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Terminator Salvation: More Human Than Human

Yeah, that’s right, you stupid robot. Pull my finger…

Rating: 5 out of 10

I’m going to change up my tactic for you. I’m going to make an effort to increase your enjoyment of this movie without giving away any type of spoilers. Great debates have been held inside my head about the formation of this review, so let’s see if I can get them all to come together in print and actually make sense. If I get lost along the way, please send a search party and ask them to bring Nerd Rope.

Terminator Salvation brings the robot-battling franchise charging forward into the year 2018 and lands us deep in the war between machines and humans. The humans are being driven underground while the machines seem to be gaining more and more ground every day. When a miraculous tool falls into the hands of the humans which could swing the momentum their way and possibly end the war, John Connor has to make a choice between following logic and following his instincts.

Here’s the hint I’m going to offer you in hopes it will help you enjoy the movie just a little more: John Connor (Christian Bale) is not the main character in this movie! The trailer and the story arc up to this point have built him up to be the main focus, but while watching the movie your attention is drawn toward two other people: Marcus (Sam Worthington) and the teenage version of Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). These two characters, greatly helped by the actors portraying them, provide numerous layers and poignant moments and steal the focus away from the top billed Bale. Bale suffers both from narrow development of his character and one-note deliverance throughout the film. For large stretches he just feels like Batman without the mask. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy him as Batman, but in those films we get to see him as Bruce Wayne as well and he achieves a balance between different sides of the character. Salvation doesn’t really give him that chance, so the blame doesn’t fall completely on him. Worthington and Yelchin, on the other hand, really become the main story of the movie and steal the spotlight. Worthington shows great dramatic range, but he does lose a step during a romantic subplot with Moon Bloodgood. Yelchin, who also plays Chekov in the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (so far the summers best flick), lands another major role in terms of storyline and mythological importance. As the young Kyle Reese he single-handedly represents the past and the future for the life of John Connor, which is a lot of weight to be shouldering on such a young actor, but Yelchin proves he is up to the task. Displaying innocence and hardened street smarts at the same time, he manages to bring the much lacking human element to this movie front and center.

There is an argument to be made that movies in this genre are not here to astound us with great acting or well thought out plot development. They are here to create insane CGI and never-before-seen special effects to literally knock us out of our cushioned seats. In that realm, Salvation did an exceedingly good job. The robots were bigger, the explosions were louder and you could literally hear each and every gear and servo inside the machines as they whizzed towards our woefully under-prepared human survivors. There is a pair of impressive chase sequences which included some very unique moments and that kept people glued to the screen. Very little of the action seems to move the plot or story along though and in the end you begin to wonder what it was all for; you almost feel the entire film didn’t even need to happen. No matter how deep a movie is inside the action genre, the audience needs to feel that the story had a distinct purpose and Salvation fails to completely deliver in the end.

The decision to focus more on the effects than story falls in the lap of director McG, who gained massive exposure when he brought the 70s iconic TV show Charlie’s Angels to the big screen. It doesn’t seem like he’s really changed that much in his style since then though. It is still all about flash and visual onslaught to keep the people bouncing in their seats without a foundation to make any of it meaningful. Charlie’s Angels was meant to be summertime fluff, so it worked out well, but Salvation has a darkness and grit which needs to be motivated in the writing and direction as well and that just didn’t happen. To extend the olive branch slightly towards McG, he was definitely weighted down by massive paradoxical plot holes in the film created long before he ever dreamed of taking the reins of this apocalyptic franchise. Despite the poor directing and plot development flaws, the box office numbers are not terrible ($68 million opening weekend), so you can be sure the graveled and gruff voice of Bale will be heading our way in a couple years to remind us, “You are the resistance.”

Recommendation: If you are interested at all in seeing this, do yourself a huge favor and see it in the theater. The sound and picture are a large part of what makes this watchable, so don’t discredit yourself with lesser visual and aural impact.

Added recommendation to McG: Leave out the Arnold cameo next time. Seriously. Really.

Daily Musings 3/11

1 – Thankfully for the fans of the tragically late Heath Ledger, it was just announced that they are back in production for the last film he was working on The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and they will be leaving all his footage involved and intact. Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell will also be stepping in to take over the rest of the role, but no CGI, no re-cutting to make unshot scenes work. His last performance will be shown to us as Heath and Terry Gilliam intended it. [via Starpulse]

2 – More celebs have added their voices to the protesting of hate crimes like the one that happened mere weeks ago. [via Perez Hilton]

3 – Improv Everywhere, the group behind the people frozen in time inside Grand Central Station, are back with an impromptu musical inside a Los Angeles mall food court. I would have bought this hook, line and sinker if I didn’t actually attend acting class with one of the guys (the janitor, good singer too).

