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Back in the mid-90s, when I was just entering my late 40s (right after my first divorce), my dad picked me up from a movie theater in Chicago where I had just seen a Saturday matinee with a friend. On the drive home, he asked me what I thought of the movie. “It was great,” I said, running a hand through my long white beard, “The special effects were awesome, obviously, but it was also really funny, and exciting. The acting was good, just everything was perfect. Dad, I’m being completely serious right now: it was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.” I was talking, of course, about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie. Now that I am almost 100 years old, my tastes have changed, but I still expect the same kind of wide-eyed, over-enthusiastic post-viewing hum from my summer movies. I want to be plucked like a string (no instrumo). Granted, one could argue that bright, summertime excitement and an ash-gray post-Apocalyptic wasteland are simply incompatible, and that the expectations for Terminator: Salvation should have been adjusted accordingly, but the fact that the movie depicted a living nightmare of sub-human survival was not what made it a miserable experience. It was the fact that this movie stinks.
Oh well.
I had high hopes going into this one. I really “enjoy” post-Apocalypse stories, the Terminator franchise in general has been very fun (minus the scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger beats up the lady robot in the bathroom in Terminator 3 and also the rest of Terminator 3), and the trailers were great. And for as much as I mocked and ridiculed McG for being an unrepentant man-boy-douche with a joke for a name, a history of terrible films, and having a small penis, I wanted this to work out, I really did. I wanted to walk out of the theater and say “Hey, I had this McG guy all wrong. He’s a great director. I bet his dick is huuuuuge.” Nope. He is really bad at his job! And in this economy!
First of all, enough with all the screaming and yelling. This movie should been called Screaminator: Yellvation. I’m all for some loud, aggressive action that just makes you want to get a tattoo of a Diet Red Bull on your FUCKING NECK, but this was ridiculous. Every other line of this movie was shouted into my face, and the only person who could possibly have found this more obnoxious than me was the BABY that someone had brought with them (to a 10PM showing on a Thursday, because of how parenting is hard!).
Second of all, the motorcycle terminators were the biggest disappointment in cinema in 2009 (nice try, Lars Von Trier). They were so neat and scary in the trailers, but it turns out they are incredibly easy to kill. Sometimes you can even use them as slingshots to ruin robot spaceships. And that’s fresh! (That is not fresh!)
Speaking of using motorcycle terminators as slingshots to destroy robot spaceships, almost all of the action in this action movie felt really tired and unexciting. Not as tired and unexciting as the slow-motion fight scenes in Watchmen, say, or the Photoshopped mutant.jpg fights in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but still. Bruce Willis launched a cop car into a helicopter last year in Live Free or Die Hard (now that movie was how you do exciting-retarded), Wolverine launched himself off a motorcycle this summer, it’s like enough with the throwing stuff at helicopters/robot spaceships. Not throwing a motorcycle at a helicopter is the new black.
But on to the actual movie as a chapter in the Terminator series: huh? If you think about it, absolutely nothing happens. At the end of the movie, we’re in the exact same narrative place that we were in the beginning. John Conner is going to continue to fight against the machines. The end. This whole thing was a narrative red herring. Even Terminator 3, which was basically a rehashing of Terminator 2 but with tits, brought us to Skynet’s self-actualization and the global Apocalypse. This was just…nothing. Not that we didn’t get another half-imagined exploration of the complications of time travel, America’s new favorite thing. Like, again, OK, if Skynet kills Kyle Reese and he can never be sent back in time and John Conner can never be born then John Conner would never have been born and this movie would never have happened. Fuck you, Terminator: Salvation. You are not a good enough movie to warrant me spending another second trying to think through your plot as if it makes sense.
AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE ENDING. Although to be fair, it does remind me of that New England Journal of Medicine study about people who need heart transplants because they got stabbed with a big piece of metal?! Ugh. See, that’s the thing: if even someone who by all rights has no idea what he’s talking about, ever, knows that that’s not how things work, your movie been had problems. For example, I also know that you should not detonate a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION when your helicopter is still HOVERING OVER IT.
AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE HAM-HANDED JESUS IMAGERY*. Seriously, don’t even get me started. Please.
Sam Worthington was fine in this movie, I guess, except when he alligator wrestled that watersnake terminator? That was ridiculous. But good job. He only had minimal trouble hiding his obvious British accent even. Anton Yelchin was fine in this movie. I like him pretty good. Blood Moongold was ridiculous, although I’m pretty sure her ridiculousness started with someone writing into the screenplay “She is a tough fighter in the resistance and her name is BLAIR.” Christian Bale needs to apologize AGAIN for his on-set meltdown because come on. The cinematographer could have WALKED INTO THE BACKGROUND of any of the shots in this movie and IT WOULD NOT HAVE AFFECTED THE PERFORMANCES. And Common was the same as he is in every movie. Common.
I think it says something that the part where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face was CGI’ed onto a bodybuilder’s naked body was one of the least terrible parts of the movie. It was kind of fun, even. Yiiikes.
And that gets to the root of the movie’s aesthetic conflict. The original Terminator was a campy b-movie that embraced its low-brow ethos even as it worked on a relatively high-brow narrative level. It was fun! And if you want to turn it into a turgid, piss-yellow drag, knee-deep in nuclear ash, that’s certainly a legitimate direction to take it in, but you’re going to need a better director than McG. The guy can’t direct his way out of a MLB commercial.
Not that everyone agrees.
All in all, a huge disappointment, and yet it is a disappointment steeped in optimism. There were plenty of red flags along the way, from the original selection of McWorst, to the recent news that they had to rewrite the whole script to Crystian Babyle (perfect), and yet we wanted the best from everyone. We gave them the benefit of the doubt even when they did not deserve it, and they fucked us, but something tells me we will fall for it all over again next time. Because we are great.
Right?
*OK, but Dude, McG, even film students don’t use that much heavy-handed Jesus imagery. Even MADONNA doesn’t use that much heavy-handed Jesus imagery. Ed Hardy saw this movie’s heavy-handed Jesus imagery and was like “ew, lame.”
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My favorite part was when they showed a trailer for District 9.
my favorite part was when i woke up just as the end credits started.
My favorite part was when I only had to pay the matinee price to see this garbage.
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I’d also like to point out that exchanging hearts is not as easy as saying, “here, take this heart” and automagically, boom, there you go.
Let’s keep in mind also that the Resistance’s chief awesome surgeon babe was originally a veterinarian, not a heart-transplant surgeon. I’m pretty sure that shit is hard to learn, especially when living the horrid post-apocalyptic wastelands.
Oh, McG.
I was wondering the whole movie if there was any point to Kate’s character. I guess that was it. But still ugh!
I dunno, I thought she had a pretty BIG role, get it? (Still got it.)
I was hoping they would play the BaleOut Remix during the credits.
it’s sad when an unaffiliated mockery of an irrelevant incident is the only redeeming value of a film.
but, srsly, that song kicks ass.
Man I went into the movie getting all excited and mustering up all the caring I could about the Terminator franchise, and I walked out of the theater not even wanting to talk about what just happened. I saw it with a friend too. We were like “Where’s the bathroom?” I didn’t even want to talk about how lame and disappointing it was or whatever, I just didn’t care times a million. I was like “I wonder how Gabe is even going to care enough to write about it tomorrow.”
I had no idea a movie filled with so much action could be so dreadfully boring…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this movie was so lousy it makes the Sarah Connor Chronicles look like The Wire. It makes Terminator 3 look like Terminator 2.
I’m officially tired of grumbly, mush-mouth Bale.
I think I might have fallen asleep at some point because I don’t remember large sections of the middle. Then again, I was also really drunk. It’s really the only way to see it.
