Terminator Salvation Review

With the Memorial Day weekend winding down, so are the final tallies for box office numbers. Unfortunately, Terminator Salvation is not reigning supreme. Here is my review on Terminator Salvation.

I had high hopes for this film. From exclusive clips and panel interviews at Comic Con to the final trailers leading-up to the release of the film, McG and Christian Bale looked like they had the right formula for reigniting the Terminator franchise. Well, the movie was good, but I didn’t love it. Stop here if you’re wary of spoilers.

I was led to believe the story was going to focus on John Connor. Being the leader of the resistance, I imagined they’d explore his character’s personal conflict and how he came to be the legend that is “John Connor.” I was completely mislead as the focus was almost entirely on Marcus Wright, being the prototype design of Skynet and Cyberdine Systems as a Terminator with total human emotion. Marcus Wright was basically a Terminator, not aware of being a machine. The future isn’t too distant as its set in 2018, so there were no laser guns as seen in flashbacks from the originals, so the technology was relatively primal. There were no hints of time travel being developed. In addition, I’m a big fan of post-apocalyptic stories, which is why I was looking forward to this film, but there was something about this movie that didn’t show a futuristic level of desperation that they should have.

Christian Bale’s performance was great, but something about it seemed a bit misplaced. It almost seemed like he would’ve been better suited playing Marcus Wright. Don’t get me wrong, I think Sam Worthington did a fantastic job, but I think having Christian Bale and Sam Worthington on this movie together almost seemed like duplicating roles. On an unrelated note, I keep getting the impression Bale is not being forgiven for his “Batman voice.” Will people leave that alone already? For the rest of the cast Anton Yelchin did a great job as a teenaged Kyle Reese and Moon Bloodgood was simply hot. Beyond breaking Marcus Wright free from captivity, I can’t recall why her character was really needed.

Reigniting a franchise obviously doesn’t come without hints to its predecessors. There were plenty of tongue-in-cheek references to the original two films. The keyword here is TWO, as they conveniently made no references to Terminator 3, which I don’t blame them for. From “I’ll be back” to “Come with me if you want to live” you’ll find a lot of familiarities. They even played Guns N Roses "You Could Be Mine," which was prominently placed during a motorcycle sequence. The mother of all references was having Arnold Schwarzenegger come out as a prototype T-800 in full garb, or lack thereof. The CGI used to superimpose Arnold’s face on another body looked flawless, and was actually a highlight for me.

Overall, the movie looks great on the surface, but it doesn’t have as much depth as I would’ve expected.