A very brief and lacklustre effort

Rating: 3/10 (29 May 2009)

The first terminator was dipped in fantastic tension: Sarah Connor is a normal everyman with simple issues in life.
She is presented through an epic film-length chase sequence a destiny. She is given a knight in shining armour. But still, she does not believe, she doesn't know who or what to trust, but nonetheless, the ever present danger moves her and the plot swiftly along.
My problem with terminator salvation is that the poetry of the first film isn't there.
I wanted to see a whole film of the apocalyptic world shown in the first terminator, all blue, neon and electric, a time of permanent night.
I wanted to see the day that skynet took over. That could have been the first act. John Connor arguing with the brass, himself doubtful that his crazy momma raised him in good faith.
This film just drifted way off track. The cybernetic hero is a total cop-out. The soundtrack was heavy and orchestral, rather than glitched and electronic.
The overall feel of the film did not set a global scene, it felt more like it was shot in the backyard. There were no vistas, no landscapes.
This is more Indiana Jones on the cheap than terminator. The machines were impotent and clanking, throwing people around. They didn't seem cunning or lethal.
The menace of the first terminator, a super-intelligent, painless and ruthless hunter on a mission, virtually unstoppable is not present in skynet's character. The machines do not come across as anything other than a skittle to be bowled at.
Skynet in the first terminator is an omnipotent and ruthless mechanism, a network of mechanised destruction, symbolic of man's industrialised and unmitigated horrors of the late 20th century.
I get the feeling that there is no true passion or intention behind this film. There is no deeper intention to inform or explore. Get 'em through the box office gate. One more for the money.
Oh well. I'd have hoped they'd return the canon to form. The post-apocalyptic terminator... shot in urban locations from around the world, made with special effects from the likes of chris cunningham and portraying a losing battle against skynet, the massacre of mankind... this was the film I wanted. This is a film I would buy on DVD.
As it is, one watch, and I was finished before the first act was concluded.
This film felt shorter than it actually was, in my memory it's under 20 minutes.
A good film feels like more time than it is, but does not bore you, it stretches moments and keeps you on the edge of your seat, a word in itself.
Terminator 1 I remember as a week.