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By Cyadon
SCS.com Forum Moderator

(Warning – review is full of spoilers – do NOT read if you do not wish to be spoiled!!!)

On Monday I was given the pleasure of seeing a sneak peek of the new movie Terminator: Salvation starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington. The movie is different in feel and pacing than its three predecessors. This is not a chase film, as the others were, with our protagonists doing what it takes to escape Skynet’s minions, but instead is very much the war movie that was advertised.

After an opening title montage that features the stars’ names embedded within computer code, we start the movie in 2003 at the Longview, TX State Penitentiary (as a Texan, I can state this is a real location, and rather infamous for exactly what happens later on in this section of the movie). A man named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is approached by Dr. Elena Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter), who is obviously quite ill. Marcus reveals that he is convicted of murdering his brother and two sheriff’s deputies and is going to die later that day, his execution scheduled by the state. Kogan begs him to sign waivers that will donate his body to her researched to find a cure for the cancer that is eating away at her. He agrees at the price of a kiss, which he takes from her unexpectedly, remarking that he now knows what death tastes like. Kogan goes on to watch as the Texas authorities put Wright to death.

Fifteen years later, Judgment Day is come and gone, and the world is reduced to a twisted ruin filled with war. The scene opens with a raucous attack on a Skynet facility led by John Connor (Christian Bale), full of crashing A-10s and exploding T-1 Tanks. They make it to the heart of the underground laboratory after breaking the above ground defenses and find scores of human prisoners, research data, and a strange signal. They begin transmitting it back to Command while Connor goes topside to see why their extraction chopper crew isn’t responding to radio transmissions. The pilots are dead and a Skynet transport is just lifting off as Connor gets back to the helicopters. He uses the chopper to fly after the transport just as a nuke goes off underground, killing the entire assault force and sending Connor’s chopper into a tailspin. After recovering from the crash (and destroying a legless T-600), Connor finds he is the sole survivor.

We find out the Connor is not, in fact, the leader of the Resistance, but a high level officer forced to answer to several multinational generals hiding in a submarine beneath the Pacific Ocean. Their spokesman is General Ashdown (Michael Ironside), a grizzled, hidebound American with four stars on his collar. British, African, and Russian generals are also in attendance. After some dramatics, Connor is finally able to meet with them and discuss what was found and the nuke that killed all his men. The generals show Connor the signal that was found before the nuke went off and reveal that it can be calibrated to be an off switch. To turn off any machine that hears it, maybe even Skynet itself. Connor volunteers to be the guinea pig and used it to make sure it works.

Back at the ravaged battlefield where Connor’s men died, from the irradiated muck a nude Marcus Wright digs himself up and screams to the heavens in pain. After collecting himself he finds the clothes of a dead Resistance fighter and starts walking, trying to find anything to tell him where he is. It’s not until he finds the skeletal towers of Los Angeles that he begins to understand what’s going on. A T-600 nearly kills him when the appearance of a teenage boy saves his life. They lead the machine into a booby trap, destroying it, and at that point the young man reveals his name to be Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). Kyle is accompanied by a young mute girl named Star (Jadagrace). As the three get to know each other, Marcus repairs their radio and allows the three of them to hear the nightly transmissions of John Connor, and the detailed description of what to do and how to fight each type of Terminator and how they are weakest.

With that, the three of them know they need to find this John Connor, each for their own reason. Kyle for his fervent devotion to the Resistance, Star to stay with Kyle, and Marcus because he needs to find answers and Connor is the one most likely to have them.

Terminator: Salvation does not focus solely on John Connor, but the story is equally shared between him and Marcus and Kyle. Each of the three leads have their role to play and I thought it worked well in not focusing solely on Connor. Dealing with the machinations of the Resistance (and there’s a fair amount of politicking as generals from Command feel slighted by all of Connor’s abilities and knowledge), but instead allows the story to move back and forth between the most action packed parts of the stories that Marcus and Connor are following.

When it comes to action, T4 is filled with it. I couldn’t find a slow point in which to use the bathroom (and when I thought I did, I still missed an explosion). If you’re an action fan or special effects junkie, this movie is definitely for you. It’s filled with both from top to bottom. The slowest point of the movie is probably the opening Longview sequence.

The brightest points about this movie are easily the performances of Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin. Both show that they’ll be around for years to come, and Yelchin’s portrayal of Kyle Reese makes him feel like a miniature version of the Michael Biehn we remember from T1. He’s fervent and quiet, but utterly resolute, and when he speaks about John Connor, you see that same devotion that Biehn resonated in the original film. I feel he was an excellent casting choice.

Worthington also holds his own against Bale and I think comes out the victor. I was very surprised by the strength of his performance in the film and I’m glad they chose him for the role of Marcus Wright, the man out of time.

Christian Bale heads up some of the complaints. He’s very one note through much of the movie with a bit too much ‘Batman voice’ as its come to be known. Not that he doesn’t comport himself well through the action sequences, but he does seem fairly pissed angry through much of the movie. The scenes where he’s seeking guidance in his mother’s audio tapes are perhaps his best of the movie.

Bryce Dallas Howard, I feel, was underutilized throughout the film and seems to be there as a sounding board for Bale’s Connor while portraying his wife, Kate Connor, and field medic for the Resistance. She definitely needed more to do and faded into the wallpaper more than a few times.

Moon Bloodgood’s Blair has more agency than her three named fellow actress, even with a stereotypical ‘saved from the redneck mafia’ scene. She is key to what Marcus is able to do later on in the film, and prevents him from meeting a rather grim and ugly demise.

The scoring of the film’s soundtrack was good, able to find amusing ways to add in a couple songs (a CD player comes on while repairing a truck), but the score generally kept its head down through most of the movie, just adding a bit to the action sequences and occasionally letting you hear some homages to Brad Fiedel’s amazing original scores with some of the Terminator pursuit music.

Overall, I thought this was a fun movie that was far superior to Mostow’s Terminator 3. I hope that’s not damning it with faint praise, though. It’s not perfect, and there are some flaws that others may not overlook (the editing is quick, the strong female lead from T1 and T2 is not present, and Bale is not in top form), but I feel it adds more to the Terminator mythos than it takes away and I recommend it to anyone who wants to go out and see it.