TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009)

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"Devil hands have been busy..."

After this review I may seem like some old codger wagging his fist at these new-fangled times, but "Terminator Salvation" is devoid of what made "The Terminator" franchise great.

How many of you remember watching the first two Terminator films with reverence and awe? The feeling of cinematic masterpiece just coursed through my veins. I must've watched both flicks a hundred times on VHS and I remember crying when Arnold was lowered into a molten vat in T2 because Cameron wrote and directed a classic, well written, competently executed and brilliantly developed piece of cinema that will stand the test of time like Casablanca, Seven Samurai, and Citizen Kane.

Nothing that McG (Pompus one named douche) churned out with this cold, calculated, polished metallic turd Hollywood squirted out for us lowly peasants doesn't even comes close to what once was a good franchise.

I seriously wonder what Hollywood is thinking these days. I imagine a phone call from generic studio producer to McG going like this: "Hey McG how's it going, you're a hackneyed wart of a human being that should be shot for your work on "Charlie's Angels" and the damage you've wrought on America's collective psyche is commended by scummy producer plutocrats everywhere. Would you like to completely destroy a series of movies that James Cameron doesn't want to squeeze every dime out of?"

McG: "Well, I was planning on firebombing the Criterion people but that sounds just as good. Remember, I want round the clock hookers and ya-yo while we're shooting and millions of dollars for doing a hit job of this caliber, I DIRECTED CHARLIE'S ANGELS YOU KNOW!!!"

Producer: "No problem, just remember to throw in a few similar shots from the originals to pay home-age, or is it ohm-age to so the cattle we call our audience won't reach for their torches and pitch-forks."

Well, that was a tirade. Its justified though since this movie is terrible. It thinks it can wow audiences with how much money they spent on special effects but doesn't allow for anything like story or characters play any role.

The writing is atrocious. How did the machines know about Kyle Reese and why didn't they kill him when they found him? Why didn't Skynet just kill John Connor the second he set foot into Skynet's base and instead send an Arnold special effect to kill him with no weapons? Why would Skynet make a half-man half-terminator yet not program him to side with the machines? WHY THE FUCK ARE EVERYBODY'S TEETH SO PEARLY FUCKING WHITE?! There are far more questions but the underlying trend is that the movie doesn't think people are smart enough to care about these questions and instead will be impressed when they see shiny things blow up.

Its shear laziness that the movie is so predictable that no turn of events comes as a surprise and little seems plausible. By the end I knew Marcus Right (He does the RIGHT thing in the end thus earning him salvation, get it, aren't those writers brilliant!) was going to give his heart to Connor. Although, wouldn't he also have to donate his spine to John Conner since that bar went straight through his back?

The acting is just plain deplorable. Christian Bale just scowls and yells (also at children) through the movie when he's not giving a communique through CB radio (that is apparently impervious to the machines tracking ability). Connor's wife is completely unexplored and is apparently pregnant. Common plays the undeveloped black guy who has no other motivation other than his brother was recently killed and has no personality whatsoever. Lets also forget the pilot (Actress name I'm not making up is Moon Bloodgood, which is probably Cherokee for "1/256th Indian") whose only purpose is to lead Marcus to the resistance headquarters which everyone but the machines could find and then attempt a ridiculous escape sequence. By the escape attempt, Connor becomes a believer in Marcus telling the truth and allows him to return to SkyNet to have a badly written finale where the old guard resistance dies and Connor saves the day without killing any more humans. Odd how he assumed transports would rescue him and they came just as he liberated the humans at the SkyNet base which is apparently a brisk walk from the resistance base.

In the end I can't give something with the TERMINATOR on it 1 star. Granted, the scene with a digitized Arnold did look cool but thats all it did, it LOOKED cool, it wasn't stylish, fitting to the plot, or even coherently done.

God bless America, eh?