Movie Review: Terminator Salvation

Starring:

Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood

The Plot:

After three stabs at homicide via time travel, the machines go toe to toe with John Conner in the ruins of judgement day. Conner, brandishing a new method of killing robots at his disposal, aims to finish the war once and for all, but he doesn't plan on meeting a new kind of Terminator that may change both the past and the future.

My Two Cents:

When one leaves the theater having watched a film, the first question that comes across one's mind should not be "What in the hell was the point of that movie?". Yes it's generally not a good thing when a film leaves me baffled as to its purpose, but Terminator Salvation makes easy work of it.

First off, it's not that the flick is a bad movie, ok it kind of is, but it has explosions and stuff so it's kind of watchable. The problem is that there is no reason for any of it. In the realm of unnecessary sequels, this is the poster child.

The first three Terminator films had a clear villain. The villain of this installment is about as vague as a blind person giving a physical description. Sure Skynet is what needs to be destroyed, but there really is no face to it, the only real villains are different types of killing machines that get trading card type descriptions from characters when they can take a breath from the action.

Another thing about the movie is that for a mythology surrounding John Conner, this film sure didn't seem to preoccupied with making him a dominant part of the film. What we get instead is Marcus Wright, a death row inmate turned robotic humanoid that joins Conner's future father and a mute 10 year old in search of other survivors. Aside from Wright the movie really has no focus on other characters, even Conner, which leads me to not give a rat's ass for any of them, which ultimately leads to not give a rat's ass about what is happening in the movie aside from the kabooms and kapows filling the screen.

As for the ending, well lets just say that the ending is about a ho-hum as it can get. There's no tension, there's no excitement and most importantly, there is nothing to take from it besides a sure bet that there is going to be yet another pointless sequel that logically judging from the film's universe, will do nothing but start the entire franchise over again, since it all begins with sending someone back in time to save John Conner's mother.

The worst thing about the ending is that it is the equivalent of a frat boy telling a beautiful girl that he is going to be screwing her after only saying hello to her for the first time. The ending is so open ended that it's basically saying "Yeah, you like what you see, you know you do and there's gonna be more where that came from." It's one thing when a franchise, such as Lord of the Rings, ends openly because all the films were made at the same time. It's another thing when a filmmaker is so pretentious that he just assumes we are going to drown ourselves in the mess he's created and then expects us to go back for seconds.

Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan united to breathe new life into the Batman franchise. Christian Bale and "McG" have united to ter...termin...ah hell with it, terminate this franchise.

Grade: D