Terminator Salvation (2009)

Despite the various lackluster reviews, I couldn't help being kind of psyched for this movie (hence my recent re-viewings of the first three). Terminator Salvation starts off in 2003, showing us new character Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) sitting on death row and signing his body away for cancer research to Dr Serena Kogan (Helena Bonham-Carter; yeah I was surprised, too). Flash forward to 2018, and John Connor (Christian Bale) is fighting in the war against the machines. He is not yet the head general or whatever, but a lower-level leading officer because apparently in the future there will still be a military hierarchy in times of trouble, run by a bunch of mostly-white dudes. They discover an underground laboratory with various pallid prisoners, but it blows up and only John survives. (Or so he thinks!) John heads to the underwater submarine base and is told about a recently-discovered sound wave that can disable machines. He volunteers to test it out. He also learns that Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) is number one on the Skynet hit list, and tries to figure out a way to find his now-teenage father.

Meanwhile Marcus has suddenly woken up after being dead for 15 years, and is understandably a bit flustered. He runs into Kyle and wordless kid sidekick Star (Jadagrace Berry) and learns about the whole Judgment Day thing, and the three seek out John Connor, with Marcus hoping he can find out how he got here. Soon enough a giant robot comes sort of out of nowhere and kidnaps Kyle and Star along with several other humans they'd encountered. Marcus avoids capture and meets up with Resistance pilot Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), who leads him to John's headquarters. Though John is incredibly suspicious of him, he trusts Marcus to help him find Kyle, as the Resistance leaders plan an attack using the machine-disabling signal on the big Skynet base where he's being held.

All right I guess I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this movie. It is all pretty emotional right now, you guys. I'm going to do a "Things I liked/Things I didn't like" break down. It's seems easier to just polarize it.

I Liked:
-Everything about Sam Worthington and his character Marcus. His story took up about half of the film, and it was easily the more interesting part. We don't know much about his past except that he committed some crime that ended up killing his brother, but his mixture of anger, competence, regret, and pseudo-time travel makes for a fascinating dude. He's kind of an asshole, but I couldn't help feeling for him. *Spoiler Alert, Seriously* Also the whole robot thing? My goodness that is such an interesting development! Waking up 15 years after you died and eventually finding out you've been turned into a robot? Hell, this whole movie should have been about this guy. Much more intriguing. Also I hope Sam Worthington stars in more (better) movies.

-Anton Yelchin. This kid (I can totally say that since he's almost exactly a year younger than me) has been really great and super likable in everything I've seen him in so far (mainly just Star Trek and Charlie Bartlett. And I just realized he was the kid in Delivering Milo). He's too freaking adorable to be in a dirty action movie, but still managed to be awesome. I really like the character of Kyle Reese and I think he did a good job interpreting it for a teenage version. He felt very genuine.

-That big robot with the motorcycles coming off its legs. Hell yes.

-The overall look of the film. It was a bit washed-out, and very gritty. The wasted landscape and hordes of abandoned cars and buildings are very effective visually. It's actually almost exactly how I pictured the setting of The Road looked as I read it. So great job, cinematographers.

-Arnold's return. I thought they did a really good job with the effects here. And it was pretty intense!

I Did Not Like:
-The ridiculous portrayal of women in the film. I get that the important characters here are John Connor and Marcus, and that's totally fine. But as Connor's wife Kate, Bryce Dallas Howard has about three lines and just sits around looking worried and pregnant for the entire movie. Really? In T3, Arnold was all "Kate will be one of your main generals", etc. Some military leader this is. Plus the chemistry between the two was nonexistent. When they shared a brief kiss at the end it was like, "Oh yeah, I guess you guys are kind of in a relationship or something. Huh." The only other notable female in the movie (not counting Star, who didn't do much except add some out-of-place sweetness in the tradition of quiet children in post-apocalyptic stories) was Blair. And she had the makings of a capable woman, what with her piloting skills and ability to hold a gun. When a few men threaten her while she is unarmed, she eggs them on, letting them know they'll be needing medical aid when she's through with them (or something along those lines). So I'm like cool, she's in the Resistance, she has mad fighting skills, here will be an interesting 3 on 1 fist fight. Instead, she falls with one punch and it's up to Marcus to beat up the entire group of dudes. Come on, I mean they could have at least had the two fight together against the men or something. Then she gets all huggy and "Your heart is so strong!" five minutes after meeting him? Sigh. Siiiiiigh.

-The ending. *Another Serious Spoiler* Oh my god, so here we are in some ambiguous medical facility that is really just an open tent in a desert. There is, I would assume, limited equipment and skills (how many heart surgeons could have survived the apocalypse and then happened to wind up with John Connor's group? I don't know, I'm not really into statistics). But when John's heart is giving out and Marcus heroically offers his, they just set right down and perform a heart transplant? Really? The place didn't even have walls, for goodness sake. It was laughably dumb and so ridiculously cloying. Plus now the best character in the movie can't be in the next one.

-John Connor. It's not so much that I didn't like Christian Bale in the role, it just seemed like the character had become really boring all of a sudden. I'm not sure if it was Bale's performance or just the shoddy writing that did it. Probably the latter. They didn't really give him much to do, either. For a while he was just sort of hanging out worried about Kyle Reese while testing out the signal. He had his heroic moments at the end, of course, but it seemed whenever there was actual work to be done it was Marcus doing it. Reminding us that robots have always been the main stars of this franchise, I suppose.

-The hasty explanation of Marcus' background. The flashing-news-headlines technique didn't work well here.

So yeah, I thought it was ok. It had an interesting enough story and featured some good action scenes, so I was never bored. There are lots of robots and self-piloting vehicles. I think the movie took itself a bit too seriously, so it couldn't be as fun as the other films (even T3). The half focusing on Marcus and Kyle Reese was pretty awesome, so most of my good feelings come out of that. I'm a tool, so I'll see the sequels they'll keep making. Whatever.

3/5

But don't listen to me! Let's hear what JD Salinger has to say about it.