 | STARRING: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington |
Terminator 3 left off with John Connor and his future wife Kate in a bomb shelter on Judgment Day. Judgment Day is the day the machines wiped out most of mankind in a nuclear holocaust. Terminator Salvation opens with John Connor (Christian Bale) leading his men on a mission to take out some kind of lab in this post-apocalyptic 2018, run by machines. He is not yet the leader of the resistance, but one of the lieutenants. His team is attacked and John is the only one to survive. Upon returning to command, he is briefed on a new weapon, a signal that can disable machines. He quickly volunteers to test it. The test is a success and an attack on Skynet is planned.
Although John is not the leader of the entire resistance, he has been building a following through a radio broadcast about the war and how to fight Terminators. Meanwhile, we are also introduced to a new character named Marcus (Sam Worthington). He was executed in 2003, but has somehow awakened in 2018. Marcus comes across John’s future father Kyle Reese, just before Kyle is taken hostage by the machines. Marcus manages to make his way to John’s base where he discovers that he is himself a Terminator, but one with some human body parts. This was given away in the trailer, although it would have worked better as a surprise. Marcus is horrified by this discovery, as he wants to be human. The movie picks up speed as it heads to its conclusion, with John & Marcus infiltrating a Skynet base in an attempt to rescue Kyle before a large resistance assault. If John or Kyle dies, the machines win. With Marcus being a machine, do we really know whose side he’s on?
Too much of Terminator Salvation seems stolen from other places. The whole idea of a machine that thinks it’s human may be cool to some, but to any fan of BattleStar Galactica we’ve seen this theme handled much better already. One fight scene against a large robot seems like it belongs in a Transformers movie. There is even a child character that is basically the exact same character as Newt from Aliens.
Terminator Salvation is a very dark film. The previous films had more of a sense of humor in spite of the serious subject matter. I missed that. Overall it felt more like a Mad Max film with robots than a Terminator film. Christian Bale is just going through the motions as John Conner, and Bryce Dallas Howard has almost nothing to do as his pregnant wife Kate. On the positive side, we do get a great fight sequence with a very familiar Terminator and we do see exactly how John ends up as the leader of the resistance. All the action sequences are good, but not great.
Wolverine & Star Trek got the summer movie season off to a great start. Things have taken a downward turn with Angels & Demons and now Terminator Salvation. Unfortunately, I have to say the film is just OK and you can wait for the DVD. Maybe someone who hasn’t watched Battlestar Galactica, or seen a Mad Max film, will find it more compelling than I did.
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