: "Advanced infiltration Units." I don't think Summer Glau's model number was ever given – I watched every episode of that show – but she was obviously designed to sucker men (She can terminate me any time).
Can anyone pinpoint where this T-800 heresy started?
As a huge Terminator fanboy, I was really happily surprised at this one. T3 sucked on ice, and is completely unworthy of mention as a Terminator movie.
This was supposed to be — as someone mentioned — a set-up for a new series of futurewar movies, which should naturally not have much to do with the time travel aspect, with the exception of the destruction of the time displacement equipment as Reece describes to Dr. Silberman in the original Terminator. The biggest problem with the film is the trailer gives away that the new guy is a hybrid Terminator. It woulda worked much better if we had suspicions but found out later.
That being said, Cameron would have be amazing behind this movie.
If you liked T3, there's no reason you shouldn't like this movie, as it was WAY better than that piece of crap. Then again, if you liked T3, you have no business talking about Terminator movies.
Lots of conflicting info that may not answer your question but for what it's worth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(characte... of particular interest is the character nomenclature section
http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/T-800_(The_Termi...
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000931/
I weep at what they've done to the franchise.
"Model 101 series 800"
Talk about a lame-ass work-around. LOL!
Thanks.
Dude, the Governator IS in this movie! I think he was CGI, but I can't be certain, they made him look really young. The special effects were really top notch, that alone was worth the ticket.
Totally agree. I found it depressing that the Resistance was so easily infiltrated by an eye-candy half-human half-terminator enemy. The new premise is that Skynet can only be "contained" by the backfiring of its own creation. Humans are too stupid and weak to overcome the terminator enemy.
The digital Arnold fighting Bale was ridiculous! The CGI scenes complete with Transformers were plain stupid. This sad excuse of a movie has put the last nail in the coffin of the Terminator series.
As usual, Mike Long has no idea what he's talking about. Has he actually seen ANY of the previous Terminator movies?
Replace the fruit snacks with Mary Janes yuk!
Definitely. They made him look right out of the 1984 Terminator (before his model, that model, was sent back). It was a GREAT idea, and really well executed.
I had a very blasé interest in seeing T3; and I never did, but this movie I wanted to see. Granted, it's not a masterpiece in terms of story-telling, but it was fun for the most part. The visuals were pretty amazing.
In the next episode Skynet should send back in time a robot to be a community organizer in Chicago who goes on to be POTUS……
Oh, wait. That's a different thread.
The story is poorly told, regardless of breaking template. Characters we don't care about? They abound in this movie. Skynet doesn't just snap Reese's neck when they capture him? Instead they just put him in a different jail cell so Connor can rescue him! The movie is full of crapola like that.
Well, they're a lot cheaper and the selection is better.
Oh, wait, that one's been done already!
I think the series has "Nuked the Fridge".
Was really looking forward to seeing this movie, but serious alarm bells rang when i read the review today in the News of The World and it was slated. Im waiting for Transformers!
I don't get all the hate for this movie. It's never fair to compare a sequel to the original because the magic of the originality is lost. Everyone already knows the premise, so really how many times can you do "killer robot tries to change the future" without it becoming cliche? Here, they are actually trying to do something ambitious, i.e. move from the kid John Conner we all know and love to the future leader of Resistance. (Sorry, the T3 John was still a kid as far as I'm concerned.) It's a very difficult thing to accomplish for a character with so much mythology already built around him. So they sort of go half way. This is still John Conner in the making, the future leader only beginning to emerge. I found it quite interesting at that level. Not a complete success, but I appreciate the attempt.
Good gosh, don't give them ideas; somebody's going to pitch that for sure I fear.
Hey, it's f****ng distracting!
LOL Nuked the Fridge! I love that, is that the replacement for "Jump the Shark"?
I saw this movie yesterday, was okay, certainly good effects but the reviews pretty much nailed it. My highlight was when buying a drink I ordered the large (the movie theater pricing schemes always get me) and when the guy handed me the garbage-can sized drink I said: "Excuse me, I thought I ordered the large!, Hello!" I asked him to "name that movie" and he could not, I chastised him and told him he must be up on movie trivia to work in a theater. (yes I guess I am a d**k)
btw the answer is: "So I married an axe murderer" but then you already knew that!
I watched this movie in an advanced showing, surrounded by hundreds of screaming soldiers and their significant others. Everyone I talked to, as we were leaving the theatre, said how much they'd enjoyed the movie, the fight scenes, the chases, and the characters. I didn't find one dissatisfied person in the bunch. So here's me, echoing what everyone was saying the night I saw T-Salvation — "It was way way better than the third movie, yea, and about time we got this story and not more of the same, to boot."
maybe it's a girl thing?? I really liked this one too. My mom liked it.
I liked the Marcus storyline, Iliked seeing JConnor grown up and reasonably functional – married, kid – and still not being taken seriously – like his mom – by the powers-that-be human but taken quite seriously by the machines. I liked the fight the human way & the machines deciding to fight the human way.
The good-looking guys didn't hurt, either…
That's exactly my point, Phyreblade.
In fact, I remember James Cameron saying once that the trick of making a sequel is to make sure the audience feels some familiarity, but also to introduce a lot of new elements. I think Terminator Salvation did that very well.
[...] Mike Long: This picture is the dog that caught the car: finally we are carried into the future where the post-nuclear dystopian world is filled with killer robots on a constant hunt. This is what we have been (well, I have been) curious to see since the very first of these pictures. Turns out, though, that a bunch of anonymous killer robots aren’t much more interesting than a bunch of trees in the wind or a bunch of cars in traffic. You gotta have a personal story to make the movie take off-you gotta have a conflict so clear it bats you in the head, for instance, the marketing campaign for a big summer movie about killer robots from the future. [...]
"Next stop = Terminator vs Predator. "
There actually there was a Terminator vs Pedator comic book. I remember seeing it in the store about twenty years ago….
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