Rating:
3 out of 5
Short version: Terminator Salvation is great for the don’t-expect-much-except-action-out-of-a-summer-movie crowd, not so great if you’re looking for a worthy successor to the first two films.
Screen Rant reviews Terminator Salvation
For the record, I am not a McG hater, nor am I holding Christian Bale’s set meltdown against him. I realize that McG will be forever haunted by the fact he directed Charlies Angels – but I had really high hopes for Terminator Salvation… I wanted it to be great.
Unfortunately, it isn’t.
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Why did I think that this long awaited addition to the Terminator movie franchise had even a snowball’s chance of being awesome? Because I had the sense that McG wanted to prove he could do it. While many people think that his film We Are Marshall isn’t all that great, I really enjoyed it and it demonstrated to me that he could actually do a film with characters you could care about.
But sadly, that’s exactly what’s missing from Terminator Salvation.
The film opens in 2003 with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) in a prison cell on death row, hours before his execution. He’s visited by a scientist who has cancer (Helena Bonham Carter) and wants him to donate his body to science. She seems desperate to get him to sign, and he’s not very cordial to her despite her situation and his.
The first problems in the film surface right at the start – why is she so desperate for him in particular to donate his body? Don’t scores of people have organ donation cards in their wallets? And then there’s his mysterious background – he’s responsible for the death of his brother and two police officers… neither of these is ever explained in the film (nor in the prequel novel for that matter, which I did read).
From there the film jumps to some serious actiony goodness in 2018. I won’t give anything away other than to say we get to see Christian Bale as John Connor almost immediately and he’s involved on a mission that does not end up going very well. At all. Very satisfying first look at the future including some fantastic action and cool visuals/camera angles.
The upshot is that the resistance (not led at this point by Connor) has found a way to defeat Skynet. Connor volunteers to test it on a small scale before the big move against Skynet central. However that plot line becomes secondary to the story of Marcus Wright and his involvement with a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). For the non-fans out there, Reese is the man who was sent back in time to save Sarah Connor and is the father of John Connor. At the point this film takes place that hasn’t happened yet (does your head hurt yet?).
Marcus doesn’t seem to have aged at all although 15 years have passed, and there is a mystery surrounding him. He runs into Kyle and the young girl he’s taken under his protection and very grudgingly goes along with them since he doesn’t really know what’s going on – and Reese did keep him from being killed by a T-600 (that’s the bigger and bulkier predecessor to the T-800, aka the Schwarzenegger Terminator).
The film eventually brings together Wright and Connor via resistance pilot Blair (Moon Bloodgood). There’s an issue of trust and conflict between the two that becomes the major issue in the film.
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149 Comments
terminator 2 was a good movie but it is the one movie that really ruined the series!…
Hey gang, I set up a Terminator spoiler discussion post. It only took me a half hour to figure out I forgot to actually enable comments on a a discussion post.
Vic
I know that if I’m going to write a review of a film and have people hanging on my every word, I would at least want to get the fact down that this is number 4 in the series. I know Rise of the Machines was not on par with the first two, but it did exist.
Um whats up? I thought all these movies came out on Firdays, I think I keep missing the release dates, is this not the norm anymore?
Terminator 2 is as close to a perfect action movie as anyone has ever gotten in my opinion. The only other movie that I felt came close is Aliens.
@Jimmy
So you’re saying people DON’T know this is #4 just because I didn’t mention #3? It’s generally accepted that the third one was not even close to being as good as the first two, hence why I made the comparison to T1 & T2 and didn’t bother mentioning T3. The first two films are the gold standard of the franchise, much like the first two Alien movies are in that series of films.
Vic
I remember the first time I saw the trailor of the movie.
They did not show the name at first, just showed robots, machines, then came Bale. Everybody including me were wondering what movie could it be. Then at the end they played the Terminator music. Tannan tan tana!! and woooooooo people in the theater started clapping!! hahaha I have never seen people clap for a trailor and I was more then happy because it had my favt actor in it!
Howdy. Bad or good I just gotto watch this movie before coming to conclusion. I think the reason they released on Thursday is because everybody will be moving around during the long weekend.
@Vic,
Did the writer’s strike hurt the movie?
http://screenrant.com/writers-strike-hurt-quality-films-heath-7460/
I honestly wonder… Seeing it at some point this weekend.
heath
I must confess I had great hopes from this film but folks the truth is that it really sucks big time. Even as god damn entertainment film.
Thanks for the review, Vic!
I may wait for the dvd.
Total disappointment. Mediocre. Waste of film, money and time. Worst Terminator movie. Worse that T3. Rip-off of MGS4 and Resistance 2 futuristic elements.
Great review Vic!!!
“From the director of Charlie’s Angels and the writer of Catwoman comes….
…Terminator 4. With Christian Bale.”
lol. What were people expecting?
