Terminator Salvation

Rating: 3/10 (23 June 2009)

I saw two films this weekend... "Up" and "Terminator Salvation". What a contrast in cinematic style and filmgoing experience. "Up" was entertaining, skillfully paced, nuanced, and cleverly simple. TS, on the other hand, was a clumsy medicine ball of overblown, clichéd action, dull direction, oh-so-earnest acting, ugly cinematography, and uninspired/uninspiring CGI.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from this film going in. I was quite familiar with McG's previous work and, to put it politely, I'm not a fan. But how could you go too wrong with a "Terminator" film? James Cameron had written the syllabus of high energy, high speed, high production value action films with "Terminator" and "T2: Judgement Day". Even T3, while a disappointment compared to the previous two films, was viewable and even mildly entertaining.
But this new "Terminator" was to be what's come to be called a "reboot". It was to take a once-mighty action franchise whose welcome was wearing thin and "re-imagining" it. A new bloated budget, new MTV generation director, state-of-the-art CGI, Christian Bale in place of Schwartzenegger, etc, etc, etc. A surefire hit... yes? Well, sadly, no.
One example as to this film's failings... James Cameron's signature open for the first two "Terminator" films was a simple device. The Arnold robot first encounters unsuspecting victims of the present. Conflict begins, and, with all the warmth of titanium and hydraulic fluid, Arnold resoundingly crushes all comers, takes their weapons as his own, and decks himself out with the terminator uniform for that film. Not Chekhov, but an entertaining way to introduce the character and get the story rolling.
This film opens with a long, dreary vignette where a condemned man agrees to donate his body to science. Not only is this entire segment dull and uninteresting... as it turns out, it's totally unnecessary to the story. It tells us nothing about the Marcus character, has little to do with main narrative, and consists of monotonous eyebrow-to-chin close-ups that set the photographic "style" of every dialog scene in the film regardless of dramatic import.
There might have been a sigh of relief when we jump to the post-apocalyptic future and the fireworks begin... except you quickly realize you've seen all this crap before. Desaturated palette, costumes and production design that were tapped out before "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome"... swish pans and shaky cam to hide mediocre effects and stunt work, muzzle flashes and spark hits galore.
Sound like an action film cliché? It is... Evidently, this is what you get when you take a worn-out franchise, add a director with no vision, and throw $200 million into a pot and stir. You get a forgettable film with poor acting, unengaging narrative, and quick-cut action you've seen done better a hundred times before.
The action in this film almost feels like a collage... You'll see glimpses of "Road Warrior", "Rambo", "Star Wars", "Aliens", and, yes, a very indulgent dose of "Transformers". In other words, if you've seen those films, you won't find anything remotely new or fresh in this one.
But it has Christian Bale, you say... Certainly the acting must be first class, right? Again, I hate to burst your bubble, but not even close. I have to give the man credit, Bale tries to bring an intensity to every role I've seen him play. But, as we've seen a thousand times before, an intense performance in an inferior film can range from sad to unintentionally comedic. Bale's turn as John Connor more than once slips into the latter category. I don't want to jinx anyone's career, but Bale may be reaching the end of his fifteen minutes... Let's hope Chris Nolan can drag Bale back from the brink of career suicide with the next "Batman".
As a whole, this film suffers more from expectations than anything. Without the "Terminator" name in the title, this might have been an unexceptional sci-fi/action film viewable as a summer distraction. But "Terminator Salvation", despite its pretensions, gets lost in the enormous shadow cast by Cameron's films.