Movie review: Terminator Salvation

The Terminator series began back in 1984 with James Cameron's film of the same name. It was a pretty decent box office hit and helped to establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as of one of the biggest bad asses in movies at the time. Then in 1991 Cameron brought us Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A movie that by all accounts is not only better than the original but ranks as one of the best movie sequels of all time. The franchise was continued with 2001 with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. But this movie was a big disappointment. First off Cameron didn't direct it so the style he brought to the previous films was missing. Recently the concept was turned into a television series with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I personally liked this show quite a bit but as is the case today it was canceled after only 2 seasons.

Now we have the newest entry in the series with Terminator Salvation. This one is again not directed by James Cameron and is instead directed by McG (We Are Marshall, Charlie's Angels).

The film starts off in modern day but quickly jumps to the post Judgment Day world were humanity is at war with the machines being controlled by Skynet. Now in the previous movies you would get to see this future world but only in brief glimpses. This movie takes place almost entirely in this time period. So you will see a lot of destroyed buildings and there is even a shot of the ruined skyline of Los Angeles (not that it probably looks much different now).

This time around the character of John Connor is being played by Christian Bale. But even though he is usually the main focus of the series he doesn't have as much screen time as the character of Marcus played by Sam Worthington. We see the character of Marcus at the beginning of the film on death row and then he is put to death by lethal injection. Then he wakes up in 2018 having no idea of what happened to him. Now I won't give away anything about him but if you've seen the trailers for this movie you already know.

Most of the movie follows Marcus as he is looking for someone. On the way he runs into a young Kyle Reese, who you may recall becomes John Connor's father after he is sent back in time to protect his mother in the first Terminator film.

Alongside this Connor and the other members of the resistance are working on a way to take out the Terminators and end the war. Of course with any movie set in war you always have to have the commanding officer that never listens to what the main character has to say. In this case that particular character is played by Michael Ironside.

Again I won't go too much into the plot but even though it is a bit predictable at times it is real good overall.

Now with a movie like this you pretty much have to talk about the special effects. The effects in this movie were done really well. Most of the Terminators you see have this real gritty look to them as supposed to in the previous movies where they always looked very shiny and brand new. You also get a good variety of kinds you've seen before and a few new ones. There is even a nice car chase scene where Marcus and Kyle are being persued by motorcycle Terminators.

As for the action scenes those too were done really well. There are a few that are kind of slower and more intense and then there are scenes that are much more fast paced like the chase I mentioned earlier. It would have been nice if there had been a few more action scenes in the movie but thankfully they are spaced out enough to keep the movie from dragging.

One interesting side not is Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of makes an appearance in this movie. At one point a door opens and a Terminator steps out and the camera pans up and we see Arnold's face. But you instantly know this isn't really him because it is the face of Arnold as he looked in the original Terminator movie. I did some research and found out that, as I figured, they used a body double and digitally put Arnold's face over the other guy's. I think it's kind of cool that they found a way to put him in the movie but it seemed a bit frivolous.

Overall this is a good action movie and a good entry in the Terminator franchise. It definitely makes up for the mistakes that were made by Terminator 3. There are plans now for a Terminator 5 in 2011 and odds are Cameron won't direct it as he is working on Avatar and its sequel right now. But if you are a fan of the Terminator series of just a fan of action movies in general you should give this one a watch.

My score: 8.0/10