Terminator: Salavation (of the series)
Today I snuck off to catch a 10am screening of Terminator: Salvation at my local megaplex, since the wonderful, if not slightly musty-smelling Alamo Drafthouse isn’t running it. I’m going to avoid as many spoilers as possible.
Rotten Tomatoes states that this latest Terminator outing lacks the heart of the original movies, which is true. Truly beneficial. After three movies and a failed television series that all espoused the unavoidability of the destruction of the human race, maybe we are bored with that story. I was tired of it after T2. Perhaps our collective conscious, brought low by years of warfare, financial distaters and political scandals will prefer to see something a little more upbeat, like its ability to survive. I say that Terminator: Salvation has saved the series. Of course, for some unknown reason, I love just about everything that involves humanity rising from the ashes of its own demise.
Take a few things into account – if you’re seeing this fourth Terminator movie, I’m assuming that you know the history, but are not a frothy-mouthed fan boy. McG, despite a ridiculous name, has done a great job of continuing the Terminator future. His style is easily recognizable, and he obviously has been keeping up with my” favorite action sequences” list. Nothing is copied, but stylistically I can pickup elements that made my favorite sequences my favorites. I see a little Blade Runner hiding in there, too. Oh, and the best GnR song ever, that’s in there, too.
The movie avoids the issue of time travel almost completely, which is a really, really good thing. I’ll accept the concept of time travel as a vehicle to get the Terminator storyline started, but I never, ever want to see something like what the Sarah Connor Chronicles did with it. It’s also nice to see machines that are, in fact, programmed to “kill all humans” and not do much else.
Anyway, good continuation of the story set out in T1 and T2, loads of explosions, great direction, a slightly annoying Christian Bale over-emphasizing every single bit of dialogue, robots, robots, robots, explosions. Oh, and everything is dirty,as in filthy dirty, but somehow Skynet has the decency to keep itself sparkling white. I guess we didn’t get to see the T-800 wielding its most deadly weapon – the feather duster. Maybe that will be on the DVD extras.
Yeah, that sums it up nicely. Go see it, its a good summer popcorn movie.