Terminator Salvation (***)

Directed by: McG
Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Common, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Ironside
Seen: June 5th 2009

*** Out of ****

With the very good Terminator and the extremely good Terminator 2: Judgement Day, James Cameron has set an impossibly high standard on the Terminator films, one that is yet to be met. The third film (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines), under the helm of director Jonathan Mostow fell far short, although it still provided some good looking action scenes. Director McG now takes us further along the line with this almost mythical story, and in some aspects Terminator Salvation succeeds, but in almost most it doesn’t.

This is the first Terminator film to not feature some machine sent back in time to either kill or protect anyone, since the film is now set in the year 2018, which is starting to get close to where the original terminators where being sent from. If anything, here we have a human being “sent” to the future in the machine world – a bit of a turn-around on the original premise.

The film starts out in 2003 with death-row inmate Marcus Wright (Worthington) signing over his body to science, or, more specifically, Dr. Serena Kogan (Carter) of Cyberdyne Systems. Then in 2018, John Connor (Bale) leads an attack by the Resistance on a Skynet base, and comes off as the only survivor after a heart-stopping fight with a damaged terminator. As he leaves, out of the now destroyed base comes yet another figure – Marcus Wright. John Connor is not yet the leader of the Resistance, but many see him as some sort of prophet. Not all though, as General Ashdown (Ironside), leader of the Resistance, quickly lets him know.

The intrigue keeps building as John Connor tries to convince “headquarters” that the machines are taking human prisoners en masse, but no-one seems to want to acknowledge his fears, and they’re all only interested in one thing, destroying the machines, in any possible way.

The film is packed full of spectacular action sequences that keep the pulse pounding straight through the film, in fact, I’ve heard (a very small few) complain that there is too much action. The special effects are mostly fantastically done, but in a few scenes it seems strangely plastic and/or unfinished. The terminators are all well-created, and still emanate the same sense of dread experienced in the first films.

Most of the actors, at some stage or another, have some alone screen time, and on their own they are good. But whenever two or more actors are on screen together things feel artificial, almost as if you are watching the video sequences made for a computer game, as if they only need to get through this to get back to the action. The few who do not fall victim to this are Anton Yelchin (playing Kyle Reese brilliantly) and Bryce Dallas Howard (playing Kate Connor – and yes, she has limited screen time). Christian Bale, even though he is the lead actor of the film, does not own the film, since he is possibly not the main character in it – but he does a lot of brooding, and the almost-Batman voice also swoops in every now and then. Sam Worthington is great as Marcus Wright, and the only thing that hurts his role are some very bad lines right at the start of the film (“So that’s what death tastes like”).

Terminator Salvation is a passable film with great action and visuals, kind of like a good action computer game. I sure enjoyed it a lot, but it lacked heart, which is the difference between this film and the first two. Funny then, that this film should mention heart as the difference between man and machine. Would that make T2 man, and Salvation machine?