Terminator Salvation Movie Review

Terminator Salvation was released in 2009 and directed by McG (or his real name; Joseph McGinty Nichol)... with mixed reception but I gotta admit for the kind of movie that it is, is not really bad but the problems that it has are indeed notable.

The story of Salvation is set in the future during the war between the human resistance and Skynet; John Connor (played by Christian Bale) fights has a soldier of the resistance and leader of a group of soldiers has well, in the middle of the war... John discovers that Kyle Reese (the men his mother mentioned would save her life in the events of the original terminator) has been found by another man called Marcus and being forced to make an alliance with him to save not only Kyle but all the other humans captured by the machines before they are destroyed not only by the machines but by the resistance itself, who is willing to pay the price to "end the war".

On one hand I am glad that they decided to go with the setting in the future... during the core war that was the backstory and relevancy of the first trilogy; the future was this big mysterious entity that threatens everybody and I think that the fact they choose these moment in the timeline makes the movie by itself already an unique addition into the franchise. On the other hand I see plenty of missed opportunities, there is no real full scale battle that showcases the war that is looked like in the flash backs of the originals, there are indeed big epic moments with fun action scenes but none of them really get across the feeling that make me think "Oh yeah this is totally the kind of thing that John and Kyle had gone trough in this war" is just a bit underwhelming on that regard.

The storytelling in this movie didn't really bothered me either... at least not has much has some of the story elements presented in Terminator 3, I can still see circumstances that could have happen to make the sequence of events play out better on screen, for example: how about instead of John using Kyle has an excuse to tell the HQ of the Resistance to stand down their attack on Skynet, he just tell them another excuse? how about something related to their new found EMP weapon... maybe? I mean what makes John think that they would really step down by talking about Kyle like he is the sole reason they should stop like he is "the only hope" HQ doesn't know nor do they care... I get why John wants to save Kyle but there are other things he could have said to stop them! Not to mention some of the dialogue felt unnatural, this mostly came across when they tried to force feed us with events from the first movies instead of just having them play out naturally; this really took me away from my immersion.

The final confrontation against the T-800 was well set up (even if there were a few inconsistencies in-between the reveal), I like that they used the same technology of "Tron Legacy" by making a CG of Arnold´s face on the terminator trying to kill John in the last act, even if it lasted just a little while before it was blown off it was a good nod to the spirit of the T-800 character itself... I also like how they played the recordings that Sarah Connor left for her son at the end of T1 (the same lines said by Linda Hamilton herself), also a great nod to the originals.

Overall, I can say that while there are a few stumbles along the way, Terminator Salvation is a fun movie that should have made a bigger effort into capturing the spirit of the original movies, but I still welcome it has a terminator entry.

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That puts an end to the marathon of Terminator movies, at the point of this review there is one more terminator movie underway named "Terminator Genisys"; said to "reset" the timeline of the terminator series (basically acting has a sequel, prequel and reboot)... I don´t know what to feel about this movie; but I have low expectations for it, I would have been happier if it was set in the future continuing the events of salvation (leaving the time travel concept behind). I have no right to give a final verdict has we haven´t seen the final product itself so all we can do is wait and see. For now I can say this: I don´t like that we are going back in time to "save a Connor" again, I don´t like that they are "rewriting" the events of the originals and I don´t like that they are choosing new actors to play the original characters (except Arnold of course).

Terminator 1 and 2 will always remain the classics in my book and I believe it is for many more people, terminator 3 and salvation are underwhelming but is in no way bad movies... they can´t match the brilliant execution of the first two but they work out has fun movies, James Cameron closed the book very tightly in T2 and Hollywood will always try to milk the franchise no matter what instead of just leaving it alone... looks like the terminator will always be back.

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Few... I am very sorry for the long time I took to write this post, but the last few weeks I have really been pushing a lot my personal project, in fact that is what the next posts are going to be about... for the next entries I am going to have updates on some sketches I have worked on has well has sharing the working progress.

Stay tuned for more (original) content soon!