TERMINATOR SALVATION [2009] review
May 23, 2009 · Print This Article
You see, the problem is that THE DARK KNIGHT has set the bar so high for action films, that a film like TERMINATOR SALVATION, bad at any time, seems all the much worse following KNIGHT just a year later. But really TS is just a bad, bad movie. I know for Terminator fans like myself, your still going to go see it. But if you are not a diehard Terminator fan, then by all means do not waste your money on a ticket to this movie. Why was it so bad?
It was bad for so many reasons. Let me list them:
- There is ZERO story
- John Connor as played by Christian Bale is an empty character
- Almost every line of dialogue uttered by Bale is cringe worthy
- There are NO great actions scenes, ZERO!
- For about half-a-second I thought something was cool, and that’s it, nothing even remotely badass happened in the entire movie
- The most ludicrous heart transplant ever
- The whole goal of the climax of the film was rendered moot by a random voice over to end the film…I was left thinking, uhhh, what?
- There are very few actual Terminators in the movie
- It’s basically a black and white or sepia movie
- Cool scenes in the trailers are NOT actually in the movie!
Nothing really makes sense. Oh, this character is going to go north. Oh, this character doesn’t speak. Why? Who knows. Such questions get no answers in this film.
What about the special effects? Horrible. I think the Terminator looked infinitely better in the original 1984 film! CGI is not good. Not at all. It cannot be used for whole characters yet (save for Golem, the one well done exception). Gimmicks and lame scenes abound. A snuggling scene comes to mind, and a cameo I knew beforehand that was coming was so predictable you could easily guess with no prior tips. Since the whole movie was pretty lame up to that point, the cameo had little impact on me. The crowd did cheer however.
The best thing about the movie? Seeing it with a proper, emotive audience. They actually applauded at the end, which seemed ignant to me as the movie was just a whole lot of nothing and totally did not need to be made.
McG is a horrible director. Bale looks like a clown in most of the movie. The action scenes have no tension to them whatsoever.
This was the movie I was most stoked about for this summer. It seems I may have to wait until a DARK KNIGHT sequel to see good action again, or better yet, just rewatch that movie on Blu-ray!
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- THE TERMINATOR [1984] review
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Well, got to say I heartily disagree with you here Jason. I went into the movie with very low expectations, but expecting to at least enjoy some hacking action. What I got instead rather blew me away.
I very much enjoyed it. You say no story, but it had basically the same story of all the other Terminator movies- a chase movie with save John Connor as the main quest, with the added sub-quest of save Kyle Rees. It introduced a new kind of Terminator, as all the movies before have done, and set a Terminator against his own programming, as both 2 and 3 did- giving us a lovely self-sacrificing swan-song similar to both 2 and 3.
Christian Bale’s character I felt was given depth by the weight of the past. It was less what he did, but the burden we know is upon him. Listening to old tapes of his mother’s voice, speaking to the resistance over the wireless. And of course, his battles with the new Terminator, and what he says.
But the brilliant thing, he wasn’t really the main character. The main character was the new guy, and I thought he was excellent. ‘Sync complete’, love it.
The cameo- I totally didn’t expect it, and it drew an involuntary yelp of glee from me when he appeared.
As for no good action scenes- I thought all the action scenes were genius. From the very beginning as we follow tight on him through a helicopter getting nuclear blasted, to the escape from the gas station, right to the mano a mano stuff by the end. Some of the camera-work was without a doubt innovative. CG I thought was seamless. I hardly even stopped to think- ‘wow that looks real’ because it DID look real, not the quasi-real that normally draws such comments.
And the tones- it was sepia, no doubt. But I like that. It’s a washed out dust-bowl of a post-apocalyptic world. I loved all the stuff in ruins, as might be expected.
But maybe this is no surprise. Did you like movie 3? I really enjoyed that one too, much to my surprise.
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SK Reply:
August 8th, 2009 at 8:29 AM
You liked T3? It was universally acknowledged as junk, they completely ignored it in Terminator Salvation with the vain hope that it would pass into movie trash history never to be spoken of again. T2 was the greatest movie ever made. Your positive review of TS is now moot due to your view of T3. When are they going to make a good sci-fi that doesn’t treat the audience like idiots – “Sync Complete”…ohhh yeeea like my ipod……duhhhh – Bring on Avatar (hopefully).
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The movie was freaking horrible!! what happened to the story, dark, non human side of the terminator, the seens out of future in T1 and T2 looked much better, no intensity, not cool looking T’s, what happened with music.. just.. such a disappointment. I knew it was not gonna be Cameron quality but this movie is junk, the is no point made, the only thing we know is that they gonna come out with T5, no thanks..
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Jason Collin Reply:
August 14th, 2009 at 2:53 PM
I totally agree. The brief glimpses of the future in T1 and T2 were tantalizing teases that looked super cool and showed a unique world. The world in TS was just a generic apocalypse world. You never saw day light in the future in T1 and T2 and I think TS should have kept it that way.
I really wonder, in the CGI era, is it possible to make a good sci-fi action film? Was The Matrix the last one?
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