Action, action -- OK but no story or character development

Rating: 7/10 (22 May 2009)

The best thing about the film is the action sequences -- but the film (sadly) ends up being less than the sum of its parts. There just isn't enough of a story and there's practically no character development -- and that matters ... a LOT! I blame McG for doing a video game rather than a movie that tells an intelligible part of the Terminator saga.
They've got a good cast. Yes, Christian Bale's doing the raspy voice thing (which is very annoying), but he's perfectly acceptable as John Connor. It's just that John Connor isn't -- quite frankly -- very interesting as a character. To me that was a HUGE disappointment. I don't blame Christian Bale for that -- it just isn't a good enough script. (The script is by the same guy who did the script for T-3. What were they THINKING???) Most of the cast is good -- with Anton Yelchin being an especial standout as Kyle Reese as a teenager. He's practically the only person in the film who shows anything like a personality. Again, it's not really the cast's fault. Everyone in the cast does a good job with what little they're given of screen time and a tissue-thin script.
James Cameron did such a terrific job of T-1 and T-2. Two different tales in the Terminator universe, each with a central conflict that mattered to me as a viewer. In T-1 it was Sarah Connor hooking up with Kyle Reese, and the two of them vs. the Terminator intent on killing her. In T-2 it was John Connor as a kid and the Terminator sent to save him, with Sarah as Mom trying to prevent the coming apocalypse. T-3 I won't mention because it was really really lame (partly because Nick Stahl was just totally boring and had completely negative personality as John Connor.)
*** SPOILER ALERT!! Don't read any further if you haven't seen the film yet!
However, in TS (which sadly, DOES stand for "tough s--t" in terms of payoff for the audience), there really aren't any relationships at all in this film. Much has been made about the Marcus Wright story -- the cyborg who thinks he's a man -- but I don't think that really worked particularly well. Anything resembling internal conflict for Marcus Wright about this situation is not really developed. (Yelling at the sky and howling while chained up is NOT the same as character development. The closest he comes to showing a reaction is when he's viewing the video message from Helena Bonham Carter's scientist character.) When we get to the end and Marcus makes his sacrifice for John Connor, I could see how this story was possibly INTENDED to add up -- but it's just not there on screen. Pretty sad.
Too many of the pop-video directors that have graduated to the big screen have this weird and distorted sense of storytelling. They frame the pictures nicely and can do short action sequences well -- but their movies tend to turn into a senseless sequence of "this happens" and then "this happens," and on and on through the film. But a story that isn't told well -- and this one isn't -- just doesn't add up in the end.
There is so much in this movie that just isn't needed. For example, take the gas-station scene -- please! There's a bunch of East L.A. former gang guys who all get wasted and only their "earth mother," Jane Alexander (who deserves MUCH better treatment than this!) gets saved simply because the "Harvester" grabs her and throws her in the "collecting" car. So what was the whole point of all that?? (Is she only there to keep an eye on Star at the Skynet labs so we won't worry about who's looking after her when Kyle is taken elsewhere???) Bryce Dallas Howard is a good actress, but she's totally wasted in this film (except to be able to perform very complex transplant surgery at a moment's notice in a field hospital with almost no visible equipment available -- a fairly incredible feat). The whole Blair Williams and Marcus Wright interaction is too much of a cliché and not very believable (she's been tramping cross-country with this guy for about a day and yet she's ready to betray John Connor and everyone she knows and has been working with in the Resistance in favor of this cyborg?? Not too believable.) This just illustrates one of the central problems of the film, in that the focus keeps shifting from John Connor to Marcus Wright to Kyle Reese. Whose story is supposedly being told here? The shift in focus only compounds the sense of just plodding through one scene after the next without really developing anything meaningful.
When the film ends, there's no sense of "completion" or "pay-off" or "satisfaction" in the story, as there was with T-1 and T-2.
I'm all in favor of more Terminator movies -- with this same cast. I just hope they get a script that's MUCH MUCH better, and a director that knows the difference between a good story and a video game.