Terminator Salvation Review

image from Posterstoponline

Premise:
The year is 2018 and the war between man and machine is full-fledged. Skynet, the government created self-defense system became self-aware and targeted humans, and only one prophesied man can save humanity. Christian Bale is John Conner, leading The Resistance, but he has an unlikely ally. Half-Man, Half-Machine, Half-Amazing, Sam Worthington is Marcus Wright: a con on death row who gave his body to science in 2003 and was turned into a cyborg who awoke in this very time period.


Standouts:
Sam Worthington, and maybe Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams for her stunts. But this is Sam Worthington's movie. Christian Bale can now fade into obscurity and live off of his success as Bruce Wayne, because this is the second movie in a row (after Public Enemies) that I've been let down by him in.

Something else that stood out was a really poor script. It brought more memories from the old movies back than created new, good ideas. The one good original idea brought to this movie was a giant terminator. AND I MEAN GIANT! To the point, as a view of the series you think... "why didn't they just send that back in time instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger? But Terminators on motorcycles is a really stupid idea. Not to mention there are a variety of plot holes, unanswered questions, and some pretty poor acting which I don't know who to blame on. It's not like the whole movie is plagued with actors acting badly, but when there's a hole in the script it's completely jarring. When Kyle Reese is being questioned about what year it is and what a terminator is by Marcus, WHY WOULDN'T THAT RAISE RED FLAGS!? Surely you'd be like "where have you been all this time, under a rock?" but no such skepticism, just straight question and answer. And Christian Bale randomly screaming "WHAT ARE YOU!?" at a completely trivial time so it could be used for the trailer makes my head hurt.


My Highlights:
Marcus saving Blair from, not machines, but humans! Marcus was just a bad M.F.'er from start to finish, and I hope Worthington gets typecasted for a while in similar action roles. By the time his big fight scene came, I was so convinced at his level of toughness I thought he would be talking smack while taking and dishing out a beating. That's basically the only highlight that'll stick with me though, is Marcus kicking butt.


Overall Rating:
I know after seeing Terminator 3 that the bar has fallen for what the series could produce after Terminator 2, but this was pretty disappointing in terms of expectations. Still, a lot of good action scenes and not a lot of thinking, so if that's all you need than this would be a fantastic movie for you. I'll give it 3 *'s out of 5, or 6*'s out of 10, because in the areas it was good in, it was great, but it still left a lot to be desired. Especially the ending which seemed very jumbled and phoned in from the writing department.


When You Should See It:
If you own a Blu-Ray player or PS3 to watch it on because the explosions are frequent and with a killer sound system, this would make for a great popcorn, enjoy your night kind of movie. If you don't fit into that category, I'm tempted to say skip, but you might want to sit through it just so you can say you saw it. This goes double for those of you who want to say you've seen the whole franchise.