Salvation for a franchise that didn't even know it needed it

Rating: 7/10 (25 May 2009)

The terminator is back again! again. As the fourth entry in the franchise this film really packs a punch with it, albeit, in a completely different ways than previous entries.
Whereas the first three films were small cast action films, Salvation is strictly a war movie. Aside from the same story as the it's predecessors TS shares almost no similarities to them. The largest of the differences would be the lack of Arny.
The lack of Governator has actually been one of the main complaints about this movie, many feel it's not the same without him.
Here's where I think many viewers are completely missing the point, keywords: the same. Being the same as the previous films was obviously completely beside the point, get with the program people. We had enough of Arny in T3, adding him in for a fourth time would be flogging a completely decomposed horse.
Actually, I felt that TS really was the saving grace for this franchise. Another movie with the same layout as the first three would simply be a drop on the "been there, done that" bucket. Salvation really brought a series that was dangling over the edge back to firm ground.
Of course, every film has it's not so great bits, this one really has all of them canned in one specific scene, the (already) infamous "campfire scene". For the sake of not spoiling anything I'm not going to say what happens, but as soon as you see something that remotely resembles a campfire just make a run for a bathroom break. Trust me, there's nothing there you didn't want to miss.
Among a few other issues is the fact that this is not the same judgment day as depicted in the first three films. Whether this is a flaw will depend on the viewers connection to the previous films in the series.
Whereas the opening of T2 painted a striking visual of the post-apocalyptic future, nightmarish and always battle-oriented. McG ops for a more realistic, dirty, gritty depiction of the future where it is not always nighttime and they are not consistently battling hordes of killer robots.
In a surprising move for McG he actually does go deeper into the ruined future-world, where the sides are not nearly as black-and-white as would be thought. For a fourth film in a series and especially for the director of "Charlie's Angels", "Salvation" actually does carry much originality and depth to it, for this I give McG credit. I personally loved the interpretation and felt it had more ground than the haunting, yet non-practical version that James Cameron dreamed up (no offense to Cameron whatsoever).
Unfortunately, much of the films bad press has come without a legitimate reason. Almost every detractor of this film that I have seen has essentially said "It isn't the same as T2, this is a bad Terminator movie, it's more like Transformers". To be honest, this is all crap. Terminator Salvation isn't a bad Terminator movie, it's simply different, and it most certainly is not like Transformers.
Many people don't seem to understand this however, they think "if it's not the same, it has to be bad". This evaluation, however, fails to state how the film is actually bad. Instead I suggest going with a basis that respects this film as it's own without outside opinion from over-zealous fans.
7/10 stars. If you haven't seen "Star Trek", watch that first, but make sure to give this a look if your a Terminator fan or not.