I can't say I was completely disappointed with Terminator Salvation as I wasn't expecting much after the terrible reviews.The story revolves around the protection of the young Kyle Reece (played by Anton Yelchin, Star Trek's new Chekov) who Skynet have targeted as their biggest threat ahead of John Connor (Christian Bale). With Reece out of the equation Connor would cease to exist (in a Back to the Future kind of way) and humanity would lose the war against the machines.
The film also follows the evolution of the Terminator models, from early basic robots to the more familiar T-800 Arnie design and a new prototype.
*** SPOILERS ***
The new terminator model, known as Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), seems a strange choice. It's made from the remains of a death-row prisoner, with a human brain and heart encased inside a terminator body. This isn't a very wise move on Skynet's behalf since it has a human soul and wants to make good on his prior convictions. Marcus isn't under control from Skynet and when he eventually realises he's a cyborg, decides to help the human resistance. It's similar to X-Men's Wolverine in a way; "lets take this dude, make him indestructable then piss him off!"*** SPOILERS END ***
As a fellow Terminator, Marcus has free access to enter the suprisingly not-so-heavily guarded Skynet headquarters. He then helps the human resistance save Reece and also donates his human heart to save Connor's life after a good old fashioned cyborg punch up. Yes, the new Terminator's actually a pretty nice guy!
This is the first time the story has been entirely set in the future so I guess they had to imagine several different types of killing machines but at times it felt they were just there to sell toys (hence the crappy poster I made) and didn't really serve a purpose.
The director McG must have been studying Michael Bay's Bumper Book of Craw as there were loads of stupid action sequences that wouldn't look out of place in any Transformers movie.On a positive note, the special effects looked pretty awesome (especially Arnie) and the explosions were epic!
The 12 rating seemed forced onto the UK version. There were scenes that felt obviously cut, to keep the bloodshed toned down to suit a younger (and wider) audience. I think this would have been a better movie with some juicy Rambo moments.
Terminator Salvation is supposed to relaunch the franchise and be the first of a new trilogy of films set in the future. I'm sure we will see sequels, whether or not Bale will be in them is another subject but lets hope they improve on this.
