Terminator Salvation (2009)

I can sum up Terminator Salvation in one rather disappointing word: BOOM. Throughout its 115 minutes of screen time, this film delivers a deafening cacophony of explosions, gunfire, and music blasted for dramatic effect. Shakespeare nailed it in Macbeth: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Director McG would have to receive the idiot label, as he somehow manages to disrupt the course of a franchise which has been chugging along steadily for a quarter of a century. As for the sound and fury thing, well, it’s a whole lotta sound and not much fury.

The movie begins in the year 2003 when a death row inmate named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is approached about donating his body to science (the consent form lets us know it’s the Cyberdyne Corporation). While he’s initially hesitant, he agrees after negotiating a kiss from the company’s cancer-ridden representative (Helena Bonham Carter). He then heads off for his date with a lethal injection.

We skip ahead to the year 2018, where John Connor (Christian Bale) and other members of the Resistance are attacking a Skynet research facility. For those few of you who are unfamiliar with the Terminator mythology, Skynet is a global computer network which achieved sentience and began a campaign of extermination against the human race. Connor is supposed to be the savior of mankind, and Skynet has sent several Terminator models (killer robots who look human) back in time to kill him, always with less-than-successful results.

To sum up, here are the important plot points for the rest of the film:

1. Connor must find and save his future father, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). Reese is actually a teenager, but as viewers of the first Terminator film know, he will eventually travel back in time to save Connor’s mother from assassination (and impregnate her in the process).
2. An explosion frees Marcus Wright from a Skynet facility, and he teams up with Reese and his mute kid sidekick, Star (Jadagrace Berry). When Reese and Star are captured, Wright is determined to rescue them. Before this can happen, he saves the life of a rebel pilot (Moon Bloodgood) and ends up in the hands of the Resistance. That’s when we learn that Wright is an advanced Terminator model who thinks and feels just like a human being. That’s what you call a twist, folks, even though they revealed this fact in the trailers.
3. A signal has been discovered which can shut down all of Skynet’s killer machines. The rebel command wants to unleash the signal and bomb Skynet headquarters, but Connor resists due to information that human prisoners are being held there.

Okay, that should be enough to get you started. Trust me, it’s a real pain in the butt to try and sum up a film which is so interconnected to its predecessors via time travel. Then again, it may not really matter, as the plot primarily exists to give McG stuff to blow up. Children, animals and the elderly may experience permanent hearing loss, as Terminator Salvation is a non-stop assault on the aural senses.

Bale does his raspy Batman voice again, and I was tired of that years ago. I guess it’s supposed to be his grim and gritty voice, but it seems more like overkill to me. What happened to the fine actor who thrilled us in films like American Psycho and The Machinist?

John Connor isn’t much of a leader, either. He basically jeopardizes the entire future of mankind to save his own ass and those of a handful of captives. Connor seems to think that humanity can’t survive without him, and I would’ve been more interested to see the film explore his dangerous messiah complex than just allow him to disregard the chain of command whenever it suits him.

The kid named Star also got on my nerves something fierce. I’ve always despised resourceful kid characters like Newt, and Star is even worse. She doesn’t talk, you see, but she does look “adorable” with her unkempt hair and perpetual shell-shocked expression. Star also seems to be a mini-MacGyver, always having whatever tool is necessary for the current task at hand. If the apocalypse really did hit, little kids like this would be the first to bite the dust. Pretending anything else is just a damn insult to my intelligence.

There are some cool action scenes, in spite of the fact that McG has developed a case of the dreaded “shakes” (meaning every bit of action is presented with fast edits and shaky camerawork). A scene which stands out in my mind happens early on: Connor is attacked by a half-destroyed Terminator, and he engages in a desperate battle with the surprisingly mobile foe. The action here is brutally fast, and you really get a sense that the Terminators can kill anyone in an instant, no matter how disabled they seem to be.

I also dug the T-600 model of killer robot. Slower than later models, the T-600s wielded mini-cannons on one arm and dressed in rags. It gave them a sort of freaky Frankenstein vibe, and I found them the most effective villains when it came to Skynet’s footsoldiers. Of course, they were pushed aside later in the film so we could be treated to yet another robot who looks like the Governor of California.

The character of Marcus Wright never really clicked for me, and I felt the film didn’t delve enough into his feelings after learning that he was a Terminator. There was really no reason for Wright to even be in the film, except to advance the rather shaky plot and ensure that John Connor reached Point A at a certain time. His final scene is especially lame, and I dare you to watch it without rolling your eyes at least once.

The least engaging film of the franchise, Terminator Salvation actually makes me long for the days of Ahnuld’s wooden acting style. It’s big and loud, but you never really care about anyone up on the screen. The action scenes could’ve cancelled out that fault, but even they are just about average (McG’s work on the two Charlie’s Angels films was much better). If you want to save yourself some money, try this: crank up your stereo and place your head next to it for an hour and a half. That should prove an adequate substitute for this noisy failure which will quietly fade into cinematic obscurity.