Went and saw Terminator twice !!!! Yesterday and Today (Warning: Spoilers below)
I loved the first two Terminators… (well the 2nd one…mostly). In my mind there were quite a few factors that made it stand out
- The Terminator was a proper character. The director (James Cameron … also known for directing Aliens/Titanic) made the terminator more than just a tin can with legs and hands attached.
- You could relate to the main characters. Sarah Conner, Young John Connor, Terminator (Arnie) .. and to some level T-1000(the melting man)! You could tell what the main characters felt like, the struggles they were going through, the tension at various points when T-1000 would get an arm’s length close to the Connors and Arnie (T-800) would be there just in time – to fight to keep those two alive.
- You could feel the internal struggle that both the Connors were going through – particularly that they were both getting more dependant/attached to T-800, while at the same time realising that it originated from the same machines that was trying to kill them.
- You could feel the Terminator becoming more human over the course of the 2 hour movie… while at the same time not forgetting that it’s a machine ! (Which I think is quite an achievement …)
However…. with Terminator Salvation.. this is what I saw
- John Conner (i.e. Christian Bale) – This was terribly portrayed. It could be the writers and/or the acting, but in brief. I thought Bale performed the same voiceovers that he had used for Batman. (short brief raspy voice) … In fact all he would’ve had to do is put on the batsuit & he’d fit right in !
- Marcus Wright (i.e. Sam Worthington) – This one was much better done. He appeared even more human than Connor and had a lot more sentences to speak!
- The trouble with the two points above… is that wasn’t the movie supposed to be highlighting Connor’s fight!!!!! It did everything but that. The whole role of Connor appeared to be rather insignificant and it certainly wasn’t convincing enough.
- And what’s the deal with Connor’s wife being shown as pregnant…but not a single word was uttered about this. (I mean.. didn’t they feel like discussing at any point how difficult it would be to raise a kid in a post-apocalyptic world ! … unless they were expecting to enrol him in the nearest available kindey ..!)
- Admittedly, the terminators themselves were well done. It would great to be able to see close ups of T-600 and for them to come up with a story as to how T-800 could’ve come about. However, the introduction of a CG animated Arnie just to please fans was probably the silliest thing they could’ve done. The scene where the door blows off and he’s standing behind it (with liquid nitrogen ’smoke’ fuming around him) was probably the comical highlight of the whole movie. I was almost expecting him to go ‘Hastalavista Baby!’ at some point.
- At the end of the movie, the only character I thought I understood and began to care about was Marcus Wright. He was the only character whose history was somewhat portrayed, what he was thinking about, his internal struggle and his quest to retain his human-ness. Every other character seemed to be an add-on with their role seemingly ‘fitted’ around whatever Marcus needed to achieve.
Having said all this.. my recommendation is as follows
Rating: 5/10
(Would recommend DVD rental to only die-hard Terminator fans, otherwise wait till it comes out on free to air TV. Hint: I’ve not mentioned going to the movies to see this)
June 8, 2009 at 5:48 pm
I mostly agree with your review.
The only things I would disagree with is that:
1. It did bring some nostalgia back (especially, when John Connor uses his previous Terminator knowledge to defend against the ‘new’ terminator).
2. It is hard to portray John Connor with ‘emotion’. He was brought up to be numbed by this as he has seen both death and destruction at a young age. However, you get a glimpse of John Connor the ’saviour’ not knowing what to do when meeting Marcus, and hence gives a sense of vulnerability to Christian Bale’s character.
Being an avid terminator fan, I think this movie did the franchise justice, especially the small detail they placed into the movie – eg. how John Connor gets the scar on his eye and explains or how he comes into being the leader of the resistance. It almost felt like a prequel (if you ignore the timeline thing)
For this I would have rated it about 6.5-7.5/10.
June 9, 2009 at 1:41 pm
5/10 and you still watched it twice…
June 11, 2009 at 4:56 pm
He took two girls on a date?
Haven’t seen the movie, but it can’t be awful considering it still at least satisfies the explosion/action criteria.
June 19, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Twice??
June 20, 2009 at 1:00 am
Hey, I just saw this; comments:
- I noticed the scar over his eye too Herb! I was thinking “Wait… is that in the same place as it is in T2??”
- I also thought expecting emotion from adult John Connor was …expecting too much: apart from the fact that Christian Bale’s voice doesn’t really portray emotion, John Connor also expected to know how things would play out when Judgement Day came, so to him he was already steeled for it and somewhat predictable; there’s no possible confusion/uncertainty or real need for emotions to come into play (OK sure, having people die is emotional, but he wouldn’t be much of a leader if he goes all emo on everyone everytime someone dies, something I think his mother beat out of him early on as a kid. Remember how he said in T2 he grew up playing/training with weapons and thought it was normal?). Bales?/the scriptwriters? attempt at emotion (in the form of fear for uncertainty and uselessness) when he finds no mention of the human/machine hybrid terminator on his mother’s tape wasn’t that well done in my eyes… but I can let it slip as it’s war, and it’s asking a bit too much to expect theatrical performances/moments to happen naturally.
- I also give big thumbs up to the drops/hints/homages to the previous movies. I also liked how -as Herb said- how he ‘becomes’ ‘leader’ of the Resistance with the destruction of the sub.
My gripes were how inefficient the terminators were at killing: the gatling gun the terminator that was hunting Kyle and Mute girl at the start of the movie was such a stupid weapon to use to kill, as it’s accuracy was all over the shop. And even in hand-to-hand combat, the terminators seemed to do their best to KEEP people alive as long as possible; instead of ‘terminators’, it’s more like ‘assaultinators’. Whatever happened to neck-snapping?? Why is it they always want to THROW people as far away from them as possible?
The other thing I’ve yet to get my head around is whether or not the human/machine hybrid is Skynet’s latest attempt at preventing the Resistance’s victory. If it is (and hence why Connor didn’t know about it beforehand), then I guess it means we’re in new territory (timeline-wise), or Skynet is silly in not trying to do something different when they know that previous efforts to prevent their loss have failed (ie: T1; possibly T2 and I’m saying yes to T3 as Connor recognises the T-800 fuel cells and that their nuclear).