I was expecting McG’s Terminator Salvation to wind up the Terminator series, an entirely unoriginal and irrational expectation. Little did I know to interpret the title literally: “Terminator Salvation” means “a means of preserving Terminator (series)”. Go lookup the dictionary.
In The Terminator (1984) a T-800 model was sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) a T-1000 was sent from the future to kill John Connor. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines a T-X was sent from the future to kill possible members of the future resistance. Now in Terminator Salvation we are back to the T-800s. Until the resistance under John Connor faces T-1000s and then T-Xs, X being the key undefined variable, the series can continue to not terminate.
The movie tries to get a look somewhere between the Star Wars and the Matrix series. Does it not make sense to be bounded between “a long time ago” and circa 2100? It does at least for the next hundred or so years.
On one hand there are many survivors wearing long cloaks, some with hoods concealing lost looks. There are flying saucers and skillful suicidal pilots. And there is preggo Kate Connor née Brewster looking like Padmé Skywalker née Amidala. (Waitaminnit, does Padmé change her name after marriage?)
On the other hand many resistance members wear thick worn-out khaki overalls. There are sentinel look-alikes, which can be deactivated using a mobile EMP. (Did you hear that, Wachowski bros? Mobile.) John Connor believes he is the One, but Marcus Wright makes us wonder whether he could be the One, though it is not exactly like the one with Trinity and the one with Persephone, though it is paired similarly and Blair Williams gets to show some. I suspect that we will be introduced to the Architect some guy behind Skynet’s rise in one of the future movies. For now we will have to be satisfied with a combination of Virginia the Old and Star the Mute in place of Oracle.
If you think the movie is closer to the Matrix series, it is only because 2003 and 2018 seem closer to 2100 than “a long time ago” and McG is very observant.
The resistance against the rise of the machines is possibly the World War III and you know how wars are right? Hence the red patches for resistance members, the concentration camp maintained in Cisco San Francisco at the Skynet Headquarters where soldiers instead of prisoners are stripped down, and the lack of any emotions except fear and Christian Bale’s wrath against the director of photography John Connor’s wrath against machines. The machines use fire to cut down on electricity and being stressed out causes them to fire uncontrollably even at their own machinery. Makes perfect sense.
Kyle Reese, Marcus Wright and Blair Williams are the only characters that seem human and thus seem entirely out of place. The rest of the cast makes Sam Worthington and Moon Bloodgood look like Laurence Olivier and Ingrid Bergman, and they look pleasant to the eyes. But the Governor of California provides most eye candy. In a tribute to many classic Indian movies, a naked T-800 covered with an external layer of living tissue (Arnold Schwarzenegger + body double + special effects + not-so-special effects) walks out of a solitary cell to attack John Connor in one of the highlights of the movie.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Image Source: IMDB
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