Thanks for the review VIC. I didn’t expect much from it either, a true sequel would be one where it really takes place in the late future and the resistance destroying Skynet once and for all, not making pointless sequels that open to other sequels…..Bale’s acting is robotic, it works in Equilibrium, not in Batman and other films, he was really good in the Prestige.
Madhukar,
I remember people clapping when they first saw “Transformers” trailer and then booed when Michael Bay’s name came on screen, lol.
DAVID GUIVANT wow you just said his acting didn’t work in Batman or other things? Seriously ? Even if you didn’t like him in this he was amazing in the batman films and he was amazing in everything else he has done. He was the only reason American Psycho was even good and his performance in Rescue Dawn was spot on and not even close to robotic. Have you even seen 3:10 to Yuma which was one of his best performances ever he actually stole the show away from Russel Crowe. Not to mention Harsh Times which was a mind blowing performance in a mediocre film.
Matt K, ya its funny
and disappointing when we see a good movie at the hands of a not so popular director. Personally I did not think Transformers was that great. Michel Bay like his previous movies (Pearl Harbour) did a mediocre job.
I do not have high expectations from McG in T4. But after being let down by T3 (whoever was the director of it) I am up for anything in T4 and hope Bale did a good job as he always does.
Madhukar,
Well to each their own…..I loved “Transformers”(Despite its flaws)and most Bay films….I just thought it was hilarious when everyone in the theatre was cheering then suddenly starting “booing”.
It was Jonathan Mostow who directed that abomination and I willing to give McG a chance and will be seeing this film on Saturday.
Bale, doesn’t blow me away as an actor, he’s ok, nothing to write endless amounts of praise over…
I’m about to see T4, hope its better then the video game.
C-ya on the spolier discussion.
Won’t take much to be better than the Video Game. It had decent gameplay, but everything else sucked it didn’t even tell a good story.
Either way while we agree on the game I disagree with you so much on Bale. I honestly believe Bale is the best actor in film today. I’m a huge fan of both Bale and Cusack.
I also don’t understand all of the hoopla over Christian Bale. Yes Equilibrium was one of my favorite movies but it was definitely not because of his “amazing” acting… And in the Batman films he was OK, very stiff in my opinion. He was much better in The Prestige, and I hated The Machinist so even if his acting was good in that I wouldn’t have noticed, lol. Rescue Dawn was pretty good, he played the part of the smug pilot in the beginning pretty well. He’s a good actor, much better than some of these nimrods in hollywood that can’t act their way out of a wet paper bag, not going to name any names though *cough*Shia Lebeouf*cough*, but nothing mind blowing or worth changing my nickname for him…
@ daniel f
I bet you liked the scene in the prestige where they showed 2 bales…lol. You are right with harsh times though that is my favorite bale movie but i do want to sAy this… I wish bale wasn’t playing connor. Nothing against you or bale but i just wanted edward furlong to continue as connor in both t3 and t4. Yeah he may not have looked as rugged but in t2 he was sort of like a hacker which was awesome for me… Whilst bale looks like he used to beat up people like that before lunch period. So again nothing against bale but i just wanted edward to be him.
Ken J,
What are you talking about? Shia Lebeouf is an amazing actor…..I’m sorry I can’t say that w/o lmao.
Yah, he’s a BIG reason why I’m not a big Transformers fan. I felt like him and his skank girlfriend ruined the movie. I wanted to see a movie about Transformers, but instead we get a movie about two idiot teens and a side story that happens to have robots that transform…
I am not really into these types of movies and usually not one to fawn over movie stars but there is something about christian bale that gets me going!
The story of TS is just a footnote of the original movies. It has no plot and it doesn’t further the saga in any
way. It just explains the trivial story-setup events which were referred to in one sentence in the previous movies.
And it has huge plot holes.
I LOVED IT, I JUST DIDNT LIKE THEY CHANGED THE THEME MUSIC..ARNOLD WAS IN IT.
I’m looking forward to it. I think that Bale can carry the series in Arnold’s absence.
Regardless of this review, Terminator Salvation ROCKS.
ACtion, is waht we asked thats what we have, anyone looking for something else, stay away.
This is perhaps the ULTIMATE action flick ever seen
Jago as an adult Ferlong isn’t really all that great. He’s a very mediocre actor also I was flipping through the channels and I saw him on one of those cop shows and he looks awful. Like a pedophile or something.
Its every bit as bad as they say people, if you want to real sci-fi in your life you need to check out The Burning Skies, seriously it puts this pee brained Terminator story line to bed (and early)! So tired of this stupid franchise reebot phenomenon, please stop F-ing our favorite franchises up hollywood and give some of the well deserved “new kids on the block” a shot! Think im bs’n check out any of the Autumn Rain stuff and tell me its not a gold strike waiting to be mined!!!
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