Terminator salvation movie cast trailer

This movie just didn’t have any soul. Beyond Worthington’s character, I didn’t connect with, or really give a damn about anyone in this movie – especially John Connor. I have no doubt that Christian Bale is a good actor, but he seems to be stuck in permanent Batman-mode. Even when he’s supposed to be showing emotion he seems cold and distant, and that Batman rasp in his voice seems to be lingering. I might even venture as far as to say that he was miscast in the role.

 

Terminator Salvation movie images

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Terminator Salvation movie cast and crew

Directed by
McG



Christian Bale

Sam Worthington

Moon Bloodgood

Helena Bonham Carter

Anton Yelchin

Jadagrace

Bryce Dallas Howard

Common

Jane Alexander

Michael Ironside

Ivan G'Vera

Chris Browning

Dorian Nkono

Beth Bailey

Terminator Salvation movie overview

The action scenes are impressive – I especially liked the fact that (as far as I could tell) a fair amount of physical models and props were used in the film. Of course there was certainly a good amount of CGI, but overall I found it well done – not like the apparently under-rendered effects in Wolverine. I also loved the look of the film… washed out tones and a true sense of a world in which the joy has been removed.

And what about the variety of Terminators? Personally I liked them. It made sense to me to have a variety of different robots for different tasks… and actually in view of that, the Terminator model that made the LEAST sense in the film was the T-600. It was too big to be mistaken for a person, had rubber skin, and most of the ones we saw didn’t even have much of that. I suppose you could say that Skynet was “practicing” until it got it right with the T-800… In any case they WERE intimidating and it was great to see them functioning in their own element, out in the open.

I thought Sam Worthington was one of the best things in the film, but even with him there were problems (which I’ll get to shortly). There was one other thing that was great but I don’t want to give away anything else.

This movie just didn’t have any soul. Beyond Worthington’s character, I didn’t connect with, or really give a damn about anyone in this movie – especially John Connor. I have no doubt that Christian Bale is a good actor, but he seems to be stuck in permanent Batman-mode. Even when he’s supposed to be showing emotion he seems cold and distant, and that Batman rasp in his voice seems to be lingering. I might even venture as far as to say that he was miscast in the role.

Think back to Terminator 2 where they did the brief flash-forward showing Connor on the battlefield in the future (that was Michael Edwards, if you’re wondering) – sure he looked tough and battle-scarred, but for the brief moment we saw him he seemed… thoughtful. Like kind of a brainy guy who had been thrust into the position and had lived with it for a while. Bale just comes across as a badass and he just didn’t work for me.

Then there’s Marcus Wright. He’s the character you’ll most likely actually end up caring about, but he’s also the character that feels shoehorned into the mythos and that doesn’t belong in the film at all. We never get a clear explanation of his background or the details surrounding how his mystery came to be in respect to the existing Cyberdyne/Skynet technology.

What about Anton Yelchin as Reese? He did a decent enough job and I was surprised at how I was able to buy him as a teenage Kyle. However here I think the problem lay in the script – there just wasn’t enough there for us to get to know him or connect with him. As a matter of fact through the entire film it seems like all we get are brief sentences of dialog from most everyone. There was also Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor, John’s wife… she served as no more than window dressing, and seemed to be in the film for no other reason than to demonstrate the continuity established in Terminator 3.

Oh, and she’s pregnant. It’s obvious visually but it’s not even really addressed or acknowledged in the film. Try a “how do we raise a child in a world like this” or something. If you’re not going to say something significant about it, why bother to have her pregnant at all?

If you know how I feel about Transformers, you’ll know that I’m not a fan of mashing together juvenile humor and serious action, but in the previous films they managed to fit in a bit of appropriate humor here and there. It’s missing from this film completely – just serious and depressing all the way through.

Rapper “Common” was barely in the film long enough to register any sort of note regarding his performance, but at least we got a little something out of Moon Bloodgood.

Finally, the film doesn’t really resolve anything by the end. Sure, I understand keeping things open for sequels (which frankly, I hope at the very least will have different writers), but at the end of the movie I was left thinking “so what was the point?”

So if you go in just looking for your typical summer blockbuster action flick you’ll probably enjoy it – but if you’re looking for a film that lives up to the first two, I think you’re going to be disappointed by Terminator Salvation.

