The new McG movie Terminator:Salvation doesn't really have a reason to exist. It suffers from the same irrelevance that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines suffered from. Viewers who have seen the first two Terminators (which are among the best of the sci-fi action genre and directed by James Cameron) know that Skynet eventually becomes self-aware and brings about Judgement Day, pre-emtively launching nuclear strikes against humanity, or something.
Terminator: Salvation picks up some time after Judgement Day happens. The Resistance has been fromed, but John Connor (Christian Bale) is not the prophesied leader of the resistence. He leads only a band of freedom fighters somewhere in the American southwest (ostensibly), taking his orders from a submarine hiding beneath the Pacific and issuing orders across the world (apparently). The bulk of the movie follows Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who wakes suddenly in the Los Angeles area after we had seen him executed by leathal injection sometime in the 1990s in the film's prologue.
If none of this makes sense, it is not for my lack of trying as much as the filmmaker's. Whether you'll like this movie really will depend on how much you liked Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. If you go to a Terminator movie looking to watch fighting robots and humans trying to fight largely indestructable robots, and to see the fighting humans/robots destroy block upon city block, you'll likely be entertained. If you're interested in caring about these characters, you're probably out of luck.
CHUD.com has a great write-up of what happened with the development of Terminator:Salvation and some theories about why the film ultimately went so far off the rails. What is really original and interesting about this film is this is the first glance we really get of Skynet. It's telling that Skynet, visiged in part by Helena Bonham Carter, is probably the most human presence in the movie's run-time. It definitely had the best screen presence and the most insightful ideas about how humanity functions.
The biggest failing of the film is that, ultimately, McG and his collaborators don't really make the argument for why the audience should cheer for John Connor & Co. over Skynet.
Final Verdict: Better than Stepbrothers, but not as good as The Incredible Hulk.
Man, I'm missing me some comic book movies.
"If none of this makes sense [...]"
ReplyDeleteI've often thought the Terminator franchise suffered from unnecessarily incomprehensible time/plot problems. Given that, you might expect that this movie, with robots and humans fighting and destroying things, would be successful in the same way T2 and its sprawling action sequences were successful. I don't know. I'll take your word for it on this one. I haven't really had much desire to revisit this universe since the mid 90s anyway.