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yeah, I had a 30 oz. martini (afternoon special, don’t judge me) beforehand and got a little dozey around the time Blair started rambling on about how she wanted to make little machine babies with T-4700 and how she was going to get those chains off him, she would, don’t leave me Juliet!! or whatever. Then the effing dog (what?) barking at the hydro-terminators (what?) by the riverside woke me up.
TSCC doesn’t need a shitty movie to make it look good. what is does need is for scifi/syfy to adopt its cancelled ass and keep it going. then we can all forget T4.
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McG is totally to blame for taking a turd of a script and thinking he could spin it into cinematic gold. I’m not saying the helicopter crashes weren’t toally awesome, I’m just saying that McG could have chosen not to put his childish half-name onto a nonsense script.
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yes but there is such a thing as an australian accent.. which sam worthington quite clearly has.. being a good little west australian boy who been had all growed up..
A lot of TermSalv’s (a name I just made up) problems are contained in this link” http://tinyurl.com/okts7o
I thought the movie was horribly mediocre. The plot didn’t fucking exist! “Oh hai, we’re Skynet. Hmm, we’ve captured Kyle Reese, #1 on our To-Kill List? Perfect, let’s hold him in captivity until John Connor comes instead of FUCKING KILLING HIM! That makes perfect sense and totally won’t lead to our HQ getting nuked or anything!”
Not to defend SKYNET or McG or anything, but it’s possible that the Terminator time travel is like “We can’t change anything because of destiny” Losty time travel OR EVEN “If we change the past our present remains the same and it just creates a parallel universe where everything is different” time travel, like Star Trek, and that Skynet knew this, and knew that John Connor didn’t know this or wasn’t sure, and knew they could lure him into their bases with Kyle.
ALSO, now that I’m thinking about the stupid movie again, I’ve found some things to get mad about:
* It should’ve explored themes of salvation for the machines as well as humans, especially since it had that cyborg guy as an in! It should’ve been about working towards harmony or some shit. Not just “US VS THEM, WHAT MAKES US GREAT IS WE’RE GOOD AND THEY’RE BAD!” Also, relying on the theme of “We value human life and they don’t!” is lame because that gets blurry in war anyway and the humans were just as violent and killy as the machines were. Like when they were shooting at Blair in that one scene when she was trying to help the cyborg guy escape, and it wasn’t even like presented as a moral conundrum for John or humanity, it was like “Shoot that bitch!” It didn’t do much to make you root for humanity or even care where these rag tag ruffians ended up.
* John Connor can’t EVER trust machines? What about Terminator 2? That was him. Remember? “I’ll be back”? Crying? Thumbs up? And yet he’s so untrusting of machines that he’d permit a rocket launcher being fired at an innocent woman who disagrees with him? Despite the whole father figure life lesson? Then what was the fucking point of (the most interesting aspect of) Terminator 2?
* Was that Sarah with the cancer in the first scene? Who was that? They never explained why he was robotnikized since Skynet wasn’t even around at that time. Whatever.
* I hated how that fucking girl, Blair, was supposed to be a love interest, and she was introduced like halfway into the movie, as a Mary Sue just dangling from a tree waiting to be rescued. She was the female lead from the 20% mark to the 80% mark of the movie, but only in three scenes. They could’ve at least shown her earlier in the movie, interacting with John at the base or something. Or did they? Either way, she wasn’t noticeable.
* That cute little black girl and Kyle were by far the most enjoyable parts of the movie, but they needed to be more of them and they needed to be more complicated and warmer.
* That old white haired woman at the gas station basically didn’t ever come into play at all.
* John’s wife being pregnant was also irrelevant. Okay? Why do we need to know that. She just looked fat and then you could kind of see she was pregnant in like the last scene but by then I stopped caring.
