As we enter the fourth week of this summer season, I don’t know about you, but after a pleasant surprise with the unpretentious, proud to be a B-revenger “Wolverine,” each new release has gotten progressively worse. Let’s just hope – because there’s a lot of summer ahead of us – that we’ve bottomed out with “Terminator Salvation.”
What a crushing and noisy disappointment this is. For whatever reason, Director McG’s fourth chapter in the “Terminator” franchise tosses aside the simple but successful plot template that made its predecessors so memorable and goes all “Bourne” with a hyper-complicated plot, narcissistic “hero” and a big fat wide blur between the concept of good battling evil. Yes, welcome to Hollywood’s post-Bush “Terminator,” where a militaristic Resistance demands we “Stay the course,” Terminators work through their feelings, and John Connor runs off to find himself only to end up in a numbingly dull third act that plays like a direct-to-DVD toss off.
Things open on an intriguing and hopeful note. The year is 2003 and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is a guilt-ridden death row inmate not far from execution. Dr. Serena Krogen (Helena Bonham Carter, who’s always interesting), approaches Wright for what we assume is the umpteenth time to convince him to donate his body to science. His coming to terms with his own death mixed with her losing battle with cancer sparks his humanity and he relents. The State gives him what he deserves and we cut to 2018.
The world as we knew it is now ravaged by a war the machines wage against mankind. Cities are reduced to rubble and those who survive are reduced to prey, living underground or constantly on the run. Some have organized into what’s called the Resistance and their spiritual leader is John Connor (Christian Bale).
Connor has married Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard in a role originated by Claire Danes in the third installment) and carries the burden of both his command and the myth built around him by others and in his own mind thanks to his mother, Sarah Conner. His mission is simple: to create his own fate which starts with making sure he’s born in the first place. This means he has to find the teenage Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin in a role originated by Michael Biehn) and send him back in time to impregnate his mother.
***PLOT SPOILERS COMING***
The Resistance is bigger than Connor, though, and General Ashdale (the awe. some. Michael Ironside) has come across an electronic device that, if launched with strategic world-wide coordination, will bring the machines down once and forever. This practical solution conflicts with Connor’s belief in a bigger fate, especially regarding Kyle Reese. The arrival of Wright, an escapee from Skynet whose last memory is of being on death row 15 years earlier, only complicates things further.
Overall, the first forty-minutes pretty much mange to live up to expectations. There are two truly spectacular action scenes, both good enough to hang with the best of the franchise. But these two set pieces do not build up enough goodwill to get you through the rest of the picture which gets progressively choppy, tedious and disconnected.
There’s a major turning point where Connor decides to split with the Resistance in order to break into Skynet and save Reese. This is where the narrative collapses entirely. The last hour or so plays like a film edited over and over and over in the hopes of creating something from a ton of footage containing plenty of action but no compelling story to hold it together. The final result is a scattered, confusing, completely un-engaging climax disconnected from anything other than its own stunts and special effects.
You will also marvel at just how easy it is for one man to break into Skynet. What could have been an imaginative and exciting sequence with our hero making his way into what should be the most secure facility ever conceived, ends up being a major letdown like something out of a “Remington Steele” episode. What follows is somehow worse.
Another narrative mistake is that we’re never told whose movie we’re watching. Is this the story of John Connor or Marcus Wright? There are large portions of time where Connor is either completely out of the picture or relegated to a supporting role. The focus keeps switching back and forth until it reaches the critical point of being no one’s movie.
Another downer is the relentlessly oppressive cinematography. At first it works, but as the narrative implodes the washed out, barrenness of it all begins to feel self-conscious. The same can be said for Danny Elfman’s score and the furious sound design, which constantly intrude as they try to make up for the lack of human drama.
Bale’s performance is surprisingly one-note, and that one note is dour. Worthington comes off best as the tortured survivor trying to unravel his past, but Bryce Dallas Howard is completely wasted in a nothing role. My guess is that the script offered her a couple juicy scenes that ended up being cut. Her role is so pointless the fact that she’s well along in a pregnancy isn’t even discussed — which is terrible storytelling — like showing the audience a gun’s hidden in a drawer but never coming back to it.
I’m a huge fans of all the “Terminator” films, the third being one of the most pleasant surprises of 2003, and there’s no reason the mythology and world created by James Cameron had to run out of gas. But here it does, and the reason is simple: McG isn’t a director, he’s a story-boarder, and the film’s antagonist is not an all kinds of cool, relentlessly bad ass Terminator or even Skynet. The antagonist is the angst and inner-conflict experienced by Connor and Wright – and who wants to see that?
If you got an incurable thing for killer robots (and don’t we all), wait for DVD or “Transformers 2.”
“Terminator Salvation” opens everywhere at midnight tonight.
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