David J. Williams

Ah, Terminator Salvation. I wrote yesterday about how there’s a lot less daylight between this movie and Star Trek than I think people give it credit for . . . but today I need to tackle T4 on its own terms. And no, this (obviously) wasn’t anything approaching the level of Cameron. Christ only knows what JC would have done with two hours and two hundred million to spend on the future war that we’d only seen in glimpses. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but there was a line in one of the trailers that I don’t think ever made it into the movie—Connor’s statement that “I don’t know if we can win this war.”  That sense of desperation just wasn’t there.  Cameron’s future rebels didn’t even dare to venture out in the day, it was so bad.  You never saw the sun in his Machine War–one more thing that made those vignettes in T/T2 cool as hell, whereas Salvation doggedly went all Road Warrior on us.

Of course,  Salvation also got caned by Everybody and Their Cat for being way too dark, so it would have taken a genius like Cameron to make it (literally) darker still and get away with it.  The writers also clearly had problems deciding whether to focus on Bale or Worthington, and ultimately split the difference in a somewhat suboptimal way.  Yet while Bale never really found his groove, Worthington was an instant star (as soon as we get past that first scene involving Helena Bonham Carter).

And the overall arc in Salvation—that this is all part of Skynet’s elaborate trap—was #$# cool. Of course, if you’re going to lure the leader of the resistance into your HQ, you might want to send a little more hardware into the room to get him than one quasi-obsolete Governor of California.  And while Worthington was compelling, he wasn’t nearly magnetic enough for Moon Bloodgood to act like a total moron and just bail him out so he can go do his Terminator thing.  But I’m sticking with my premise of yesterday–this was a Good/Decent Movie released at the Wrong Time that thus became the Worst Piece of Shit Ever.  The mob will gnash its teeth and howl for blood.  Like Skynet, they shall have it.

Looking for something to get your mind off Salvation? Go buy BURNING SKIES!