With so many films failing either artistically among critics or commercially among viewers (not to mention those that get canned somewhere along the line before being finished and/or released), I'm guessing both filmmakers and studios are more than ecstatic whenever they come up with a hit.
That's especially true when no one expects that, which was exactly the case back in 1984 when a little sci-fi action flick named "Terminator" came out. After all, its director was best known for helming "Piranha II: The Spawning" while its star was better known for his bulging biceps than thespian abilities in the first two "Conan" movies.
While the film was a modest success, it gained a growing cult following, and both its director, James Cameron, and star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Hollywood success stories. Seven year later, that was followed by the bigger budgeted special effects extravaganza, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" that was a huge hit and a terrific example, like its predecessor, of how to make a gripping action flick.
Flash forward more than a decade and Cameron opted to pass on a third film, while aging star Schwarzenegger was running for Governor of California, but returned one last time as the title cyborg in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," the weakest of the three outings despite some decent action sequences.
And now with the Terminator being better known as the governator, and the last film's director moving on, what's a new helmer to do with a franchise that seems likely to be all but kaput? Well, beyond keeping with the series' track record and employing some special effects magic to inject a little Arnie in the film right when it needs it, Joseph McGinty Nichol, a.k.a. McG, takes the story in a new but plot and thematically related direction in "Terminator Salvation."
Working from a script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris (who also penned "T3"), the filmmaker has abandoned the "going back in time to kill an important human" storyline that fueled the first three flicks, and thus provided a personified key villain. Granted, some time travel implications are still present and actually fuel the third act (the need to save a pivotal person so that he can eventually grow up into the Michael Biehn character in the '84 pic), but this is otherwise a grim war flick with a mostly anonymous villainous presence.
Considering it takes place 15 years after Skynet nuked humanity at the end of the '03 film, that grimness isn't really much of a surprise, but there's next to no desperately needed comic relief present this time around. Accordingly, if one's not a diehard action junkie, this might be a considerably less entertaining and/or enjoyable experience than its predecessors (granted, the first film was no laugh-fest, but at least it had Schwarzenegger and his signature one-liners that played amusingly despite the ominous intention).
If one is a fan of hard-hitting, smash 'em and crash 'em action, however, the film offers plenty of thrilling sequences with top-notch special effects, stunts, choreography and cinematography, the kind of which only big-budget, summer popcorn flicks can deliver. While there isn't really anything we haven't seen before in the likes of "Transformers," the "Road Warrior" movies and, of course, the preceding "Terminator" movies, McG certainly delivers the goods in terms of getting your money's worth of onscreen adrenaline.
It's too bad the same can't be said for the rest of the story or most of the characters. While it works decently in terms of temporally connecting installment three back with episode one, the plot otherwise isn't anything terribly special. Nor is the portrayal of central character John Connor (in utero at the end of #1, played by Edward Furlong in "T2" and embodied by Nick Stahl in "T3").
As befits Christian Bale's usual onscreen portrayal, Connor is all intense business, this time without much carryover of characteristics from the last two "T" outings. While intensity is good for such a pic, so is some range, depth or growth of some kind, but the actor isn't allowed any of that. It certainly doesn't help that he's upstaged by Sam Worthington whose character is bedeviled by what truly are some inner conflicts. The actor -- certain to be Hollywood's next big thing, especially with Cameron tapping him to star in "Avatar," his first feature direction since "Titanic" -- delivers a strong performance.
The rest -- including Moon Bloodgood as an action-ready heroine, Anton Yelchin as a budding resistance fighter, Common as the usual assistant fighter character and Michael Ironside as the determined general -- are okay, but their characters and characterizations either reside in "B" movie-land or precariously teeter just above that. As a result, and beyond Worthington's role, we don't really care about the characters other than by the default "humans-are-better-than-robots" mentality that automatically means we're going to side with them.
With little to no such engagement, I'll admit I was fairly bored early on, although noting all of McG's visual references to the predecessors as well as other films kept me occupied (viewers will note "Robocop," "Predator" and even, of all things, "The Great Escape"). But once he started piling on the action (some sequences are absolutely terrific on just that operational level), the more it drew me into the visceral experience.
That's not to say that "Terminator Salvation" is anything remotely resembling a great overall film (those action scenes could probably be rearranged with little to no effect on the underlying storytelling), and it's still nowhere in the same league as the first two. Yet, as a summer popcorn action pic, it's fairly entertaining, which may just make it a hit. It rates as a 6 out of 10.
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