I went to the movies to see Arnold Schwartzenegger's dystopic-yet-hopeful sci-fi franchise rise from the ashes of Terminator 3 like the phoenix it could have been.
Sadly, I'd call this movie Terminator: Not Exactly Saved Quite Yet.
While Christian Bale filled the iconic role of John Connor quite well in a physical fashion, it sometimes seemed as if the resistance's so-called leader had taken a mental vacation, and for a plot that relies so heavily on the importance of the human heart, it's not a credit to the film that its two male leads both seem to lack one.
Viewers expect eye candy from any film directed by McG, and he delivers in spades: a capable, Starbuck-esque female fighter pilot freeing herself from a parachute entanglement; echoes of the Holocaust as a harvester robot drops captured humans into something one character calls a cattle car; a first-person view of a helicopter crash in the midst of a nuke battle; the ruins of the Hollywood sign overlooking the precarious, teetering wasteland of Los Angeles; the obvious-yet-awesome symbolism of a man-machine hybrid on a cross suspended over a gaping hole filled with darkness; and, a completely unsurprising, but welcomed, cameo appearance.
Sadly, the movie's plot seemed strung-together and vague; the so-called prophecy dubbing Connor the eventual head of the resistance seemed more like convenient hand-waving over a plothole than anything else. One major failing in the movie is the bland characterization of lead role Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a former death row inmate-turned-cyborg who exits a Skynet research facility screaming as cheesily as drama queen Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. He spends much of the movie bouncing around Southern California like a post-apocalyptic pinball, as much at the mercy of his programming as much as some really bad writing. Similarly, Connor's wife Kate looks far too clean to exist in such a post-apocalyptic world, and her existence and pregnancy brings very little to the story, other than to prove ham-handedly that John Connor is (gasp!) still human despite the life that he lives.
One of the bright lights in the movie was talented young actor Anton Yelchin, who moves from Star Trek's utopian universe to this dystopian hell with an ease that will undoubtedly make him an A-list commodity in the future. More than Connor himself, Reese is the spirited, hopeful center of the movie, with his son, John Connor, existing only as a man who can't shake his messiah complex a man that, although human, has programmed himself as much as any machine.
Much of the dialogue of Terminator: Salvation is concerned with the role of second chances and the role of hope where there was previously only despair. The movie itself is one two-hour second chance one that should not have been taken.
The movie's original ending was far darker. As much as the Terminator movies are about hope and the human spirit fighting against inestimable odds, it's also the one post-apocalyptic franchise that teeters on the edge of proposing that the human spirit would not be enough when faced with a foe like Skynet. While a darker ending may not have made the movie meet financial success at the box office, it would have turned this from a feast for the eyes to a movie that made a statement. As it was, this was one movie that said nothing new.