4 – Growing up, I don’t know how many times I said to my pals, “Gee, Predator is just such an awesome film. I only wish I could express the excitement and story of it through British Rap.” Today, one of my childhood dreams has come true. [via GorillaMask]

5 – Hellion on heels, Ann Coulter, has spoken out saying Obama should do the respectful thing and step down from the race. Her reasoning is that Hillary has won three primaries in a row (she doesn’t count Vermont because it was earlier in the day). My main confusion is why she wasn’t asking Hillary to step down after losing eleven primaries in a row. 11!? Evidently Ann likes to push the stereotype that women are running around shopping while muttering, “Math is hard.” [via Perez Hilton]

6 – Ummmm…Stunt Rock is actually a Public Service Announcement for all the things you should never, ever do. This includes: hitting people with your car, jumping off buildings and dressing like a wizard during a rock concert. [via Dave]

7 -  In the first piece of good news to come out of the new Terminator project, they are officially dumping the “Salvation” portion of the title. Now we should keep our fingers crossed hoping this will lead to more things being dropped, like McG. [via FilmDrunk]

8 -  What happens when you make a worldwide phenom viral video campaign like Ask a Ninja? You win the rights to write and direct the remake everyone has been clamoring for: The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! Oh yes, once more our silver screen streets will be overrun by the seeds of discontent from the mutant garden. Let’s see if the remake can launch another Hollywood legend like George Clooney (technically he was in the sequel, Return of the Killer Tomatoes, but let’s not split hairs). [via Hollywood Reporter]

9 -  The time has come to finally buy the one item we have wanted since birth. Can someone just loan me $5,500 for it? [via Uncrate]

10 – This was too adorable not to post: [via Swissmiss]

Bonus: Just because this was their top post this morning: [via Swissmiss]

Daily Musings 3/3

1 – Now Google has finally reached the point of full cultural integration. A young, upcoming flash-in-the-pan Hip Hop star, named Teyana Taylor, has released a track under the masterful hands of Pharell called Google Me. Click here to listen to it [via PerezHilton]. Honestly, the beat and the flow = good stuff, the chorus and concept = borderline retarded.

2 – Back in the day it seems the Hell’s Angels were dangerous on land, but completely inept on the water. They hatched a plot to kill Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones but failed in prime hilarious fashion:

“Mangold said the men tried to reach Jagger by sea. “The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard,” he was quoted as saying. They all survived but made no other attempt on his life, Mangold said.”

I don’t know who this Mangold person is, but he should be getting phone calls from the studios right about…now! This has all the trapping of Will Farrell’s next mildly entertaining Saturday afternoon movie fare. [via The Superficial]

3 – A final goodbye to Jeff Healey. I won’t write out his whole bio, since the people over at Starpulse have already done such a great job of it, but I will say that Angel Eyes is an amazing song and is in heavy rotation in my “Heartwrenching Songs of the Eighties” folder in ITunes. What? You don’t have a folder like that on your computer? Uh huh. Sure, I believe you. Oh, in case you didn’t know the other amazing thing about this truly talented guitarist, he was blind. Yep, now don’t you feel productive?

4 – Marion Cotillard went from being the widely respected winner of the Best Actress Oscar for Mome La to being the widely chuckled at actress who made some badly worded comments about the 9/11 attacks and the landing on the moon:

The Daily Mail says:

“I think we’re lied to about a number of things,” Cotillard said, singling out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as an example of the US making up horror stories for political ends.
“We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes. Are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [in New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed.”
She added that the towers, planned in the early Sixties, were an outdated “money-sucker” that would have cost more to modernise than to rebuild altogether, which is why they were destroyed.
She said: “It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them.”

“Did a man really walk on the Moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.”

[via Tyler Durden]

So what did we learn here today? First off, never give awards to the French, they just don’t appreciate it. Secondly, never say something in a interview you can’t blame on too much cough syrup. Lastly, there are indeed still people who don’t believe we’ve landed on the moon, even though we can send robots to Mars. Sure, that makes total sense. I’m going to go back to banging my head against a wall until more knowledge and facts fall out.

5 – Simon Pegg has blasted Warner Brothers and McG for the complete mishandling of his creation, the TV show Spaced. Evidently the pattern of stealing witty and intelligent comedies from Britain and repackaging them, making them terrible and keeping the same name does make some of the original British creators a bit miffed.  [via FilmDrunk]

6 – The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, just finished a two day visit to Iraq and he wrapped up the whole affair by saying “No one likes the U.S.” OK, I’ll admit we are not the most loved country in the world as we would like people to think. It’s not all teddy bears and rose parades when we come to town, but coming from Iran that statement holds just a little bit more irony. When Switzerland or Jamaica starts saying no one likes us, then I’ll be worried about our global image. If we are only being bad mouthed by crazy dictators who continue to talk about wiping other countries off the planet and ignoring absolutely huge parts of world history, I think we are still in the safe zone then.  [via CNN]

7 – I was really hoping for a cool red beam or some nifty sound effects when I clicked on a link that said “Shoots Reporter with Ray Gun”.  But it turns out this is an actual weapon, not one in my imagination, so it’s not nearly as cool. [via GorillaMask]

8 – Office Dare for the day: Ask a female colleague if you may borrow a lipstick. Then pocket it and walk away.

9 – It seems we can’t stop the battle for worst movie ever made this year. In the last few months we’ve seen Blond Ambition open to $64 per screen average, then The Hottie and The Nottie came in with a whopping $2,000 weekend total, now we get Witless Protection which is currently running a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and is officially being turned away by Canadian theaters. I hear someone shouting, it’s soft but you can just make it out, it sounds like Uwe Boll yelling, “See!! Someone is worse than me!!!” [via FilmDrunk]

10 – Ummmm…ouch: