Guest Blogger Nathan Presents: So You Won't Have To - Terminator: Salvation

Greetings, readers! As promised on Wednesday, our Guest Blogger today is Nathan, who stepped up to the plate and swallowed down a steaming pile of Terminator: Salvation, So You Won't Have To, and - more importantly - So I Won't Have To. For his efforts, he receives a copy of Blood Car, one of My Favorite Movies of the Decade (Nobody Else Was Going to Mention).

Without further ado, here's Nathan:

People tend to question my taste when I tell them that I actually enjoyed Terminator 3. While I acknowledge that it has its failings, it never ceases to be fun and more importantly it feels as if it belongs in the series in both tone and mythology. Terminator: Salvation does none of these things.

What we get instead is an uneven and at times confusing movie that tries to emulate and reference the first two Terminator films without actually trying to BE a Terminator film. The writers and McG constantly throw out callbacks to the earlier films:

A chase sequence featuring a big truck and a motorcycle? Check!

“I’ll be back?” Certainly!

A factory brawl with lots of sparks and molten metal? Absolutely!

“Come with me if you want to live?” Couldn’t live without it!

Now, I’m not saying that references to the other films are inherently a bad thing. It’s just that they are handled poorly. In fact there is actually a perfect moment for John Connor to speak the iconic “Come with me…” line to Kyle Reese the first time they meet, but the line had already been wasted early in the film.

Despite this, the real problem with Terminator: Salvation lies within the handling of John Connor and the ongoing mythology. Most of Christian Bales scenes are flat and pointless. It’s not the fault of the acting, Bale does a perfectly fine job of getting all he can out of a one note role that feels shoehorned into the movie, but when it comes down to it the majority of his scenes could have easily been removed without really effecting the film overall.

The plot fares even worse upon close scrutiny. Skynet chooses an incredibly convoluted method of achieving their goal of ending the resistance movement. Basically it boils down to them tricking Connor into entering a Skynet prison camp to save Kyle Reese. The problem with this is that if the robots are aware of Reese’s importance, it would simply make better sense for them to kill Reese themselves thus negating Connor’s existence (a possible occurrence which is explicitly pointed out in the movie.)

Now, I don’t want it to come across as if there is nothing positive about this movie. The acting is very good overall, with standout performances by Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright and Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. The action sequences (at least some of them) are also a high point, especially the scene involving a 50 foot tall human harvester robot that illogically (yet kind of awesomely) has motorcycle shaped robots in each of its legs.

The more I think about the movie though, the more I think that it would be the most improved if all of the Terminator mythology were removed. It would simply take some cosmetic changes (names and designs of the robots) and the removal of a couple of scenes for it to become a reasonably entertaining post apocalyptic robot movie. However the overall film feels so different from those previous that all the references to them and their characters simply feel forced. Unfortunately, for it to exist comfortably within its intended universe it would need an overhaul from the ground up. I can’t say that I hated it, but I also can’t fully recommend seeing it. You should probably just pop in one of the first three instead.