Giant dick, meet Robocop Lite!
TERMINATOR: SALVATION Review
"I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours." -Ebert
And how!
A lot of effort went into this movie, from the special effects crew and the technicians. You can tell that the director, the unexplainably self-titled 'McG,' cares about the Terminator saga. But what a joyless slog it is. When Macbeth bitches, this is what he's talking about.
The plot is best explained as above. It's worked before, it doesn't work here. Let me focus on the details. First, Christian Bale's performance as John Connor is a failure. I didn't care about him at all. I didn't believe he was a messiah, I didn't believe he was a hero, I didn't even believe he was human. But I did believe he was an actor who knew the project he was working on was, how you say, not so good. Bale is Bruce Wayne. Bale is Batman. Hell, Bale is even Patrick Bateman. But Bale's John Connor is a one-note dick, a joyless emotional robot who speaks in his Batman voice THE ENTIRE MOVIE. His speech about losing our humanity is laugh-worthy. How can he inspire humanity when he can't even inspire a movie audience? Hell, we've followed Shia LeBouf to fight Megatron; but Bale's John Connor couldn't lead a bunch of drunken law students to McDonalds. WHICH IS VERY EASY TO DO.
So that's half of the movie shot. Next, we have Marcus Wright, or the cyborg with feelings. As every trailer has already told you, he thinks he's human, but he's not. This is foretold in a prologue that is laced with symbolism, or at least Helena Bonaham Carter owing someone a favor. Sam Worthington does what he can- I've never seen him before, but ad campaigns promise I will see him again- but his story has been told before, and better. His character is made of the newest parts, but his story is off the shelf Frankenstein-Robocop-Blade
This leads to the third, and ultimately biggest problem with T4: Skynet. The supposedly biggest, baddest terminator of them all. The spawn of mechanical Satan. And yet, god help me, she (for she is played by Ms. Carter) is the crappiest villain out of all the Terminator movies. She is machine evolution backwards: after first learning to build and develop the Governor of California as a killing machine, she is left with a bad bond villain speech. She is trying to kill John Connor, see, and all her other plans have failed... so she's going to keep his father in the future, Kyle Reese, locked up as bait for John Connor to come within their grasp. This involves a convoluted plot to LET John Connor sneak in to Skynet, so it can... let him get close enough to destroy Skynet. Nevermind that the evil computer could shoot him countless times, or shoot his father, or use her Robocop-lite to shoot him, or any other ways that they could kill John Connor.
It's a dumb plan. Not only is not worth of supposedly the first computer to attain self-awareness, it's not worthy of Die Hard 2. So, basically, we have John "the giant dick" connor and Marcus "I'm not as interesting as I look" Wright fighting Sky "I'm about as smart as the villain in National Treasure" Net. Whoop de shit.
Let's be clear. This isn't Wolverine. The special effects are top notch, the plot is relatively straightforward, there are fewer lines that inspire huge groans and there are no musicians showing up in unexplainable costumes. It is competentBut if you're going to make a 200 million dollar popcorn movie (like Iron Man) and have zero moments of levity or self-parody (like Dark Knight), you better know what you're doing. You better have characters you care about, you better have a point and you better think things through. Explosions, even well done explosions, are not enough.
Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe I need more than just a constant series of explosions. Then again, maybe not- I'm the guy who liked Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard and Starship Troopers. I got nothing against robots beating the crap out of each other. But if you don't care about the tiny little people running around, or if the robots aren't named "Optimus Prime", after a point, it's just noise. And not even real noise; most of it is computer generated noise.
You did, McG. You made Michael Bay look good. I cared more about the characters in Armageddon than any of the survivors in this hunk of expensive junk.
RATING: * * (out of 5)
P.S. Arnold does make a cameo thanks to the 200 million dollar budget, without actually being in the movie. It's awesome, and the closest thing than a real Terminator moment we get.
P.P.S. The resistance has remarkably uneven powers. Sometimes they can summon air force bombers on radar, other times, they have to resort to short wave radios. Sometimes they have to hide on a submarine, sometimes they can have open air force bases. This either means that Skynet is even more incompetent than we thought, or (more likely) the screenwriters really didn't think about anything other than 'oh yeah, this would be cool.'
Vote Schwarzenegger.
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