Terminator Salvation

There is only so much irrational crap I can take from a movie and Terminator Salvation crossed that line.  Until the final moments there was your basic amount of nonsense going on but the conclusion just completely killed me.  This is one of my favorite franchises (I base my entire fear of artificial intelligence on it) but whereas the first 2 movies are a couple of the greatest movies ever made; Rise of the Machines and now Terminator Salvation are just action movies and nothing else.

Let’s try to delay my angry outburst for as long as possible.  The best thing about Christian Bale is that he takes these roles so seriously.  75% of his screen-time is John Connor talking into a microphone but he damn near makes it work, except for the fact that half the time he talks like Batman and the other half he talks with a strange lisp.  Still, he is a great John Connor for the future of the franchise.  The new guy, Sam Worthington, does good work as the human/machine hybrid.  He throws in little moments of classic Terminator movements.  It was fun to see Common because it was Common not because of anything his character did in his 5 minutes of face-time.  The best casting of all was computer generated Arnold showing up.  Ah soon George Lucas’ dream will come true and humans will no longer be a necessity for live action movies.

Although there were a couple of nice action sequences, nothing blew my mind.  So going into the Skynet confrontation I was on the fence for Terminator Salvation.  Sadly, with the pressure on the story just fell apart.  There were 2 separate sequences that were just unacceptable.  First off was taking the earliest version of the T-800 and making it completely invulnerable.  This was the model that was destroyed in all the other previous Terminator movies but this time around it survives having molten liquid steel dumped on top of it.  This is exactly what destroyed Arnold and the more advanced Robert Patrick in the second movie but this time around it just gets up and keeps moving.  I know you always want to establish how unstoppable the villain is but don’t contradict what happened in the previous movies.  The second and more brain numbing moment was the heart transplant that ended the movie.  Are you shitting me?  First off that heart was punched by a Terminator as a way of killing a character yet a half hour later the heart is good enough to be transferred!?  Then a trained veterinarian did a heart transplant in a makeshift triage tent in the middle of what looked like a desert.  I’m sure all the proper bypass equipment was available and operating area was completely sterile.  I hate when this shit is noticeable.

I really wish I can sit here and tell you that the action in Terminator Salvation was mind-blowing and worth the price of admission.  But I can't so I won't.  This was just an okay summer movie.  The Terminator franchise should be so much more that this.

6 out of 10