* The more I think about Terminator 2, the more annoyed I am. Remember when they stopped at the gas station and those kids were shooting at each other with the pop guns and John was like “We’re not gonna make it.” “Why? The machines?” “No, the people.” That scene was deep! It was supposed to imply that humanity is doomed by it’s own warlike be behavior, and the machines were just holding a mirror up to that. And you were supposed to think that potential future John Connor, with his Jesus symbolism, was going to maybe UNITE humans and machines, or convince humans to deviate from their violent nature and strive for peace, or something. But NOPE! It turns out the reason he’s the savior is because he’s really good at army stuff? And he can give orders to people through the radio that slightly contradict the strategic opinions of the person in charge (also why isn’t John the person in charge in the first place?) and everyone will listen. Stupid.
No, they can definitely change the future in the Terminator series. Not to be excessively nerdy (to be excessively nerdy) but T1 moved Judgment Day back, T2 originally STOPPED Judgment Day (people thought Old Sarah Connor dying happy with all her grandkids was too happy of an ending) and ended up pushing it back again in the real ending (it was moved from ’97 to ’03)
Could the “irrelevant” pregnancy have something to do with the “we value human life” thing? Like some sort of anti-abortion message? I’m unlikely to see this movie, but those just jumped out at me.
Small nit, I may have misunderstood your usage, but generally “Mary Sue” characters don’t need to be rescued.
Spot on, Gabe. Absolutely nothing happened in the entire movie. And might I add that it was dreadfully humorless? I actually enjoyed T3 just because it didn’t take itself too seriously. But this one, ugh. The only time it showed any signs of life was in the rapid succession of previous film references (when Christian Bale says, “I’ll be back;” then the fake Arnold shows up; and then he dumps lava on the terminator before freezing it). Then again, this is exactly what I was expecting. The Terminator movies were always about Arnold Schwarzenegger first, then Linda Hamilton, then special effects. Nowhere on that list is John Connor. So centering a movie on him, with only cameos from Arnold and Hamilton didn’t look too interesting. And, surprise, it wasn’t.
Side note about Common: Is it just me, or are filmmakers afraid of giving him roles that require a vocabulary beyond monosyllables?
I hate to be that guy, but a few errors: Live Free or Die Hard came out in ’07, not ’08. And it was adequate. Sam Worthington is Australian, not British (one of his lines with MOON BLOODGOOD, a name that reminds me of MST3K doing Space Mutiny, was blatantly Australian).
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this film was a major fail
Was there supposed to be a link with “tattoo of a Diet Red Bull on your FUCKING NECK”? Because that’s probably a thing that exists, right?
I read in Parade that they plan to do 2 more sequels. Maybe they can re-vamp the series and act like T3 and this crap didn’t happen and start from T2.
Team Resistance: Fuck
YeahWhatevermy point is this: i dont care how important john connor is, YOU DO NOT TAKE THE HEART OF THE ONE UNKILLABLE TERMINATOR SOLDIER YOUR SIDE HAS. seriously. that is logic 101. get some other lackey to donate their heart. mr. terminator is a good card to have in this increasingly moronic game this franchise is turning into.
There were two terrible terrible things in this movie not yet addressed.
1. McG referencing Schindler’s List
I just re-watched Schindler’s List two weeks ago (because I like to be sad), so admittedly it was top-of mind for me, but the moment on the transport where the woman indicates that there are rumors that the robots will or won’t kill them is right out of Shindler’s List. PLUS, they are called transports. Plus, it just LOOKED like it. You know what they say: If it looks like a reference to Spielberg’s meditation on the holocaust, and it smells like a reference to Spielberg’s meditation on the holocaust, then McG should go to jail.
They say that all the time.
2. I also watched Charlie’s Angel’s last month (see earlier liking to be sad), and the moment when Blair warns three dudes that they are going to need help when she’s done with them is straight out of Charlie’s Angels. McG referenced his own movie! Alongside Schindler’s List!
Plus Jesus imagery. Relax, metaphorical Jews, robot Jesus is coming and he’s bringing Drew Barrymore!
This review was like birth control for movies. Thank God I don’t have to see this now (I can make my own decisions, but this just confirms everything I suspected). Also, Live Free or Die Hard was the illest.
