Terminator Salvation 

If movies like last year’s The Dark Knight and Iron Man are textbook examples of A+ summer blockbusters – dizzying eye candy thrown like a thick, durable shell over legitimately meaty fun – then a Terminator Salvation is the next best thing: An engaging work so slick and well produced on one level that it’s hard sometimes to remember the deeply rooted dumbness of the whole affair. McG’s fourth film (after two Charlie’s Angels movies and We Are Marshall) is also #4 in the Terminator franchise, and by now it should be evident that, like the futuristic killing robots themselves, this series is not going anywhere. Just when you think it’s run into an artistically immovable object – say, Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected governor of California – it adapts, regroups, and starts rolling again like the irresistible force that it is.

In fairness, Salvation was begging to be told for a while now – for 25 years, in fact, even since James Cameron first showed us a few tantalizing glimpses of the near-future apocalyptic wasteland from which an adult John Connor, leader of the human resistance against Skynet’s machine army, would send a soldier back from the future to protect Connor’s mom until she could give birth. Skynet, of course, sent a Terminator to kill Sarah Connor (in The Terminator) and then another one to kill young John (in Terminator 2: Judgment Day). They failed, and John stayed alive to watch the bombs fall in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. And all along, we puny human moviegoers have waited patiently for Connor’s future to become our present. Is it any wonder that it only partly lives up to our quarter-century of expectations?

It’s 2018, and Connor (Christian Bale) is a seriously militaristic sumbitch: His wife Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard) is pregnant with their child, but apart from one fleeting onscreen kiss it’s hard to imagine this version of Connor ever relaxing long enough to take the time for a little foxhole rumpy-pumpy. Some opening narration tells us that not everyone accepts Connor’s destiny as the one true leader of the resistance; he’s not fully in charge (yet), and those who are do some serious eye-rolling at his histrionics. In particular, they can’t figure out why he’s so determined to save the life of Kyle Reece (Anton Yelchin), a teenage spitfire who hasn’t even officially joined the resistance yet: He’s hanging out in Los Angeles, committing acts of random vengeance on the machines whenever he gets a chance. (Apparently, only John knows that Reece is the soldier who will eventually be sent back to defend his mom – and become John’s father while he’s there.)

But Kyle has indeed been captured by Skynet machines (along with thousands of other POWs), and Connor is going to need help to bust him out. Specifically, he’s going to need Marcus (Sam Worthington), a taciturn loner whom we first meet in the film’s opening scene … as he’s being executed via lethal injection, circa 2003. When we next meet Marcus it’s 15 years later and he looks pretty spry for a dead guy. What gives? And does his secret have anything to do with Skynet’s interest in experimenting on human subjects?

Well, duh. Terminator Salvation is constructed in such a way as to make spoilers beside the point, but let’s just say that while Connor may need Marcus’ help, that doesn’t mean he trusts the guy. Worthington (a relative newcomer, from Australia) is fun to watch, and in fact McG spends more time with his Marcus than with Bale’s Connor. This seems like an odd decision until it dawns on you that Bale has submerged himself so deeply into his grim, merciless character that he’s actually a profound downer on screen. His Dark Knight growl is still intact, and if the guy doesn’t get to do a romantic comedy pretty soon I worry he might become a danger to himself or others.

But in the meantime we have Worthington, who trapises around the landscape in the first half of the film, adding some nice energy to some tightly assembled action scenes. I may be the only person alive who liked both Charlie’s Angels movies, so it doesn’t surprise me to see the director come to life when Marcus and Kyle are roaring around the desert in a souped-up Jeep, battling airborne Skynet hunter-killers. McG is surpremely unsentimental about his action sequences: Over and over, characters must act quickly to save themselves from serious peril, and the camera doesn’t wait for them to dwell on their options. There’s a lot of confidence on display in those scenes; it actually made me wonder what McG would have done with the Normandy sequence in Saving Private Ryan. (Yes, really.)

When it’s all said and done, however, Terminator Salvation is hamstrung by its narrative limitations: Because it’s a time-travel movie we know there’s only so far anyone’s future will really change; and because it’s a franchise we know that no matter how satisfying Connor’s victory may seem, Skynet will wriggle away to suggest more mechanical deviltry in later films. (That was the one saving grace of the otherwise moribund Terminator 3: The sight of nuclear armageddon actually had the feeling of high stakes finality.) There will likely be another Terminator, and another. But for now we have 2018, and resistance, as another franchise taught us, is futile.  6

Erich Van Dussen is managing editor of Rochester Film Journal. Contact him at info@rochesterfilm.com.