Terminator Salvation

It seems the trend for sequels is to not call them sequels anymore. I guess sticking a number on a movie title has a certain negative connotation, but for all intents and purposes, Terminator Salvation IS Terminator 4. That's actually a good thing for this movie: 3 films of back-story means it can almost entirely ignore establishing backstory... and oh does it ever. While i could rail against the over-used premise of the film, i'll try and judge it on it's own merits.

The movie stars christian bale as batman as john connor. I say it this way because it's clearly not a different character portrayal despite clearly being a different character. It's not that the characters are the same, they just feel the same - right down to that stupid raspy voice that sends shivers up and down my spine like nails on a chalkboard. I'm usually the type who has to look up actors' names (because i don't give a damn about remembering them), but in this case i knew immediately that that was the batman acting like john connor and not because of bale's fame.

Anyways, the movie starts "in the past" (ie, pre-Judgement Day) with marcus wright (sam worthington) on the verge of his execution for a triple homicide. Naturally, we know that he's (going to be) a good guy because he's so convinced he deserves to die. In a decade where villains are characterized by their inexplicable "love of evil", being anything but seems to be a writers way of telling the morons in the audience (aka, us) that a character's redeemable.

As it turns out, Marcus donates his body to science for the purpose of... curing cancer, i guess (the movie's kinda vague on this), but the real reason is more plot-device-y as he comes back later on "in the future" to serve as one of the main two protagonists the story will follow later on.

Now, believe it or not, the first half of the movie is actually not all that bad: there's some timely action sequences, a bit of story to play off of - though most of this is drawn from the 3 movie history - and even some suspense thrown into the mix.

But what's this? Something's missing! I know: it's the required-by-law love-story of course! But john connor, the main character of the series, is already married (don't worry, that's not a spoiler... it's so unimportant it's barely worth mentioning in the canonical story of the movie)! What's a writer to do? Cue the shallowest of shallow love interests - Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood). Blair is such a shallow character that the movie doesn't even try to hide this fact and the minute her usefulness has run out she's never heard from again.

Despite the movie trying to put in some romantic overtones between blair and marcus, their relationship never really goes anywhere and marcus ends up with a much stronger rapport with john connor - a man who starts off hating him and never really grows to trust him. In fact, all characters seem to have this intrinsic love of john connor, but it's mostly based on pre-movie stories that have set connor up as a prophetic savior of humanity. Did they all see the previous 3 movies or something?

The movie has its climax when the terminator himself shows up to face off against john and marcus in an epic final battle. That's right: Arnold Schwartzenegger reprises his role as the cold robotic terminator of the title, putting on an acting performance that not only wows the audience, but shows up his staunchest critics as he demonstrates that yes, he, too, can act!

Wait, that's not arnold... that's just a computer graphic! Oh my.

Well, it was still the coolest part of the movie.

Anyways, other than Arnold's no-show appearance, the film doesn't really offer much in the ways of impressiveness. The story is stupid and has a lot of holes that you'll find yourself thinking about during the movie... like, if the terminators are so dead-set on wiping out humanity, why are they rounding them up like cattle? And why do so many of the terminators fight without guns? And why do the ones with guns always MISS? They're ROBOTS for christ's sake!

Oh well, i'm sure there's much i could read into this that i really shouldn't. It is, after all, a movie - one i'm sure we'll see more of in the future.

I give Terminator Salvation 4 pointless character roles out of 7: D+.