I will admit that I’m a huge Terminator fan. I’ve seen the first three movies many times over and I watched every episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which was just cancelled after its second season). I even read the comic books back in the day. While the show was okay, the first three movies were great action movies with the recurring plot of an impending world-devastating disaster (“Judgement Day”) and the struggle for survival between mankind and the machines that brought about the catastrophe. The leader of the resistance is John Connor and the movies featured cyborgs called Terminators that come back through time to try to kill him before he can do so.
Plot
The first three Terminator movies were released years apart and I love how each one has its own explanation about how the machines are going to take over. At the end of the third film, the machines were just beginning their reign. The fourth movie, Terminator Salvation takes place in 2018 and the war is fully on. I liked how John Connor was not the instant leader of the resistance. A group of military people who survived actually run the show for the humans and they don’t yet understand how important John Connor is to their survival so he has to prove it. Thanks to the first Terminator movie, we know that John’s father is Kyle Reese. He will be sent back in time at some point in the future to meet his mother and conceive John. Marcus Wright is a Terminator who doesn’t know he is one. The resistance, including John and Marcus are on the lookout for Kyle. Kyle gets caught by the Terminators and is sent to a prison camp. The “good guys” rescue Kyle. That’s a watered down version of the plot.
Characters
I liked Christian Bale as John Connor. I think he was a good choice. Although you could feel a hint of his Batman role from time to time and his role in the movie Reign of Fire solidified this one for him. John has gone from a reluctant hero to knowing what he has to do. That’s a big change. Marcus Wright (played by Sam Worthington) was decent. I would have liked to see him in a future movie as a the cool, strong guy who helps people out. Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood) started off ok but then deteriorated into a love-dovey backplot. John Connor’s wife Kate Connor (Bryce Dallas Howard) has a smaller role and it’s not bad. Overall, one of the biggest problems I have with most of the characters is that aside from Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), you don’t really care about them very much. This could be due to a lack of time to develop their characters or perhaps the writing, I’m not sure at this point. Perhaps I’ll update the review when I see it again (eventually).
Plot Holes
There are a number of plot holes that make this movie the first one in the series to fall apart somewhat. Here are just a few points that annoy me:
- This is a time of paranoia and secrecy. Why does Blair risk her life to help Marcus escape? She just met him.
- The Terminators caught Kyle Reese. Why put him in a cell? Kill him and the machines win. Duh.
- What is the likelihood that after Los Angeles is blown to bits that Marcus, the half-human, memory-gone Terminator would stumble into the city, find Kyle Reese, and go to some place where cars actually work, which isn’t that far.
- Why did Marcus have to donate his heart? He would have made for a very interesting character in the next movie. Like having a strong man on your side. Why didn’t they take a heart from someone who was going to die anyways?
- Spontaneous heart transplant in the desert after a nuclear war? Riiiight.
- Where were all the “normal” Terminators throughout the movie, walking around, trying to kill everyone? One here, one there is a joke.
- Skynet could find a submarine deep in the ocean and destroy it but couldn’t find a landing strip for fighter jets just a few hundred miles away?
- Terminators require major battle scenes because they are so incredibly difficult to stop. Yet at the end of the movie, this is an afterthought and the helicopter just flies away like it’s no big deal. This reminds of the stupidity in the Star Trek Voyager episode where, after years of Star Trek: The Next Generation when we’ve all come to fear the Borg and recognize how difficult it is to destroy their ships, someone reminds Captain Janeway that they need to deal with the Borg and so she says “do x y and z” and the Borg Cube explodes. The entire scene takes less than a minute and away Voyager goes. It’s ridiculous. In this movie, they should have spent less time wasting bullets on the two escapees and more on how they would free everyone from the Skynet slave camp.
Beyond Suspension of Disbelief
There are some things you just have to accept within the suspension of disbelief. I get that. But you’re trying to top 3 extremely popular terminator movies and this was the first with an exceptional number of issues.
- Everyone looks very healthy. A nuclear war took place. There should be much more misery, scenes of starvation, and disease.
- Skynet controls military satellites. Why can’t it track the jets back to base?
- If Marcus is a prototype that was built years before his awakening, why is he technologically superior to the other Terminators?
- Where did they get this endless supply of bullets? It’s years after Judgment Day yet when 2 people escape, they waste bullets and bombs like crazy. Not to mention the abundant amount of jet fuel they seem to have access to.
- There is no sense of time versus distance. Just like in X-men 3 where they just pop back and forth between Upstate New York and San Francisco as though they were very close to each other, the amount of time it takes to get places is short. That’s messy writing.
Tied to the Old
Like the TV show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the producers tried to maintain some continuity by bringing in the past. I liked that part.
- John has come to rely on his mother’s tapes and he’s shown listening to them, including the original text narrated by Sarah Connor from the first Terminator movie.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a very appropriate rather than gratuitous appearance in the film, making it clear at what point in time in the “future” they’re at.
- We see how John gets the scar on his face as seen in the first movie.
Lack of Originality
This movie suffers from a lack of originality. I like the idea of a more human form of Terminator and the cool variations of Terminators like the giant, headless Terminator and the Terminator motorcycles. These are very cool Terminators and they clearly blow everything wide open in terms of potential. This was a good move since we’ve already seen a liquid-metal terminator and a hybrid version in the last movie which were both very hard to top.
But other than that, there is a lot to be desired. Just a few of the things that immediately came to mind while watching this movie:
- The water Terminators (hydrobots) looked like a cross between the tail end of the Decepticon that they caught in the dessert from the first Transformers movie and Doctor Octopus in Spider-man 2.
- The Terminator that is covered in molten metal should melt, not become an exact plot copy of Terminator 2.
- The scene where the giant Terminator picks people up and puts them in a cage is copied right out of War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise.
- “Come with me if you want to live” – a homage or overused at this point?
- The silent girl was like the girl in Waterworld (only she didn’t talk rather than talking a lot).
- The scene with the helicopter flying away as the San Francisco Skynet headquarters blows up looks like sinking of the water platform in Waterworld, the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars, and far too many other movies.
Conclusion
I liked this movie but probably mostly because I love the Terminator franchise. If it were a stand alone movie about an apocalyptic future, it wouldn’t have gone nearly as far in ticket sales. Despite my criticisms, Istill think it’s a pretty good movie, even if it’s the worst (by far) of the Terminator series.
RSS