I saw Terminator Salvation on DVD last night, and, contrary to the ton of criticism and weak box office it received last summer, I thought the movie was pretty good - powerful, intellectually provocative, with fine action scenes. It was not as good as the first two Terminator movies, to be sure, but it was better in some ways that the third Terminator, and makes an important contributor to the overall Terminator story and lore.The action takes place at a time in the future when John Connor is high in the resistance command, but has not yet taken command, and has not yet sent Kyle Reese back to save Sarah Connor from the bad Arnold T-800 Terminator. But the most compelling character is someone/something new - Marcus Wright, first seen as a prisoner being executed in 2003 (before the rise of the machines), but who turns up in the future in the same time as John Connor. Turns out Marcus hasn't time traveled, though. He's been rebuilt into a half-human, half-machine - a cyborg - but by whom? And for what purpose? With the characteristics of both human and machine, Marcus makes for the perfect infiltrator - he can pass as human (until a machine-killing mine unveils him), and as a machine (able to pass Skynet scans). If the humans had created him, Marcus would be an ideal destroyer of Skynet, and vice versa. The denouement hinges of what Marcus really is, and is played out just right.
There's no time travel in this Terminator movie, which for me is unfortunate, but the John Connor we see has lived through the earlier Terminator movies - he knows he will later have to send Kyle back to save his mother, and become his father - and this makes Kyle, a teenager at this time, the person to most need protection and saving in this story. Early on, we and John Connor learn that John is the second most wanted human on Skynet's hit list, and Kyle is the first. Which makes sense, because if Skynet kills John Connor but leaves Kyle alive, he could conceivably still go back in time and father another John Connor with Sarah. Thus, even though there is no time travel per se in this story, it informs the story in a way that makes it a fine, harrowing, paradoxically pummeling time travel narrative anyway. (One of my commentators in this blog, "radabad," wonders why Skynet didn't just kill Kyle when it had him in custody, instead of using Kyle as lure to get John. See my response, in the 5th comment below.)
No mention is made of any of The Sarah Connor Chronicles in Terminator Salvation, but nothing in the movie contradicts what we saw on television for two years, and we do get to see a good minute of bad Arnold in the movie. All in all, if you're a Terminator and/or time travel buff, I highly recommend Terminator Salvation. Don't listen to the critics. They don't know it, but they were probably programmed to dislike it.
See also reviews of The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.1 Cameron's Back ... 2.2 Firing on All Cylinders ... 2.3 Who, Truly, Is Agent Ellison? ... 2.4: Meet Allison ... 2.5: Unpacking the Future ... 2.6: Terminator Mom, Human Daughter ... 2.7: The Saving Robbery and Cromartie ... 2.8 Perspectives and Death ... 2.9: An Idiot's Guide to Time Travel in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... 2.10: Riley Lashes Out at Facebook ... 2.11: Cameron Meets A. E. Housman and Andre Bazin ... 2.12 Sarah Connor Chronicles in Triple Time ... 2.13: Space, Time, and Blogging in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... 2.18: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the Life of Riley ... 2.20: Sarah Connor vs. Death in Two Forms ... 2.21: Profound Lessons from a Kidnapping in The Sarah Connor Chronicles ... The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 Finale
And from Season 1: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 1 and 2 ... 3 ... 4. A Robot Primer ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8-9
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8 comments:
A movie with bags of atmosphere - BAGS of it! That's what I liked the most. I saw it before I moved to Mordan House. But the arrival of the CGI Arnie was unnecessary.
Steph x
Paul,
I generally love your reviews and critiques, but I generally disagree with you on this one.
As an action movie, Terminator Salvation does a very good job providing hear thumping action with new terminators and ways of destruction to the series. However as a sci-fi movie and an addendum to the Terminator series, it really misses the mark.
First of all, the terminator series hasn't decided on a theme yet as to whether there is a fate or if everything is inevitable... the first two make it clear that there is "no fate," while the third one tells us that judgment day was unavoidable. It seems the same is true in this one because Kyle WILL father John Connor and he WILL be the salvation of humanity.
As far as Kyle being number 1 on the watch-list, the machines had him in their possession, new about it, and used him to lure John Connor into their midst. Why? If the killed Kyle there would be no John Connor and they knew that.
That aside, when John Connor is finally in their midst, the home of skynet, the only send one terminator after him? Why? They have, assuming, hundreds of terminators they could throw at him but send only one and allow him to escape.
I completely understand that sci-fi requires suspension of disbelief and it may seem that I'm nitpicking, but these seem like too vast of errors in judgment on sky-net's part to make this film stand on its own merits.
Of course, that's just my $0.02, which is probably worth less than that.
Happy New Year to Paul, your family, and the rest of your readers!
Hey, Stephanie - welcome to Infinite Regress! I agree that the Arnold wasn't at all necessary, but it still nice.
Rabadad - glad you generally like my reviews and critics - and as for disagreeing on this one, that's what makes intelligent discourse and enjoyable debate...
One factual point I'm not sure about: when did we see that the machines knew they had Kyle? If they were sure they had Kyle, then I agree with your logical analysis about that weak point in the plot.
As for the machines only sending one Terminator after John - well, they were distracted by Marcus, and the machines did send their best (Arnold)...
Ok, I just looked at the relevant part of the video. You're that the woman roboticist tells Wright that the plan was to get Wright to lure John to SkyNet by telling John that Kyle was being held there.
But when exactly did Skynet confirm this? I guess there is no reason for Skynet to think Wright's info was wrong.
So, you're right, this is one soft point in the plot.
But the very fact that we can focus on points like this shows that Salvation was a fundamentally worthwhile movie, which did add to the canon :)
One other reason why Skynet didn't just kill Kyle as the surest way of erasing John: Kyle father John in Universe 1. If Kyle is killed, Universe 2 is created, in which John never existed. But it's not clear that John 1 would cease to exist in Universe 2.
This gets into the metaphysics of time travel - and my universe 1 and 2 analyses - which I've discussed here in my review of FlashForward, Lost, Deja Vu, etc.
If SkyNet was aware of such time travel analyses, it might have thought the safest course of action to be killing both Kyle and John.
I agree with you about the inherent paradoxes with time travel which makes it a slippery slope to use as a key plot point... better to just use it for story development than risk the associations with the grandfather paradox.
I haven't seen the movie since it came out, so I'm not quite sure exactly when it was confirmed about Kyle. So you got me there :)
I still stand by my original position that it was a decent action sci-fi flick, but there were several short comings (not just with the time travel piece, but with character development... there was little fleshing or talk about John's pregnant wife) that make it short in the Terminator series (although better than 3).
One thing people seem to not notice is that the John created by the original Terminator MUST have been a different one from the John who sent Kyle back in time (think it through). But then Kyle gets Sarah pregnant and alters the timeline with a new version of John who, expecting him to be this great leader, she trains to be exactly that.
That's another reason killing Kyle really doesn't make that much difference (Paul's reason is also entirely correct in my opinion). They tried it before and just ended up with a, possibly, even more formidable version of John than the original one they tried to go back in time to prevent.
As in the previous two movies, there is, along with the extreme violence and destruction, a lot of wit in the proceedings.
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