Terminator Salvation movie review

With much buzzing, beeping and whirring, the Terminator franchise comes to an absolute creative standstill, or even goes clankingly into reverse, with this fantastically dull fourth episode. Look closely in the battle scenes and you can see one of the red-eye Terminator robots yawning, leaning over to another robot and mouthing the words: "I actually voted for Stavros Flatley."

It is set in that post-nuclear future of smoky wreckage, CGI ruination, battered bridges and buggered buildings prophesied in James Cameron's original 1984 film. The star is notorious crosspatch Christian Bale, playing John Connor, the freedom fighter battling robot-machine tyranny. Connor, you will recall, is the resistance hero whom the machines tried to wipe out by sending California's future governor Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to whack his mom. Connor and his comrades discover what they think is a kryptonite-type weapon which will win the war: a signal transmitter that appears to immobilise the robots.

They certainly need all the help they can get. Because Connor has chanced upon evidence that the machines have developed an all-new, human-looking super-duper, so-unstoppable-it-makes-previous-Terminators-look-stoppable Terminator. Where, oh where, can this chilling prototype be? Meanwhile, a mysterious warrior hoves into view, insinuating himself into the resistance fighters' ranks: one Marcus Wright, played by the Australian actor Sam Worthington. But as we have already seen this same character in the pre-credit sequence on death row, pledging his body to science, it isn't hard to guess his tragically conflicted secret. Inevitably, we are to be reintroduced to that self-defeating concept already rolled out in T2: the "nice" Terminator, the Terminator we're sort of supposed to be rooting for.

Fundamentally, Connor and Wright utterly cancel each other out; all the crash-bang action is entirely uninvolving, looking frankly less exciting than the chase scene at the beginning of Walt Disney's Bolt. There's nothing to compare with the magnificent showdown between Arnie and Linda Hamilton at the end of the first movie, and the only woman on view here is Bryce Dallas Howard, playing Connor's winsomely pregnant partner who is at all times wringing wet.

If the contest was about who can be the dullest, Bale would win hands down. His belligerent, resentful facial expression is that of a stunned ox, or a vexed moose, or a rhino that thinks it's overheard someone calling its mum a slag. All the world has now heard the famous on-set meltdown that Bale had while making this film, weirdly maintaining his American accent while raging at director of photography Shane Hurlbut for messing with the lights while Bale was trying to do a scene. (Almost as many will have heard his apology, phoned into an LA radio station, expressing concern that anyone would have thought less of Hurlbut, and emphasising that he is in fact an outstanding professional.) Perhaps the tantrum should be released as a bonus feature with  perhaps it is rather that the film should be the bonus feature, and Bale's super-strop the main event. It is certainly more exciting and more deeply felt than anything in the fictional action.

The terminators themselves, once so scary, are now starting to resemble a chorus line of grumpy C3POs. And despite being notionally formidable warriors, they have an unfortunate eccentricity, which is to prove convenient for the narrative. If you can get close enough to stab them in the back of the neck, they go limp and floppy for a good few minutes! What a very unfortunate design flaw for these Terminators. Why didn't the "machines", those implacable foes of humanity, think to stick a metal plate on the back of their necks?

And the other thing is, for the third time, he's beck. The original Terminator comes very briefly out of retirement, digitally created to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger as he was 25 years ago, in his primped, pumped pomp. Oddly, this obviously unreal Arnie doesn't look as excitingly and creepily unreal as the actual, real, non-CGI Schwarzenegger did all those years ago. Nothing and no one in this film looks as gloriously mad as he did in 1984, and no one is capable of the droll, subversive hints of humour that helped to make the film and its star such a smash.

Famously, Schwarzenegger's later switch from movies to politics was so quick that he was fully installed as governor of California just as the edition of Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines hit the stores. Well, now that his career in public office is beginning to tank, who knows if the de facto leader of Hollywood's Austrian-American community won't be back for T5? After all, Sly Stallone returned for another Rocky and another Rambo. Perhaps Arnie will feel the need to stick in the old red contact lenses for another sentimental outing. Perhaps this can be all about the problems that a Terminator faces in his autumnal years: the slowing up, the grandchildren, the bittersweet visits to the prostate clinic. It couldn't be worse than this.