I’ll admit it; I haven’t seen a single Terminator movie until now, and I sat down in the theater Monday night with only a basic knowledge of the Terminator lore: John Connor is prophesied to save the world from machines. Although I wasn’t a fangirl nerding out, I was excited to see this summer’s first guns-to-metal, dirty, muscled action movie. Sadly, I was severely disappointed.

The movie kicks off without any exposition or structure. A death row inmate named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) signs away the rights to his body for medical or technological experimentation. Skip forward to 2018 where John Connor (Christian Bale) and his team of men are trying to infiltrate a Skynet research facility that seems to be abandoned. If the jump seems random, that’s because it is. The entire movie continues moving from one action sequence to another, never relenting for a breath of plot or character development.


If you had to assign a basic plot to the cacophony that is Terminator Salvation, it’d be that John Connor needs to save teenager Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who, as we all know, is his future (past, present?) father. Pre-climax, John Connor has no idea of Kyle’s whereabouts or a plan to rescue him from the machines that are inevitably chasing him. This makes Salvation high concept to the extreme: all you need to know is that it’s Man vs. Machine. Arguably the most interesting parts of the movie are left unanswered. You never find out much about Marcus’ or Kyle’s pasts or Kate Connor’s pregnancy. Character exposition, however minimal, would have brought this testosterone filled action movie into focus.

Summer movies can be full of high-quality action but also build an intelligent story. Live Free or Die Hard started with the same concept as Terminator (John McClane needing to protect Matt Farrell), but the plot wove into a full-bodied story with a fan-pleasing ending. The biggest crowd pleasers in Terminator Salvation are the two homages to the previous Arnold Schwarzenegger films. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appearance is laughable to any non-fan. His appearance has no point of reference and does nothing but titillate the audience for two minutes and distract them from the small knowledge that they’ve seen nothing original or noteworthy for the past one hundred minutes.

There are three central problems in McG’s filmmaking that missed the mark. First, the violence in Terminator doesn’t seem to have consequences. A skilled filmmaker will make you feel the pain being portrayed onscreen. As an audience member, you have a visceral reaction to the violence or gore. If you don’t know what I mean, refer back to the hammer scene in Casino. Martin Scorsese’s 1995 epic makes you feel the pain the player goes through as Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro) has the cheater’s hand beaten with a hammer to teach him a lesson. Every time John Connor, Kyle, or Marcus gets knocked around, I didn’t care. My body did not shudder; I did not feel that the violence would have any repercussions.

Keeping the movie as PG-13 severely hurt it in style. The only thing that brought intensity to the screen was Christian Bale’s portrayal of John Connor. His character is so angry and intense; it’s no wonder Bale famously freaked out on set. The deep voice and yelling get old faster than a DP can set up a sound stage full of lights. Bale’s Connors seems boxed up tighter than a Robert Pattinson action figure.

Maybe Shane Hurlbut, the cinematographer and director of photography for the movie, gave up trying after Christian Bale’s on-set meltdown. The movie is the most visually bland thing I’ve seen since Two and a Half Men. If the creative team behind the beiges and grays wanted humanity’s future to look bleak, they accomplished their goal. But it didn’t feel bleak. Our visual reactions don’t match our emotional reactions, and the disconnect just leaves the audience visually (and emotionally) bored. With digital technology, there’s no excuse for unimaginative shots and scenery. Desolate, terrifying scenery is only acceptable when done right (see Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later).

I wasn’t impressed by the cinematography, I wasn’t shaken by the violence, and I wasn’t compelled by the story. Overall, Terminator Salvation was a failure to the action genre. I know, I’m almost as disappointed as you are.



- Kim Wetter, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image Courtesy of Warner Brothers)