I want to start by saying that I really expected very little from this film. Reading some form of review after the theatrical release was almost unavoidable, and at best the reviews were uncomplimentary. Supposedly I had seen all there was to see of the major action sequences through the trailers, therefore seeing it on the screen didn’t seem as important to me. Herein lies the problem with reviews, putting too much stock in another persons opinions can lead to regret. Expectations are a tricky thing and I believe there were almost unrealistically high hopes for Salvation. It seems to me now that the reviews were based more on what the reviewer wanted from the film rather than what was presented. Though perhaps by generating a negative expectation I could enjoy the movie for what it was.
For me the point of the Terminator franchise has always been the human condition. Just what gives humans their humanity? What happens when that line begins to blur? The first installment brings us a machine with a biological shell. In Judgment Day John sets about humanizing the machine. In Rise of the Machines… well let’s just skip three please. The short lived Sara Connor Chronicles pushed the envelope even further with a convoluted boy on girl robot love affair. I can’t help but draw a parallel to Gene Rodenberrys Data from ST:TNG. The android makes no secret of his Pinocchio Syndrome, whereas it’s a little more complex with the character of Cameron. Certainly the idea begins to develop though we’ll never know how fully. With Salvation we come to the logical conclusion of a machine that thinks it’s human. Or perhaps it’s safer to say a man made into a machine without his realization. Either way we’ve been down this road with Galactica. Not that the predictability is a detriment, the notion is served up on a silver platter within the opening scene and the fairly bludgeoned viewers with the plot in the trailer. I can’t imagine writer or director thinking this was supposed to sneak up on the audience. All this is to say that the real point of this movie isn’t about one-upping Cameron’s The Terminator, but finding a way to continue and expand the theme post apocalypse. Go back and watch the original again, is it fair to expect Salvation to have less plot transparency? In fact the character Marcus is almost a direct contrast to the original T800. Both are displaced in unfamiliar surroundings, the T800 in the past and Marcus in the future. While the T800 is driven forward by its programmed mission, Marcus wanders almost aimlessly through a dystopian California. Maybe I”m drawing my own connections but it seems awfully coincidental. For me the movie is not really about John Connor, he really isn’t the epicenter of the plot. It’s really about Marcus and what his affect on events will be. Granted he is an unwitting participant in Skynets designs, his role is still pivotal.
The comparison may just be the crux of the entire argument. Maybe the fans were expecting something more spectacular, the next step in effects evolution. Cameron set a bar with The Terminator and then raised it with Judgment Day, but Salvation does move the franchise ahead in that respect. The effects were good, I dare say even great, but how do you trump the shenanigans involved with getting the T1000 on screen? After the wire-fu of The Matrix and digital puppetry of The Transformers there’s little that will wow audiences at this point. I feel that special effects have hit a ceiling so to speak. 3D is making a strong resurgence, but until I can watch without a pair of goggles I will forever be mentally transported to watching Captain Eo my first visit to Epcot. It wasn’t bad, just a nuisance. I liked the juxtaposition of Skynets sleek and futuristic looking army against the salvaged equipment scavenged by the resistance. One does wonder why a computer would care about aesthetics but I suppose the machines were equally functional. The setting looked just as apocalyptic as you might imagine though perhaps a little more green than the future imagined by Cameron in 1 and 2. I don’t know that Saving Private Ryan pioneered that grit filter, but it seems you can’t have a war without it now. It works and almost unnoticeable. Admittedly I should have seen the film in the theater if only to see things go boom. It might have helped with the night scenes too. I don’t know if my contrast settings are too low, there were moments where I had no idea what was going on. I figured out the action by extrapolation but it remained a minor nuisance. I intend to find a configuration disk somewhere to hopefully remedy this problem.
The acting was adequate. No stellar performances though Sam Worthington is most noteworthy. Bale’s onstage rant had more passion than anything his performance evoked. This could have more to do with script and directing though I have yet to see anything like his American Psycho performance, although that may be unfair since the nature of his recent films haven’t allowed for a lot of character development. Certainly John Connor has a little room for some neurosis after all he’s been through. All the other characters are pretty forgettable, though it’s always fun to have a Michael Ironside appearance. The Arnold cameo made me grin as well.
The film is not the best of the franchise, though I will argue it’s a far sight better than Rise of the Machines. It’s funny but the things that seem to bother most critics of the film really didn’t bother me at all. Connor’s delivery of “I’ll be back” was too cliched for some but has been in every Terminator film. It’s tantamount to “I have a bad feeling about this” in Star Wars. All in all I was entertained, there was more good than bad. It might not stand on it’s own as a sequel but it’s better than 3. We’ll see what the future holds for the franchise. Until then, meh.
