Reno Reviews TERMINATOR SALVATION

ENGLISH - (U) - 28 May 2009 - Sci-Fi/Action/Adventure
Distributor: Sony Pictures (Columbia)
Running time: about 115 mins.
Director: Joseph "McG" McGinty Nichol
Producers: Derek Anderson, Victor Kubicek, Jeffrey Silver, Moritz Borman
Writers: John Brancato, Michael Ferris (Screenplay); James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd (Characters)
Casts: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Bryce Dallas Howard, Common, Jadagrace Berry, Helena Bonham Carter
Plot: Set in 2018, the film focuses on the original war between the human race and the Terminator computer network, Skynet. After destroying almost the entire human race on Earth in a nuclear holocaust, a group of survivors led by John Connor stands up to the war and together they struggle to keep those machines at bay and from completely wiping away the human race.

THE VERDICT:

Reno Ooi says:

WARNING FOR SPOILER! There's still long time before we can watch Christian Bale as caped crusader again. As a Christian-Bale-fans like me, I really had much anticipation on this movie: Terminator Salvation. The producer company did spends lots of money in promoting this movie, as I can conclude via how we see Terminator Salvation posters everyway, newspapers, roadsides, staircase etc. However, here's the thing: the distributor will be making box office success due to the anticipation BUT they will also get a lots of bad and cruel critics at the end. Let me tell you why.

First of all, you must realise that this is not a very terminator-sense terminator movie. There's no more good and evil terminator go back through time and fight against each other for each own's sake of benefit in future time. This movie simply take the concept of "Judgement Day" and "War between resistance and machines" from the previous prequels, and make it a futuristic war movie. They are things that already mentioned in conversation in prequel. This movie is just "materialize" those conversation content. So, it's more of a war-kind of movie, rather than the cat-and-rat chase among future robots in present world.

Nevertheless, speaking as a war-genre movie, this movie really is a great disappointment. The first 75 minutes of the movie is dull and boring, despite all those fancy kind of terminators models appear in the movie. Ask yourself, why you watch this movie? Mainly because you want to see how John Conner fulfill his destiny to be a resistance leader and finding his teen father. So, who really give a shit about the process of war? Terminator franchise (the previous three) focused on characters, i.e. Sarah Conner, John Conner, T800 etc. BUT not on a bunch of human fighting against a bunch of robots! Introduction of many fancy robots is not gonna compensate for the failure of the movie. Make it easy to imagine like this: we enjoy that there's only one Arnold (T800) in the movie, but we won't enjoy much when there's a bunch of Arnolds in the movie. Same things go for other robots.

Most of the scene in the movie are very dark with destroyed buildings and wrecked cars here and there. Back in time, we enjoy the previous movie because we like the robots (in human forms) fighting in the background that very close to our real life. But, sorry that in fourth movie, it takes place and occur in time that we feel so distance and hence hard to appreciate it. I praised McG for his bold move, but he really screwed up the franchise anyway. This movie is definitely lacking the very original terminator-sense and it will kill hearts of many Terminator fans.

Enough for the background of the story. In term of the story-line wise, only the last part of the movie which is really exciting because we see John Conner destroying Skynet and also (spoiler!) T800, i.e. Arnold is coming back (although just briefly)! However, I cannot accept the explanation that Marcus Wright is a mole-robot. This is just stupid because, if Skynet can already make this advanced kind of infiltrating-model robots, why they still send those older models back through time to terminate young John Conner? It just doesn't make sense.

In term of acting-wise, everyone in the movie play their part well. Christian Bale being heroic (as always) and Sam Washington being torn apart between human and robot identity. They are good actors. After giving some thoughs, however, I still feel that adding this Marcus Wright character is a bad move. People love John Conner since many years ago, and the character would be much success if it just focuses on him. Introduction of this Marcus character is killing off the chance of better involvement of the John character. You don't put two main heroes in one movie, especially when one of them is already very influencial for ages.

To sum up, this is gonna be a great disappointment for Terminator-fans. The only way to get through this is be patient throughout the first 75 minutes and at the end you'll get to see what you want: John Conner destroy the Skynet base! However, when you walk out from cinema, please mourn that Terminator Salvation cannot salvage the Terminator...