This summer started out bad for me and hyped movies. Wolverine was shitty. Very shitty. Disappointingly shitty. It actually ruined my expectation of all summer films. It was like opening that gift on Christmas you thought was a Nintendo and found out was a grow your own rock kit. Star Trek was released and I couldn't even bring myself to go see it in fear of getting let down again.
I have yet to see the new 'Trek, though I have heard good things. But I was able to recover my post-Wolverine depression and get out of the house to see Terminator: Salvation.
In stride with the other Terminator movies, TS brings us to the future where John Connor is fighting for the survival of the human race. Christian Bale plays the Christ-like Connor and Sam Worthington plays a dude.
Now, the Terminator story isn't all that complex (how they fill a whole show about it baffles me), and in TS it is bare bones. If you don't remember who John Connor or his father, Kyle Reese are, don't worry. Their names are said over and over again, and there is so little dialogue in the movie that the character's names probably take up half the script.The little dialogue is due to the minimal story line, and the minimal story line is due to the intense, non-stop action.
Seriously, any movie that has two separate atomic explosions that don't involve Hiroshima or Nagasaki is okay in my book. The Terminators look damn cool and the opening scene is gritty and reminded me of a futuristic Black Hawk Down. The Resistance unloads an amazing amount of ammo into the unstoppable Terminators and the Terminators respond with their own arsenals. It is cool seeing different T-X00's and all the kick ass ships they have. The scenes are just insane at times, and the sound is terrific.
What I never got was how these unstoppable terminators fall victim to .50 cal shells. If I remember correctly the Arnold Terminator of past could take slugs to the face and just keep on walking. Where are the lasers? Or at least photon canons? Anything we could have developed besides an M-16? Seems to me like we would already be dead if all we had were just bullets to fight these things. The Terminators also seem so well organized and well equipped that it is almost foolish that there is a "war". It seems impossible for any human to survive anywhere, and it is almost as if the terminators allow the human race to exist. I mean, they have heat signature targeting and all that jazz, how can you hide from that?
But anyway, the movie was entertaining. The booms and bangs kept my eyes busy and my ears dancing, but that was all. The complete lack of story line was frustrating,and it surprised me that Christian Bale's character was as small as it was. Sam Worthington really drives the ship. The Dark Knight spends most of the time speaking in that Batman voice in very low, whispering tones saying nothing but scripted prophetical statements. There is nothing real about this John Connor prophet. He survives everything and knows even more. What made T2 so great was how they took time to build on Arnie's Terminator, making him a father figure to a young JC. When he destroys himself and gives that thumbs up, it means something, the audience and the characters had some sort of emotional reaction, or at least reference. I could really care less about any of the characters in this movie, I just wanted more explosions.
So Terminator was better than Wolverine, but not as good as I needed my salvation to be. Only Revenge of the Fallen can save me now.
- Dabs
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