Don't Expect Salvation For The Terminator Franchise In Terminator: Salvation

On three different occasions in the 21st century, someone has tried to get the Terminator franchise back up and rolling again, despite the entire saga coming to a pretty clear conclusion with Terminator 2: Judgement Day. And on each of these occasions, the resulting films have produced zero sequels and had steadily declining domestic box office results. In the middle of the two most wretched entries in this saga (Rise Of The Machines and Genisys) is Terminator: Salvation, a McG directed effort that brought Christian Bale aboard the franchise as John Connor and surprisingly comes out as the best post-T2 movie in the franchise, though don't take that as a glowing endorsement.

Maybe the best thing to come out of Terminator: Salvation is that it at least doesn't try to just blatantly rip-off the premise of T2 like the Rise Of The Machines and Genisys did, though those iconic Terminator lines we always have to reference for some reason still show up here and the climax does take place in an industrial factory like the first and second Terminator movies. Still, Salvation at least has the courtesy to explore a new genre (post-apocalyptic war movie) and incorporates new types of characters that haven't been seen in this series before, namely a man named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who turns out to be a key component in helping John Connor (Christian Bale) save human prisoners from a Skynet base.

Marcus is a man who was sentenced to death in a pre-Judgement Day world who all of a sudden wakes up in the world of 2018, where the machines rule all. He's awkwardly introduced into the movie, with the opening scene of the motion picture being a flashback to himself moments before his death sentence, before the majority of the first act focuses itself on John Connor with only brief looks back at Marcus waking up and traveling across the landscape. Once Marcus meets Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), we start to get more extended sequences with the character, but it's impossible to shake the feeling that there's some disjointed screenwriting at work here as the film tries to focus on both John Connor and Marcus Wright as separate lead characters to the overall movies detriment.

The fact that little is done with John Connor as a character just further hurts matters, since, despite having a talented actor like Christian Bale on hand, Connor doesn't get all that much to do in this story and we don't get a greater sense of why he's held up as a mythic figure in the world of human resistance, instead he grumbles, moans and puts on an act of intense bravado that feels quite shallow. Supporting characters surrounding Connor played by Common and Bryce Dallas Howard get shockingly little to do and the only one in the cast who really leaves an impression is Anton Yelchin as a young Kyle Reese, in one of his two scene-stealing May 2009 blockbuster performances.

McG, who chooses to frame the desolate landscapes as sepia-toned gravel laced terrains, has a decent eye for action in the movie for sure, thankfully tossing aside shaky-cam and what not for cogent action sequences that make good use of newly created types of robots and there's even a nice variety in the types of action scenes depicted, ranging from a chase scene to a climactic infiltration sequence. However, the CGI employed throughout these spectacle-driven segments of the story are quite plastic looking and feels extremely out of place amidst the more somber and gritty world they're supposed to be inhabiting.

Terminator: Salvation comes out as, more than anything else, a movie that really could have been something special with just more effort put into it. Its story as is is just cogent, but it's easy to see how a more focused screenplay that added depth to its characters could have been riveting. The newer elements it introduces to the Terminator mythos are actually pretty interesting on a surface level but they don't get to be used to their fullest potential. Casting great talent like Christian Bale, Anton Yelchin and Bryce Dallas Howard should have made this thing work like gangbusters, instead only Yelchin really gets to shine thanks to a lackluster script. Compared to the sequels that would directly follow and precede it, Terminator: Salvation is practically a masterpiece, but on its own terms as a movie, it's yet another example of a post-T2 Terminator sequel that just feels undercooked compared to its promise, though at least this one is watchable and doesn't make me feel filled with rage.