Live Free or Die Hard was a travesty; a stain on my brain
Helena Bonham Carter as this movie’s version of Colonel “The Architect” Sanders from the Matrix: Reloaded is just more proof that Hollywood needs to give up on AI as compelling villains. A talky, over-explaining evil robot at the climax of the story is exactly what we want out of our action movies (it is not exactly what we want out of our action movies).
I dunno. What else was horrible? The unexplained preggers wife? Sam Worthington swimming, or something, to San Francisco in a day? Ninja eyepaint Blair telling someone she has just met, for the first time in her life, that he is a “good man” even if he doesn’t know it? ANOTHER mute post-apocalyptic spunky kid? White-haired old lady with a hilarious cane? Post-apocalyptic uggs, all around.
Can somebody tell me why the machines still have numerous terminals that allow humans to interact with their systems? I mean, you want to kill them, right? Probably unplug those USB keyboards, then, RoBro.
To be fair to this movie, the wrecking truck chase sequence was pretty great. And the hand-to-hand fight stuff with Marcus was also surprisingly well done, I thought.
Also, I want a little mute kid that has everything you could possibly need in a little bag. Did she mug Felix the Cat or something?
This movie was terrible. I put my not-already-spoken-about problems in list form.
1) Why would the robots make a robot motorcycle that could be ridden by people at all? Why not just line the whole top with super-sharp spikes so that in case they were taken down they couldn’t be recomissioned by their enemy?
2) Apparently you can just jump in an ocean and enter a submarine underwater. That is something that happens.
3) Despite it being the post-apocalypse judgement day where everything sucks and robots hunt humans, there is still apparently a market for orthodontics, because they kept showing people smiling straight at the camera with PERFECT TEETH.
Ugh. I did enjoy Michael Ironside as the asshole in charge though. A++++ type casting, will cast again.
unneccessary film school knowledge droppin on ya:
they didn’t CGI Arnold’s face onto anything; they actually used a body/face mold still around from the 1st movie. It was a “real” effect, no cgimo
The movie was a letdown, but after “T3,” come on, not THAT bad. It was a different animal, not a chase-driven action movie, but a bleak post-apocalypse film. The ‘homages,’ especially the subtle, motif-driven ones, were a nice touch.
McD+
To be fair, Terminator was better than Wolverine. Also to be fair, it was stupid. It should have been PG-13 for “headaches you’ll get from non-stop asinine action sequences and also, yelling.”
Keep in mind, this movie was written by the guys responsible for Terminator 3 AND Catwoman.
Wait I have to defend Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you can still be an adult and enjoy the Live action movie
sexman’s all grow’d up
I’m pretty easy going when it comes to flicks like this. Keeping my expectations low keeps my disappointment low. At worst, I want to pass 2 hours without thinking. But this movie had me thinking the whole how hard it sucked. And it sucked. Out loud. Big time.
I was promised breasts, and after seeing the movie and moon’s performance, I can see why mr. mcg fought for them
Summer blockbuster movie wins : 1 (Startrek)
Summer blockbuster movie fails : 40 (25 for Wolverine) (15 Terminator Salvation)
Terminator: SalFAILtion
Actual (but paraphrased) conversation upon leaving the theater:
“WHY THE F*** WOULD HE NEED A HEART TRANSPLANT? HE WAS STABBED IN THE GUT. THAT IS NOWHERE NEAR HIS HEART FIRST OFF”
“He wasn’t stabbed in the gut”
“Yeah dude, he was stabbed in the chest.”
“OH I’M SORRY I GUESS I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW HEART FAILURE WORKS. I GUESS I DIDN’T REALIZE THAT WHEN SOMEONE STABS YOU IN THE CHEST, YOUR HEART GRADUALLY SLOWS DOWN BEAT BY BEAT BY BEAT FOR HOURS UNTIL IT’S JUST THE FAINTEST WHISPER OF A SOUND AND YOU FADE INTO DEATH LIKE AN ANGEL….UNLESS YOU GET A TRANSPLANT FROM A ROBOT”
“Keep your voice down. We’re in public. Jesus.”
