The Secret Stand Up of Alex Mac

Terminator Salvation is something or a conundrum to me. By all indications, it was going to be a summer action flick. And that is what it was. At the same time, it has a legacy to live up to. Terminator 2 is not only one of the genre defining action movies, it was also a moderately complex examination of what makes human, well, human. That, and it was really cool. Seeing Christian Bale cast as John Connor in a gritty, war torn future seemed like it had a lot of potential. Trailers showed the film to have a really cool feel. And then, I heard that McG was directing. And then I heard the Christian Bale freak out. After I was finally done laughing about that whole escapade, I made my way to a local arthouse cinema run by Vichy Frenchmen to se the film. And by that I mean, I got together with some friends late at night and saw the movie at the cheapest place we could.

And we still didn't get our money's worth. Salvation is a convoluted mess which does not live up the potential that it had. After all, the premise is sound. Show us the fabled war against the Machines which the series had always been centered on. What follows is something far more complicated than it should be. The story centers on John Connor (Bale) as he struggles against SkyNet. Normally, this would be enough. Enter Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright, a death row inmate who donated his bosy to CyberDyne before the start of the war and awakens to find himself a cyborg. The meeting of these two men will drasticall shift the course of the war forever. This happens all while the Machines hunt down a young Kyle Rees (Anton Yelchin), the man who is destined to go back in time and become Connor's father. 

It is a lot worse than it sounds. Terminator is a clunky series on disjointed set pieces which never reall build to any suitable climax. There are a dw cool moments but they never really feel complete. Sure, the bike chase is cool to look at but it feels off for some reason that I cannot put my fingers on. Indeed, that is Salvation's biggest flaw. It has all the means to be something good and looks actually feels like a movie (which is more than can be said for Wolverine) but there seems to be no real purpose to the story other than to tell it. Themes are present but they are never presented. The cast is good enough, even if Bale overacts the part of Connor. Worthington conveys a decent sense of inner turmoil. But as the two main characters, you feel little empathy for them. You don't feel their humanity. The only one you do feel for is Yelchin's Reese, who struggles to survive in the crapsack world he is in. There is a wieght to Yelchin's performance that the other protagonists lack. I expect great things from this guy. I mean between this and Star Trek, he certainly stole the summer. Or at least a small part of it.

This, like so many other films this summer, is something of a missed oppourtunity. Even if the well you are drawing from hold the same old water, it doesn't mean you can still enjoy it. Many of summer's films so far have missed a chance to take something we know and make it new again. Make it interesting. Salvation could have done what Star Trek did but alas, failed painfully.