First things first – I like The Terminator movies. Well, I thought The Terminator was good, T2: Judgment Day was awesome, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines just plain sucked, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was pretty standard TV fare. Thinking about it what I really like about Terminator movies is the background story, which is pretty grim (robots trying to wipe out humankind), yet it is peppered throughout with hope.

Being a Terminator movie there is plenty of stylized action…

After the dire T3: ROTM I was half expecting Terminator Salvation to limp along like an injured T800. Instead I was blown away by dazzling FX, a good storyline, good acting, and loads of action complete with explosions galore… and I just love the fiery orange clouds as they light up my Big screen LCD!

Terminator Salvation (TS from now on) begins before the robots destroy the world. A convicted killer (Marcus) on death row agrees to leave his body to science, more specifically Cyberdyne Systems, who, as every Terminator fan knows, are responsible for creating the machines that destroy mankind and the world.

After Marcus’ execution the movie jumps forward to 2018. And yup, you’ve guessed it, the world has been ravaged by the machines. Once great cities have been reduced to giants piles of rubble. The great plains, once lush with grass and trees, are nothing more than desert wastelands. And humanity has all but been snuffed out by giant metal machines and, of course, the Terminator cyborg soldiers.

Into this bleak world steps the hero of the movie, John Connor, played by Christian Bale. Mr Bale is not my favorite actor – I hated his Batman, especially in The Dark Knight. However, he plays a good very somber Connor… given the subject matter he was hardly going to ham it up Jim Carrey style.

Robot motor cycles give chase…

The storyline has it’s moments, but it really acts as a backdrop for all the F/X. And that is the main star of the movie… the F/X. To be honest, I didn’t really take note of much of the acting, directing, or cinematography in this movie as I was being constantly blown away by the amazing FX, which was flawless throughout thanks to George Lucas’ FX company ILM (Industrial Light and Magic).

Being a Terminator movie there is plenty of stylized action sequences on offer along with a fair amount of violence. People are thrown around by metal skeleton cyborgs, snatched from moving vehicles by worm-like robots, shot, stabbed, and beaten, although there’s not too much gore on offer. On the plus side there are a few poignant moments such as the scene when human prisoners are transported to a facility reminiscent of the concentration camps of WW2, and when a human cyborg hybrid decides that his fate is not to be decided by the Skynet supercomputer.

Some of the other themes to be found in the movie include love, what it means to be human, and self sacrifice, hence the Salvation in the title. Just don’t watch this movie expecting it to contain any BIG messages or faith-based metaphors; Terminator Salvation is, for the most part, a BIG action flick with BIG explosions and lots of shiny metal monsters.

Keeping it real,
Chris

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