Been There. Done That...

Rating: 4/10 (19 January 2010)

With the exception of a few interesting action scenes, and decent acting by Christian Bale, there's not much new in TERMINATOR SALVATION. The only exception is that we're fully immersed in the post-apocalyptic world and not time-traveling into the past ... which is why it got four stars from me instead of one or two.
I do love Christian Bale's acting chops. He is, to me, the complete action hero. His DARK KNIGHT performance cemented that. But you need more to make a good movie, and Terminator Salvation fails to give us a new (or even interesting) storyline. What's more alarming is that rumors are circulating that a Terminator 5 film is being considered. Oh boy. Perhaps it's time to lay this series to rest. I'm not saying that T5 will be bad, but if the track record for this series remains unchanged, then we won't be in for a highly successful sequel.
If you're familiar at all with any of the other three Terminator movies, you're aware of John Connor (played here by Christian Bale), the quintessential hero against the thinking machines; machines that have brought mankind to near extinction. In T4 we stay firmly in the future, fighting the crazed machine-made mankillers (with the exception of a brief stint in the present that rapidly moves us forward) and discovering that Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington, AVATAR) – a man from the past awakened in the future – has become a weapon for the machines by being an unawares accomplice in trying to eradicate the human population. When his true identity as a machine is finally revealed, it is as much a surprise to him as to the "humans." With the help of a young and feisty Kyle Reece (Anton Yelchin, STAR TREK), Marcus fights his way through the machines and into the safety of the humans. Here we see him battle with the knowledge of his new internal, metallic identity, and throw himself into the war. But who's side is he really on? This is "The Big Question" that the audience is supposed to ponder but, to no one's surprise, the embittered and oft-conflicted anti-hero makes "The Right Choice."
In addition to being a cliché, the movie even reinvents a scene from T2 in which a Terminator gets frozen and tries to break free. Been there. Done that. Let's move on people!
The final word I have on this film is that it really doesn't do what it should, which is to show us a great story about characters we've come to know through cinema. But instead, we got a rehashing of old themes with a bit of action eye-candy. Not much to it, really.