Terminator: Salvation * 1/2 (One and a half stars out of five)

Terminator: Salvation * ½ (1.5 stars)

Things I liked about this movie:
- Moon Bloodgood. She is attractive.
- The new types of Terminators. They were clever.
- Sam Worthington. He’s Australian.

That’s about it.

The author of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, and countless other great films once wrote that the shooting of a movie should be the factory assembling the car; that all the parts should have been thought out, shaped and perfected long before production ever begins. The higher summer movie budgets grow, the more his words seem utterly ignored. A movie does not need to have every detail planned before it begins production, but it should at least know where it is going and what paths it will take to get there.

When a director is handed a blank check and the reigns to a movie he/she is not prepared to direct, disaster looms imminent. Prepared or not, in Hollywood, once production begins there is no turning back. Even when the whole cast can see that the project is derailing. Even when everyone involved knows that whatever plan first existed is now long gone. Even when the plot makes no sense, the actors stop trying and you’ve blown up so many things that explosions bore your test audience, production will never stop. The wheels of finance will keep pushing the project forward, no matter the train-wreck. So please, to all directors out there, if you are handed a script with dialogue worse than the kind you’d find in a Fast and the Furious sequel, walk away. We all understand the drive to make it big, to have a hit summer movie and an 80 million dollar opening weekend at the box office, but have more respect for your fans than this. Have more respect for your teachers and mentors than this. Hell, have more respect for people in general than this. If you don’t, you won’t be employed much longer.

Yes, McG: this is aimed at you. Because this was crap. Fast, loud, explosive, repetitive, illogical, inconsistent, boring crap. I was bored within 20 minutes. Also, if Christian Bale wouldn’t listen to you, you started that reality by choosing a name that makes you sound like an Irish rap cereal. Prince earned the right to a stupid name by being awesome. Your major directing achievement is Charlie’s Angels. Either make a movie worth watching or get a name that doesn’t make me think of the head counselor at a fat camp, then you can complain about having stars that don’t respect you.

Speaking of the actors, the blame can’t be set squarely upon the shoulders of the director. The actors are to blame too. Anyone who’s ever been in a poorly directed play knows that actors, if they band together and work, can save a poor production from disaster. It may never be good, but it can avoid disaster. Clearly nobody on this movie felt such work would be worth the effort. Christian Bale, who is known for completely immersing himself in his roles, played John Connor as Batman. He had the same gravely voice, the same strong mannerisms, the same loud emphases. The only real difference: for John Connor, Bale grew a scruffy goatee. Common performed as if being on set bored him endlessly. Helena Bonham Carter strolled through her performance with zero emotion, minimal expression and an almost apathetic approach to her significance in the storyline. Moon Bloodgood was attractive, but little else was asked of her. Anton Yelchin was fine, but was better in Star Trek just two weeks ago. Sam Worthington was the only performer on screen who held his own, and his efforts should be applauded. He isn’t great, but his performance stands up admirably. In a pile of explosive dung, his performance was the shiny new penny.

Perhaps sights should be set upon the writers instead. They are the ones who first craft the story, who arrogantly consider it complete and worthy of production and send it out to reap the rewards . . . but isn’t Hollywood supposed to be a land of forever failure? Isn’t LA the city that invented blacklisting? These writers, John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris, wrote Primeval. They wrote Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. They even wrote Catwoman. How are people not punished for behavior like this? How are these people still employed?

The plot isn’t worth summarizing. It is tepid and illogical and it doesn’t make sense anyway, so I’m not going to bore you with yet more writing. A lot of things blow up. Pretty much everything in fact. Which does prompt the question of why everything is so explosive in the future, but even that isn’t a question much worth dwelling upon. Not when other things are blowing up. So many things. In fact, you get bored watching them.

For 100 minutes we waited, hoping through all of this that one final glimmer of hope would come right: that the ending wouldn’t be terrible too. A good ending can redeem a lot of boredom and irritation with a bad movie. It might even give one hope for a better script in the sequel. But no, this ending was awful. It made no sense, deflated an emotional peak and committed the penultimate film blasphemy: It set up a great plot twist, then threw it away.

Perhaps I’m just ranting. Perhaps I’m just angry that the Terminator movies, one of the only franchises in history to have a sequel as good as than the original, have become as bloated, illogical and soul-draining as the Leprechaun movies. Perhaps I’m just angry that Terminator: Salvation was actually less entertaining than Alien: Resurrection. Perhaps non-fans will enjoy this movie more than I did. Perhaps. But I doubt it.

Directed by McG
Written by John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris

Starring:
Christian Bale – John Connor
Sam Worthington – Marcus Wright
Moon Bloodgood – Blair Williams
Helena Bonham Carter – Dr. Serena Kogan
Anton Yelchin – Kyle Reese
Jadagrace – Star
Bryce Dallas Howard – Kate Connor
Common – Barnes
Jane Alexander – Virginia
Michael Ironside – General Ashdown