Terminator Salvation

Considering that he’s part of the dreaded “MTV Generation” of filmmakers (with not one, but both of the Charlie’s Angels flicks to his credit), McG is surprisingly old-school when it comes to his framing: no jumpy Michael Bay antics or hypercutting Paul Greengrass mimicries. He is a far more organic director, letting the action sequences play out naturally. When the new moto-Terminators speed after a group of humans, we aren’t shown a million different angles or sweeping aerial views; nor a camera held from the perspective of someone shaking uncontrollably. We never get the impression (as we do, perhaps, with Bay) that the director is suffering a case of cinematic attention deficit disorder. That’s a good thing.

It’s his execution that’s at fault: the action itself. He piles explosions on top of other explosions and machines slamming into other machines, backed by the deafening cues of Danny Elfman’s score, and I’m pretty sure Christian Bale had a yelling stipulation written into his contract. Everything’s loud, intense, bombastic. You can’t accuse McG of copying Jim Cameron’s first two flicks — or even Jonathan Mostow’s goofy third — but you’re left wishing he’d perfected his own style before tackling such an ambitious project and producing, as a result, a frustratingly passable action-thriller.

Terminator Salvation is half-reboot, half-sequel to the first three motion pictures. Or prequel. Or…both. It takes place after the events in T1, 2 & 3 but features characters from those films at a younger age. (Why? Because of the time travel stuff, stupid.)

This one, of course, notably lacks Arnold Schwarzenegger as a central character (though he does pop up briefly, via CGI rendering, in the movie’s last act). What we’re given, then, is an entirely new breed: a film that delves into the mythos of the pre-established Terminator universe without necessarily being a true Terminator film. Or, at least not a true old-fashioned Terminator film. And that’s kind of the dividing line that will throw some fans off and entice others in.

McG cites Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as an influence on his movie, and it shows. The world is bleak and starved and seems to have a post-fallout hue cast over it. Speaking of fallout — if McG were a bit more competent with the human element of his story, I’d trust him with a Fallout 3 adaptation, because that game’s style is seeping into this film. Desert wildernesses, decrepit buildings, people wearing rags with grime stuck to their flesh. Yet somehow the female lead, Moon Bloodgood, always looks like she’s just gotten done applying makeup and iron curling her hair. (Not to mention, based on her outfits, she must have found the only mall clothing outlet that hadn’t yet been raided by pillagers.)

Bloodgood is a great example of the movie’s terrible tendencies — sad to say, she personifies them. I’ve seen her interviewed and she’s as likable as could be, but she’s an awful actress, and her entire role could have been excluded from Terminator Salvation leaving in its absence a tightened film and less predictable subplot, which is this: the cyborg-who-doesn’t-know-he’s-a-cyborg, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), falls for her. And she falls for him. And like Sarah Connor at the end of T2, she is forced to confront the spiritual conundrum of what truly separates man from machine.

But here’s the thing: isn’t that such a cliche? If done well, it could be as touching as T2 was; if done poorly, it can be a disastrous reminder of Short Circuit 2 (and no one wants to remember Michael McKean’s hair in that movie, okay?).  Unfortunately, McG hasn’t a clue how to handle his characters’ interactions, and so we get very heavy-handed intermissions featuring Worthington and Bloodgood Staring Longingly Into Each Other’s Eyes and saying some pretty cringe-worthy stuff. One campfire sequence is so unintentionally funny that I really, truly felt sorry for McG, in the same way you’d feel compassion for a young boy naively attempting to, I don’t know, shave or something. At first it’s cute, like, Oh, look, he doesn’t realize that he’s too young to shave. Then it’s like, Oh, shit, he just cut his neck.

But I’m under-selling the movie’s positive attributes, which are the action sequences. Too loud, maybe, but a whole lot of fun. The special effects on the Terminators are solid, although some of the battle ships and vehicles aren’t. McG throws in plenty of nods to the older films without all of them seeing too forced (we even find out how the adult Connor from T2 got his scar — a level of detail proving that McG really is a fanboy himself), and Anton Yelchin, who I despised as a precocious kid shrink in 2007’s Charlie Bartlett, is fantastic in the role of Kyle Reese, effectively channeling Michael Biehn from the first movie. Between this and Star Trek, he’ll probably be the next champion of the Nerd Chic a la John Cusack and Shia LaBeouf. (Or is it too early to have another Shia LaBeouf?)

Worthington’s character, Marcus, is the most empathetic and, as such, steals the film from everyone else. His accent is inconsistent (think Jimmy McNulty from The Wire) but it doesn’t really matter, because for all we know his character was originally born in Australia or something. Hell, go crazy with it.

Marcus is on death row at the beginning of the film, pre-J.D., and signs his body over to Helena Bonham-Carter, who plays an evilish doctor person. He wakes up years later and soon realizes that he isn’t entirely human. Audiences will connect with Marcus for this reason alone: he represents the viewers. We’re thrust into this new world just as suddenly as he is, and in his bewilderment and confusion, we find our parallel. With Avatar’s release later this year, he’ll most likely be the Next Big Thing, and is essentially – in this film, anyway – what Heath Ledger was to Christian Bale in The Dark Knight.

And so we arrive at Bale: he plays John Connor, whose initials in ‘84 were either Cameron’s stab at religious allegory (Jesus Christ) or self-worship (uh, James Cameron). Considering the man’s inflated ego, it’s hard not to believe it’s the latter. Anyway, we’ve been hearing about Connor since the first Terminator, got a glimpse at him as an adult in the second during the film’s prologue, and followed him (as portrayed by Carnivale’s Nick Stahl) in the third. He’s the future savior of mankind, raised by his mother with the full knowledge of his destiny, living with the everyday reality that his existence is vital to the survival of mankind.

But here’s the thing about John Connor: he’s really not that interesting (or at least not in McG’s world, he isn’t). That’s an obvious flaw, perhaps: if you woke up every morning knowing you were the saviour of the human species, would you be a fun guy to hang around with? Probably not. In that regard, Christian Bale nails Connor: intense, passionate and dry without an ounce of self-reference or levity. He never steps back and winks at us, and even his brief dialogue retread (“I’ll be back”) feels legitimate, spared of Arnie’s corny delivery from T3. This guy means business. That’s what you’re left with, but without a compelling enough story, who really cares?

Bale will be massacred by overzealous blog culture critics who’ve been waiting for months to crack relevant jokes about his leaked on-set rant, but he extracts every ounce of potential from the character and – to that extent – gives a fantastic performance. The bottom line is that John Connor as a religious figure in the Terminator universe has no room for expansion, and unless McG were to fundamentally change the dynamics of the character, a post-Judgment Day Connor is not going to connect with audiences. It’s not as much Bale’s fault as it is the fault of the series itself, but that’s precisely why Cameron never envisioned taking the series this far: the impending doom of Judgment Day in the original series always felt far more intimidating than the reality of it. The brief glimpse of nuclear holocaust in the first two movies was eerie and scary because of its fleeting nature; keeping in tune with his religious allegories, Judgment Day was to the Terminator universe what Revelations is to fundamentalists: that big, frightening end for humanity that we must all live in awareness of. Seeing it unfold kind of takes away the charm, you know?

So although Terminator Salvation is somewhat competently made and an entertaining enough action spectacle — big explosions, fast pace, singular vision, thrilling special effects, commanding leads and dependably Hollywoodized token characters — giving this much away just feels a bit self-defeating. What if the End of Days occurred tomorrow, Jesus revealed himself unto us all and the remaining human beings left on earth were forced into resistance camps? Would anyone still be reading the Bible?

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