Terminator Salvation

May 22, 2009

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 130 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Those darn time-traveling Terminators, they’ve been trying to kill John Connor now for four movies, a ride at Universal Studios, and a TV series.

This time, McG directs. And most of the movie takes place in the future post-apocalypse.
Terminator Salvation
Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is on death row in 2003. He donates his body to science. In 2018 he wakes up to discover the world is a post-apocalypse, and killer robots stalk the ruins. How did he get here?

Meanwhile, John Connor (Christian Bale, who, as we’ve seen on the Internet of late, takes his movie-making ****ing seriously!) leads the Resistance against the robots, getting the few survivors to fight.

Skynet, the killer computer network, has new Terminators at its command; motorcycle-Terminators and underwater-Terminators.

And young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, who’s having a good summer, since he also played Chekhov in Star Trek), destined to go back in time to be John Connor’s father in the first Terminator movie, is in danger here, and John Connor has to take steps to save him.

Bryce Dallas Howard is apparently playing the character that Claire Danes played in the third movie.

This is a pretty good action movie. As Terminator movies go, it’s not in the same class as the first two James Cameron ones, but it’s better than the third one (which is still a fun movie).

And, really, the first three movies are all variants on the same basic structure. This one does manage to do something new.

This is the second summer-movie blockbuster in two weeks to revolve around time travel (Star Trek being the other). Without giving spoilers, I think it is arguable that the time travel here doesn’t seem to quite work the way it does in the other movies; but that’s part of the fun of time travel movies; drawing diagrams on a beer-soaked napkin and arguing about what would and wouldn’t work with a completely impossible thing.

Apparently this is going to be a trilogy of movies with Christian Bale. So he’ll be back. And he’ll be back…again.

Popularity: 51% [?]

Posted by Mack Guffin | Filed Under 4 Stars, Action, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Christian Bale, Moon Bloodgood, Sam Worthington, SciFi, Theatrical