Happy Birthday To Me: Terminator: Salvation

I like the Terminator mythos. It's an interesting story of human nature and decision, deals well with time-travel and paradox, and its overarching sci-fi elements are strong. These days, everything Terminator is expected in my book to be "Not as good as The Sarah Connor Chronicles (RIP)", but from the buzz I'd heard I decided to be more generous with Terminator: Salvation and downgrade to "Not as good as T2".

Well, yep. It was definitely not as good as T2.

Terminator: Salvation is the first Terminator production set after Judgment Day, though it opens pre-JD in 2003 with the execution of death-row inmate Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), shortly after he's agreed to donate his body to Cyberdyne for scientific research. It's understood, to anyone in the audience with a basic familiarity with Terminator, that Marcus is the original prototype for the infiltrator terminators, though this isn't formally discussed until two-thirds of the way in. When John Connor (Christian Bale) launches an assault on a SkyNet base where human prisoners are being kept, Marcus wakes up after fifteen years to find himself in the middle of a bombing, and presumably having his last memory be of dying. Needless to say, he's a little distressed. All he knows for sure is that he wants to go north, which unknown to him is where SkyNet HQ is. In the course of his wanderings, he meets up with teenaged Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who as far as Marcus knows is nothing more than a kind and wary young man, and whose subsequent capture prompts Marcus to alter his plans slightly...but not before his machine nature is revealed to the resistance, to their shock and fear, forcing John to decide what to do with him. If I seem to be focusing on Marcus more than on John or Kyle, it's because Marcus is the true main character of this story, and the salvation in question is primarily his.

As a sci-fi action film, this is one of if not the best - strictly in terms of the action. The planning, directing, and execution of these sequences are fantastic, and most importantly, they don't go on too long (Michael Bay, take note!). There may be a few too many plane/helicopter crashes - John personally crashes a chopper twice within the first hour - but hey. Also, the picture looks fantastic. I'm not sure why so many professional critics thought that a post-apocalyptic, occasionally nuclear wasteland having a washed-out look was a bad or gimmicky thing. What else should it look like, bright and fluffy? At any rate, I believe Terminator: Salvation is the first Terminator film production to show us the wasteland during the day, and it looked great. Like the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3, but with more greenery. The other predominant and, I think, thoughtless professional criticism of this film's aesthetic was the "biker style" of clothing. Well, for one thing, bikers aren't the only people who wear leather. And for another thing, leather clothing makes the most sense in a post-nuke war setting, because a) it's durable and protective, b) it's easy to come by, c) it's comfortable, and d) it was the basic armor of choice for several millennia of human warfare, so it's not like the Terminator: Salvation costumers just thought, "hey, everyone should look badass. How about leather?". So enough pointless, thoughtless criticism about how the film looks. There's plenty wrong with it without having to be lazy in one's critique.

Which brings us to what's wrong with it: the story is, well, sorry and weak. It began life as a story with some strong elements but a nonsensical conclusion, from the golden pens of the scribes who gave us such frightening fare as Catwoman. The film was intended as a story about Marcus, and his relationship with Kyle, and John Connor's screentime amounted to roughly three minutes as he lived on the HQ sub, kept hidden so the machines couldn't identify him, and existed mostly as a legend making radio broadcasts to the resistance topside. The original ending of the film - which I really think would've been interesting combined with the "second chance" theme - had John dying at SkyNet in the scene where he's critically wounded, with Marcus bringing his body back to the resistance and offering to continue John's role, with only a handful of people knowing the truth, so that the resistance doesn't lose hope. John's wife and upper command agree, have his face grafted onto Marcus, and the film ends with Marcus, having completed the procedure and looking like John, having a normal conversation with his wife etc. before his eyes flash red, and he shoots them all...fade to black! As it stands, the story is a hodgepodge of interesting ideas that could have been but were poorly developed (ie. Marcus and Kyle's relationship), the frantic replacing of bad ideas (the orginial script had SkyNet pulling a Matrix-style "we're actually trying to preserve humanity!"), bad writing combined with tacked-on good writing, and, of course, trying to find things for John to do after Bale insisted on playing him. This helps explain why Salvation's John is such an uninspiring, one-dimensional, character - and, for some reason, not the leader of the resistance (this role is taken by good ol' Michael Ironside, doing in his best in a confusing and useless part). John Connor is an interesting creation, but Salvation's version feels like some random guy dressed up as John Connor. I presume this is because, as good as Jonathan Nolan is with a word processor, John just wasn't meant to be in the film in the first place, and to properly add him in would've meant a complete re-write and change from director McG's vision for the story.

As it is, there remain some strong elements thematically, and wise decisions. So many action films are killed by too much backstory; in the case of Marcus, we get none, and I think it's great. All we know is that he was responsible for the deaths of his brother and two cops, but not why or how, or whether he was a criminal, bystander, or a cop himself - and I think this is a great decision, especially considering the film's "second chance" theme, because when it comes to salvation, the past is irrelevant. There are also some interesting thematic implications in regards to how Marcus was given his second chance at life by the machines, combined with how he'll choose to use it. Another nice bit of non-exploration includes John's wife, a role that was heavily criticized for consisting of little more than being very pregnant. I suspect that was the whole point, just to be there and pregnant, because it's the utmost symbol of the divide between man and machine, and what says "second chance" more than one's own child? Unfortunately, these elements aren't enough to save the picture. I was particularly disappointed by the weak and lacking human element because of McG's long work on Supernatural, a TV show made successful by the interactions between its main characters.

In other news, the acting is pretty solid, even from Moon Bloodgood (Journeyman), whose relevance as a character could have easily been picked up by someone else, who had a real role in the original story, and who I strongly suspect remained in the film only to provide the requisite Hot Babe Factor. I'm not 100% sold on Sam Worthington, just because I'm pretty sure someone else could've played Marcus as well or better and been able to hang on to a U.S. accent at the same time (he flickers back and forth a lot, which I find distracting). I'm not trying to say he did a bad job, and I know there are some pretty strange accents in the states, but back-and-forth? Not fun. Actually, Bale was initially offered that role, but requested Connor instead. Anton Yelchin, last seen delivering an exuberant, delightful turn as young Chekhov in Star Trek (two blockbusters in one summer? Kid, don't ever fire that agent!) makes a fine Kyle Reese, and in a very sly bit of casting (if it was in fact on purpose) looks like a cross between original Kyle Michael Biehn, and Sarah Connor Chronicles' young John (Thomas Dekker).

If the physical casting resemblances aren't a deliberate wink, references to the first two films range nicely from blatantly obvious (Kyle's first words to Marcus are "come with me if you want to live!"; a very unexpected cameo of sorts from the first picture) to "you really need to like Terminator to catch that", like in a scene of Marcus teaching Kyle some survival tips that includes a quick and subtle nod to Arnold's famous one-handed sawed-off shotgun reload in T2. The film walks a thin line between requisite amusing references and going to far, and just barely stays on the right side.

Is it worth seeing in the theatre? Well, like I said at the beginning, the action and visuals can't be beat, so...yes. However, if you like Terminator and are used to it being an interesting story as well as good ride, you'll probably be disappointed.