Well I’ve waited a long time to see this and I think the worse thing I did was to take note of the American reviews which were mostly negative ones, so right away the Terminator Salvation was in a losing battle with me.
The film is set in 2018 a post-apocalyptic earth and John Connor (Christian Bale) is now the leader of the human resistance against Skynet the whole reason on why the terminator goes back in time to present day. The opening scenes are very good, they portray earth a very gritty, depressing place to be but the cinematography is fantastic, straight into a battle to take over a Skynet base and john Connor walks out of the battle the only one alive, after this the movie just goes downhill. The film is just full of flaws, no plot just a lot of half-finished scenes, lots of holes, lots of Bale jumping around screaming like he did in batman, then there’s Sam Worthington’s character Marcus Wright. The film opens in 2003 and we see Marcus in a prison signing his life away to Helena Bonham Carter Dr Kogan and she saying it’s for the saviour of mankind, ah right! We can guess Marcus is a murderer, but we never know how and why he did it, when we see him in 2018 he appears like out of the same place Connor appeared after the opening battle, Marcus appearance a little like the terminators in the previous films. Marcus is very mysterious you don’t know much about them, though he’s the tin man from wizard of oz with a heart but doesn’t know how he became what he is.
I did however like the CGI and the terminators themselves and their variations and the little surprise near the end, all I’ll say hasta la vista CGI baby (oops spoiler). Oh, I forgot to say John Connor does learn from the terminator hitlist he’s no2 on their list and a teen boy called Kyle Reese, Johns father is no.1 and Marcus knows who and where Kyle is as they meet at the start of the movie. There are a few cliches from the early movies like I’ll be back from John Connor, Marcus in all black like Arnie and Connor playing the Guns and roses song from T2 on an old tape deck and of course Kyle saying to Marcus “come with me if you want to live!!!”. This is a Goofs/mistakes paradise for those anoraks who want to see the mistakes, the idea had potential but it just played like one big video game, MCG you should have finished the script, so overall film gets Please make sure a decent director and scriptwriter is in place for Terminator 5 in 2011!!!
★★ 1/2
Sci-fi, Action | USA, 2009 |Rating: 12A | 3rd June 2009 (UK) |Sony Pictures |Dir: McG |Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin
