Terminator Salvation

I never saw the first Terminator, nor did I see the second. I did, however, catch the third one and while I found myself confused and disappointed with the an anticlimactic ending, I followed the story and was drawn into the movie by the action. I approached Terminator Salvation with this background of expecting little more than a few big explosions, some killer robots, and at least one well done chase sequence. This movie fantastically exceeded any expectation that I had of how disappointing a movie could be. This movie is bad.

This movie fails to deliver anything but the sensation that I could have better spent my time playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Wii. The graphics are acceptable, it uses character established and fleshed out (I presume) in previous movies, and it made plenty of efforts to acknowledge and reference the past movies (so I'm told). However the execution of it all was terrible. Christain Bale plays the role of John Connor, someone I spent the entire movie not caring about. He spends most of the movie acting like a whiney little bitch. He doesn't spend time directing people or in combat, instead he just watches people do things other people higher up told them to do already! He seems completely unnecessary to the entire plot! He breaks up this string of non-action by throwing temper tantrums at his superiors. He seems more like the kind of guy who lives in his mother's basement when he's 45, yelling at her upstairs that he needs more pizza bagels. On the rare occasions he does venture out into the field, everyone around this guy dies. Why the hell do they keep sending him on missions if all they do is get everyone killed and accomplish next to nothing?!

I'm not sure if it was because of writing or the direction (although it was probably both), but John Connor is one of the most emotionally distant characters to watch on a movie screen. He never consults with any other particular character, instead he just whines and tantrums at whoever is in the proximity. He doesn't seem to have any friends and no-one ever seems to like him for any reason. He has a love interest: a medic-wife who is clearly in the late term of her pregnancy with what I can only assume is his child, but every scene they have together is so coldly formalized that I began to doubt they ever could have married in the past. I began to doubt the obvious pregnancy because no character, especially John or his wife, ever makes mention to it. Eventually I reconciled that she just had cancer, from all the nuclear explosions occurring every 20 minutes, and it had for whatever reason taken the shape of an 8th month pregnancy.

The explosions in this movie are plentiful and serve no particular purpose. It's like a five year old playing with air planes and motorcycles got to decided when collisions were appropriate. And in this movie, for every high speed collision a machine makes with another machine, there's a random robot fight sequence. During the robot fights I literally found myself cringing, it wasn't because of the tense drama or the amazing effects. No, it was because these super strength robots kept fighting mere humans, lifting boulders and crap, and the humans kept escaping without a scratch. For being human 'terminators' these robots were terrible at their job. Every time one grabbed a person I'd think 'holy crap that thing could tear off his arm and beat him to death with it' but that never happens! Instead the robots throw people into walls or try to wrestle them to the ground. I remember in Terminator 3 the antagonist robot punched her fist through the driver seat AND the driver of a truck before steering it after the main character. Swarzenagar shaped humanoids twice her size can't hold a 5 year olds arm? The only thing that makes less sense is the ending. I need to talk about the ending, enhanced with all the spoilers I can pile on. So if you plan on seeing this terrible movie with your own money and don't want it ruined STOP READING NOW (although just seeing the actual movie itself ruins the movie experience).

The only remotely interesting character is half human-half robot cyborg who has to choose between the two sides. He dies in the end for no adequately explained reason. His character undergoes a decent amount of development, he actually gets a love interest that he shows affection for, and the story makes an attempt to explore the strengths, weaknesses, and social ramifications of being part human and part machine in this war. However just before managing to destroy the main complex John Connor gets stabbed clear through the chest with a rusty piece of metal and is later carried to safety. He's laid out in the medical area by his wife (who doesn't seem to particularly care) who tells everyone that John is going to die 'because his heart can't take it'. The cyborg offers to donate his human heart to John in order to save his life. How the hell is John even alive?! What exactly can't his heart take? It was ahnintliated by a jagged piece of metal! What the hell did that hit going through the dead center of his chest to cause only his heart in particular barely mortal stress. A quick or irregular heart beat causes stress. A leaky heart valve or a clogged artery causes stress. Hell high blood pressure causes stress! He had a huge damn piece of metal shoved clean through his rib cage! How the hell is he alive?! And how is this the perfect time to do an organ transplant?! Apparently in the future, organ transplants can be done of the fly, with no need to consult blood or tissue types, and are always completely successful... with no chance of failure as that would be something someone would consider before killing a perfectly healthy (much more interesting) individual to possibly save some douche bag.

The ending of the movie gets even more stupid and pointless. In addition to fighting machines another sub plot revolves around finding John Connors father to send him back in time to impregnate his mother (how romantic is that?). However they never actually send him back, he just rides off into the sunset with the gang... off on another whirlwind adventure no doubt (why the hell not). After all of this drawn out time and effort enduring this movie, John narrates that the war isn't over and that Skynet is still a fully functional global presence sending its machines to kill off humanity. Well then what the hell was the point of this movie. Why did I sit though all this crap if it didn't even matter to these Fictional people?

As I said before this was a terrible movie. It will probably squeak by on ticket sales just riding on the back of it's predecessors, but make no mistake, no one under their own free will should have to endure this terrible mess of plot bunnies and misplaced CGI effects.

I give this movie 1 out of 5 Movie Ferrets.