Terminator: Salvation

Review!

About three months ago, Australian actor Sam Worthington adorned the fashion-pages of American GQ in clothing I don’t expect to afford for another five years. The big story then, even beyond the perimeters of the Terminator Salvation set, was of how easily you could provoke Christian Bale into breaking your nose. You’ll recall Bale was caught on tape swearing masterfully at an incompetent stage-hand, and perhaps like me you hoped that would carry over into his role as John Connor, erstwhile hero of the Terminator series. There was an aura about Worthington, in the pages of that magazine, that rather implied he was up to something, that he in fact planned on stealing the show.
The newest of the big bad Aussies plays a mercenary who’s given up on the prospects for a human resistance growing overwhelmed by robot technology that has effectively laid siege to the human race, and is now intent on saving his own bacon. John Connor, Bale, is now first-in-command of a globalised army whose recruitment system looks much more informal than drafting, thanks to some time-warp mechanism that enables Salvation’s producers to pretty much turn the clock on whatever events they feel like – the Terminator fanatic I sat next to said something about Connor having to be dead already, or something of that nature. In any case, our brooding mercenary, Worthington, makes the existential discovery that he’s actually metallic inside, and ‘destined’ to end the charge of John Connor because he was programmed that way. He is captured by the resistance, and gets to meet Connor in a captor-hostage ceremony that has all the pomp and lavish of Stanley meeting Livingstone in the middle of nowhere.
Perhaps like this reviewer, it only dawned upon you recently how much of a hoot the previous films in the series were. The first Terminator was lip-smackingly violent, and helped make cyborgs as disturbing as clowns for a while; the second was filled with the liquidity and grace that eventually won director James Cameron an Oscar, though for a completely different effort – fans barely noticed that ol’ Schwarzenegger had become a bit of a mommy’s boy by going good. It would be enough to say Rise of the Machines, the third, co-starred the gorgeous Kristanna Lokken, but that would mean not mentioning the almost complete absence of a soundtrack, in favour of two wonderful hours of bullet absorption and tin-can symphony. Sci- fi fans are known for their standards, and the whole point of the Terminator franchise, in all its leather and gasoline, was that it didn’t have any.
Fast-forward to a year in recession. A man whose name is McG is directing, and I’m cringing because he’s the fellow responsible for Stealth, Chuck and one of those XXX turkeys – Chuck I quite enjoy, but that’s not the engine I’d like powering a brand new Terminator flick. The design-team behind previous instalments hasn’t been dismantled, thankfully, their touch evident in a bleak, sooty landscape that suggests machines can’t craft a holiday destination; excellent.
But it doesn’t take long to realize something is amiss: glorious opportunities for tension-packed gun-fights are squandered for the sake of meaningless explosions, and you can’t help but wonder what writing underpins it all, if any. An actor of Christian Bale’s caliber is reduced to the likes of a talking action-figure, such that he barely has a scene in which to genuinely kick some ass. There’s just too much talking, too much dread at what ‘the machines will do’, and this culminates in a disappointing finale whose much anticipated cameo appeareance leaves you wondering why they ever bothered.
What I found most shameful was the film’s blatant gesturing towards the advent of one more sequel; it’s as if McG’s whole-heartedly admitting to you, ‘Well, this one’s pretty crap, but you’ve got no idea what’s coming up next...’
The film has its merits – that landscape, those special effects, that bit where Worthington’s half-borg flees captivity on a motorbike cast against the moonlight; it’s an honour, one might add, to just place eyes on the radiance of Bryce Dallas Howard. But compliments like these could be made of any modern picture, and that’s not good enough.

POPCORN: Phwoar! scores are based on how little we ate, and I cleaned out the bloody box. We await a likely fourth Terminator patiently.