Terminator Salvation (2009)
By now, most people are familiar with Christian Bale’s f-bomb blitzkrieg on the set of Terminator Salvation. His outburst was terrifying, but frankly, I would be angry too if I had devoted several months of my life to this movie.
Terminator Salvation is a wreck. Like the machines fought by John Connor (Christian Bale) and his scrappy band of resistance fighters, this movie manages to be both lifeless and relentless. Director McG pumps out action sequences at the Uzi-fire pace, filling the pauses between explosions with inane questions (is John Connor a false prophet or the key to salvation?) and Bale’s growls.
As Connor, Bale emotes his hardest, but his fine effort can’t jumpstart the lemon of a script. Even a birthday-suit cameo from the Governator fails to satisfy. It comes off as a cheap diversion, one more clunker for the scrap heap of arbitrary set pieces that make up this movie. The mindlessness wouldn’t matter so much if Terminator Salvation was actually entertaining, but the film commits the twin sins of not making any sense and taking itself with extreme seriousness.
Scriptwriters John D. Bracanto and Michael Feris (also responsible for Catwoman) give just enough justification for the explosions. Machines have taken over the earth, turning all cities into Ground Zero, driving the human “resistance” underground, and in one case, onto a submarine. Aside from Connor, the movie expects us to empathize with Marcus (Sam Worthington), a death row inmate who donates his body to science. Marcus gets his lethal injection; he wakes up half-robot, half-human.
This plot twist is mostly explored on the surface level (e.g. Marcus looking down at his mechanical torso and yelling “NOOO!”), but the premise raises interesting questions about the central role machines play in our lives. Can we live without technology? Do ever-present gadgets redefine what it means to be human? Have our iPhones become a fifth limb?
As far as redefinition, the on-screen gadgets haven’t changed much in the 25 years since the first Terminator. There’s shoptalk about microchips and processors, but the machines don’t have much digital capability. Most are still industrial-revolution-grade, soldered from good-old-fashioned steel. Since many of the machines that populate our lives no longer rust or tick, the film’s villainous gear-crunchers seem quaint and almost antique. The Terminators are analog enemies in a digital age.
Maybe we have become so cozy with computers that the possibility of digital rebellion is just too scary. Even Connor, luddite poster boy, sports a Blackberry-like device (supplied by Rio).
Nice to know that PDAs and in-movie marketing survive the coming apocalypse.
The Bottom Line: Save your money and your time. The machines want you to see this movie. We can’t let them win.
