John Connor

TERMINATOR SALVATION Movie Review

by Matt Goldberg    Posted: May 20th, 2009 at 8:05 pm

While “Terminator Salvation” may want to come down on the side of humanity, it’s as soulless as its robotic antagonists and puts all of energies into its thrilling set pieces and puts as little attention as possible towards its characters.  While director McG has shown himself as a skilled director when it comes to designing his action sequences, he still has a lot to learn about what makes a film compelling and his film remains ambivalent in trying to forge its own direction while still remaining faithful to James Cameron’s first two films in the series.

The film opens in 2003 where death row inmate Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) signs his body away to a dying scientist (Helena Bonham Carter) and her research for Cyberdyne Industries.  Oddly, even without WB’s over-zealous marketing attempts (which gave away just about everything there was to give), the film spoils what would have been a remarkable reveal: that Marcus Wright comes back in 2018 as a Terminator, or, a hybrid but definitely not 100%-human.  It would take time to set up Marcus’ motivations and keep his secret secret (not skipping him like a stone across a river during a set piece would help).  There’s no time for that in “Terminator Salvation”.

Once in 2018 we meet up with John Connor (Christian Bale) who is not the leader of the resistance but definitely one of its higher-ups as he sends out radio messages to the masses from his secret bunker (which oddly can’t be picked up by the machines but they can zero in on rock music in about five seconds) but we’re told (via prologue titles) that some see him as humanity’s salvation while others view him as a false prophet.  We never get to see that division.  We also never get to see if Connor, a man who’s been at war before he was even born, has doubts, frustrations, passions, or anything outside of being a soldier.  He hugs his wife Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard) from time to time.  The film needed to make John Connor into a fully-realized character rather than further typecast Bale as “grim, unsmiling gentleman who occasionally screams at someone so you know he has a pulse.”  But there’s no time for that in “Terminator Salvation”.

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