Extremely slow, loud, tedious flick

Rating: 2/10 (11 May 2010)

If TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009) is not the worst of the Terminator franchise, then I don't know what is! To call this movie "meandering" would be a gross understatement. What exactly was this film about? OK, there are 2 basic interconnected plot points, both of which get established early. First is that the Resistance Command (located in a submarine!) has SOMEHOW found a way to control the machines through a short-wave signal. Second is that during the interception of the signal, the Command also found out that Skynet's main targets are high-level soldier John Connor (Christian Bale) and teen-aged freedom fighter Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), John's father that he must send back so that he can exist and save humanity.
The FIRST thing I queried was WHEN AND HOW DID SKYNET FIND OUT THAT KYLE IS JOHN'S FATHER?! This was something that only Sarah Connor knew! And John only found out through the tapes she left him (how they were still playable after 34 years is another story!) and there's no way John would stupidly reveal this information...OOPS...He DID halfway through the movie, but NOT at any point before in the previous 3 films was this major factoid revealed...So, again, HOW AND WHEN DID SKYNET FIND OUT?!
Back to the former plot point...Other than in a scene stolen directly from TRANSFORMERS, I don't think the signal was ever used on the Skynet robots! Speaking of that ripped-off TRANSFORMERS scene, there were many such scenes like this that are obvious ripoffs from big summer movies. I'm not talking about standard formulaic tricks that virtually ALL summer action movies employ; I'm talking about DIRECT, BLATANT RIPOFFS! The main offense is that Bale, for some inexplicable reason, used his raspy, annoying Batman voice from THE DARK KNIGHT to enunciate most of John Connor's dialog! It was painful to listen to. To add to it, they had a scene late in the movie where Bale stole one of Skynet's machine-operated motorcycles, then raced down the highway towards Skynet in a moment reminiscent of his racing down the streets of "Gotham" in TDK. I think I even heard some of the TDK soundtrack in there somewhere. So TS blatantly ripped from two RECENT summer blockbuster movies, neither of which should even exist in the Terminator universe, and one of which was made just a freakin year before it AND starred TS's main actor! Unbelievable.
TS was obviously meant to be a "serious" movie. But it was more of just a downbeat, tiresome experience. I understand that the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse should be downbeat. Yet everything in the movie felt like a contrivance or a convenience to suit the purposes of the movie. And the surprise revelation late in the movie was a BIG stretch, the genesis of which made no sense. It was really just a silly way to explain away everything, not some slick or brilliant twist.
Actually, Bale shares lead duties with Sam Worthington (who plays holocaust survivor Marcus Wright). While the more experienced Bale is borderline terrible in TS, Worthington gives a decent performance to counter Bale's monosyllabic grunting and theatrics. I found Wright's story more interesting than Connor's in this, but it had too many cliché moments and scenes to be taken seriously. Marcus' story being the primary one needs to be involving, but it is told in a linear, predictable manner with scenes of EVERY character he comes across seeing the "good" inside him and eventually trusting him with no real basis or provocation.
Other than the ho-hum dialog, there is random, uninvolving, unexciting action mainly to show off all the different styles of Terminators out there, including one that looks like a Transformer...Yikes! TS is actually more reminiscent of bleak apocalypse movies like the MAD MAX films than it is the TERMINATOR franchise as none of the colorful, nightmare-noirish, futuristic scenes we got a glimpse of in the first 3 movies is evident at all in TS. Just pale, drab-looking daylight scenes. Did they change the future that much in T2?
Including the stars Bale and Worthington, none of the supporting characters leave any kind of real impression, with the exception of Yelchin's good performance as Kyle Reese, the only character that rises above the material. Also, I strangely didn't find that little girl that was with Kyle all the time too annoying; usually, little kids are the death knell of many a good movie (and that includes Edward Furlong's annoying, overrated rendition of John Connor in T2!). But she was apparently mute or either just chose not to speak, so that helped! The two adult female characters Kate Brewster (Bryce Howard) and Blair (Moon Bloodgood) are there OBVIOUSLY just for eye candy! There's even a gratuitous scene where Blair goes topless to seduce Marcus which felt really unnecessary.
In reality, TS doesn't even feel like a Terminator movie at all, just a loud, contrived, humorless summer action movie. TS also has a lot of moments where the heroes (esp. Bale) just yell out, sometimes for no apparent reason! Interestingly, Bale in one of his interviews after TS premiered said that he wanted to do a film that stayed faithful to the Terminator franchise, which was fine, but he went on to say that T1 and T2 were basically great films (won't get many arguments there), but he essentially trashed T3 saying it was unfaithful to the franchise. Guess what, though, Bale?...Contrary to the opinion of way too many so-called Terminator fans, T3 was actually a well-written and acted, provocative, fluid, exciting action movie that WAS faithful to Terminator; and even if it was not faithful to it (I think that it was), it still is a darn entertaining watch DESPITE being labeled a Terminator movie...But the movie that you were hyping and this movie I'm reviewing, TS, is NONE of those things (Terminator flick or not) and a serious contender for worst summer movie of the decade...The irony!