“I HATE THIS MOVIE. I HATE IT.”
My feelings of the movie cooled down a bit after. I think this movie would have been OK if it didn’t have a million tiny little problems that joined together to make an overall bad movie. Yknow? I use that measure of description to differentiate it from the godawful Spiderman 3 or X-Men 3 films which had a million BIG problems (i.e. everything). Rotten Tomatoes’ rating of 34% sounds exactly right.
OK, I went into this movie cold open on a fool’s errand, because not only had I never seen any previous Terminator movie, I was informed that they were “epic cinematic tour de forces.”
THREE SUBSEQUENT QUESTIONS:
1. If it wanted to kill all humans, why didn’t Skynet just poison the air? Or the water?? Or kill off all the food supplies (i.e. coyotes because what?)??
2. In a post-apocalyptic wasteland where you are fighting an endless battle against starvation and death, eating coyotes and murdering each other to survive, why in the fuck would you keep a pet dog? WHO IS FEEDING THAT DOG AND ON WHAT?
3. Hey, did anyone remember to download the ENTIRE DATABASE OF SKYNET STRUCTURE, INFORMATION AND HISTORY out of Marcus before they drop-dragged his heart into John? Anyone? Star?
I refuse to even acknowledge the midday desert heart surgery. Nope. Won’t do it. I refuse.
Um could I just mention the worst edit I have ever seen in a film ever. john connor jumps from helicopter into the middle of the ocean – cut – standing wet in submarine.
right.
ok.
McG.
i liked it.
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It was disappointing because T2 was the Holy grail of action films: intelligent, exciting, funny, magical and stupid all at once.
Salvation meanwhile is poor on almost all creative levels: the script is poor, the logic behind the script is VERY poor (I LOVED the alarms sounding at the SkyNet complex – apparently robots have ears), the relentless gritty photography looked great for the first 30 minutes but you were numb to it by the end, where was the music?, the new robots were all disappointing and weak, the direction was average, the acting mostly terrible, the casting almost bizarre (I love Mr Ironside too, but really? World goes to hell he’s in charge? Common??? Common??), the production design only about the level of a Mad Max ripoff, and on and on.
Cameron brought logic and emotional meaning to the action genre, and unless you have Bay’s ridiculous visual chops you actually need those to make a decent blockbuster (see Knight, The Dark).
So very very sad.
/goes and sits in a dark room for a while
Everyone missed the Short Circuit reference. Perhaps the Schindler’s List reference was WTF enough.
When they capture the terminator John Connor orders ‘have him disassembled’ and then when someone asks what he means Blair goes ‘Killed!’.
Disassemble! No disassemble!!
Of course, Ally Sheedy’s love for Johnny Five was more real than anything in this entire movie.
It’s not as bad as people are saying. It’s flawed for sure but not THAT bad. Could have been better. Like people are saying…better than T3 or Wolverine…but not as good as Star Trek or T1 or T2.
Hey! We couldn’t find a babysitter, so lay off. Junior enjoyed the shouting, just like he gets at home, by the way.
why did anyone get into a helicopter, when clearly helicopters blow up the minute a person gets into it.
I’ve been in Vietnam the past 3 months so I missed this movie and Star Trek. I went to the local dvd shop in Da Nang this morning and picked up pirated copies of Star Trek and Terminator Salvation. After inserting Terminator Salvation into my laptop I realized 4 minutes into the movie I wasnt watching Terminator Salvation. I was watching fucking “The Terminators” starring Jeremy FUCKING London!!
Anyway, I didnt get a chance to finish watching “The Terminators” because it was pretty damn horrible. But seeing everyone rip on this movie, i figured i wont be missing that 1 dollar i spent.
Screaminator, ha ha.