The Ruination of an Epic

Rating: 4/10 (19 December 2009)

Terminator 2 was the first movie of the series that i watched when i was just a kid and so i practically grew up with Arnie as a role-model fighting machine...it was such fun to enact him before the mirror and deliver his one-liners from the film. It sort of made you feel powerful to an extent.
After that i watched Terminator and Terminator: Rise of the Machines. And although none of these movies were as good as T2 but they were still worth watching several times primarily because of Arnie playing the role of Terminator. No matter how many characters they add up into the series Arnie is the life and blood of this series. Without him the Terminator universe cannot exist. However, this was not my view before I watched this movie.
When it was announced that Christian Bale (who is one of my favorite actors) would play John Connor I was really delighted. Bale is one of the most sensitive actors around and i felt that even after Arnie's absence, he would bring new life to the series. I was waiting for a long time for John Connor to take charge of the franchise and i thought that the happy day had come. I was seriously anticipating a breathtaking movie but was utterly shocked by what i received.
Bale was absolutely passive in the entire movie and had not a single smart action sequence to his credit in the entire movie. I couldn't see his leadership qualities...in fact, i couldn't see the humanity in his character. He appeared more machine-like than even the actual machines and that is not all right for the movie. I know it is quite feasible that waging a long and losing battle could make any person grim and serious but it doesn't exactly mean that you've to always maintain a staring expression on your face. I have seen him playing grimmer roles in grimmer situations (Equilibrium and even the Batman series) and in a way, he always looked a heroic figure in all those roles. Here, he was like a mere shadow overburdened by expectations. He should act like a figure of inspiration whereas he felt a demoralizing military commander. This was what destroyed the film for me.
Whatever stars i've given is because of that brilliant chase sequence (Sam Worthington is true class, for sure) and that brief period of film where Arnie steps in. Even though he was digitally portrayed but that was the only time in the film when i actually sat up in attention feeling that something good would happen in the movie now...at least once!!!