Terminator Salvation – Good Popcorn Movie

Terminator Salvation is a sci-fi post-apocalyptic war film starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington as John Connor and Marcus Wright respectively. It focuses on Marcus, a cyborg that believes he is human, and his role in the war between humanity and Skynet.

Viewers expecting to see John Conner as the central figure will be greatly disappointed as Sam Worthington takes up most of the screen time. Worthington does a decent job as Marcus. As a cyborg/human hybrid, Marcus is expected to act without the full range of human emotion. But playing someone who doesn’t know he’s a cyborg, Worthington seems to lack the emotional depth necessary to fully sell his character, especially when Marcus writhes in pain from point-blank gunshot wounds. Does it actually hurt when Marcus’ shot? If it does, then how much does it hurt? Worthington’s portrayal did not make it clear, and so Marcus looks a lot like a WB/CW superhero.

Bale is fantastic as Conner. The character is an extremely focused and driven soldier who has seen Armageddon but still manages to think with his heart as much as with his head. I look forward to seeing Bale as Conner in future Terminator films.

Craggy Michael Ironside is refreshing and reliable in his role as General Ashdown, the resistance leader that nearly aids in the destruction of humanity. Disappointing was Common and Terry Crews, whose roles were poorly written, or whose characters were poorly directed, or whose acting was so poor that they seemed cartoon-ish and forgettable in their portrayals of Barnes and Captain Jericho respectively. It is 2009 folks; enough with the one-dimensional supportive spiritual Negro roles.

Terminator Salvation might lack depth for hard-core sci-fi fans. The question it poses, “what makes us human,” is a fundamental question in science fiction. Terminator Salvation has the platform to wrestle with this concept in a meaningful manner, but chooses to gloss over it. Instead of Marcus, Conner and the others struggling to come to terms with Marcus’ cyborg-hood, they get over it too quickly. The message: if a cyborg has a human heart, he’s ok. More detailed and nuanced exposition about the journey of getting to this realization would have been a satisfying addition to the storyline.

Visually, Terminator Salvation is stunning. Vast and desolate vistas are made even more so because of the film’s usage of a cinematic technique called Oz that gives the movie somewhat of a cepiatone look. And the robots are more menacing than ever, in part because the producers opted to use mechanical robots and replicas instead of blue screen, but also because they borrow from some pretty cool films design-wise; the larger machines are Transformers-ish with a bit of Tom Cruise’ War of the Worlds thrown in. The film also takes some visual cues from NBC’s Battlestar Galactica with the look of the human holding cells and explicit imagery of partially mutilated bodies spayed out on gurneys.

At times, the T-600 robots are just plain funny, as when they don tattered clothing and dirty bandanas; it reminds one of hilarious bits of Army of Darkness with its rowdy skeletons running about in rotten clothing.

Terminator Salvation is a good popcorn movie overall. It’s got great action sequences, like Conner’s crazy equipment-less skydive into the valley of what looks like a 100 foot wave in a perfect storm, and it’s got first-rate acting in Bale and many of his supporting actors.

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