Terminator Salvation: rage against the machine

Last night I had the honour of going out with my uni homeboys to check out the new Terminator movie. We went to the Bavarian Bier Cafe before hand, and I had some taste platter, and it was delicious. I cannot wait go to Germany and eat copious amounts of sausages and sauerkraut.

I’m going to write a little blurb about terminator, so if you haven’t watched it, don’t read it.

Terminator was a great action flick. It was certainly entertaining and inline with the previous movies, and didn’t feel like it was going to drag out. I really enjoyed the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, it’s a setting I really enjoy and to see CA locations was a treat (having seen the DC region of USA in Fallout 3). The robots were pretty awesome too; it felt like there was a lot of inspiration from transformers in terms of design and movement, and more variations of unit types, snake-like protusion drones, flying hunter killers, massive combined-transformer-like behemoths in the shape of ‘Bruticus’ destroying outposts and squishy humans, people smuggling vehicles, really cool CGI and explosions. The combat scenes between the resistance and skynet are well cherographed, the traditional ’storming the beach head’ is there, with one scene near the start with is one long cut of John Connor manning the helicopter, really immersed the audience into the film and battle. But I did cringe a lot of the action scenes, too many deus-ex machinas, and random things that just happen to work out in favour of the cast, throwing a tire iron at a flying drone moving irradically. or Skynet in it’s eternal omnipresent form would have a system override once you plug your USB device in and the user typing… ‘override’, or that they put manual controls on their motorbike robots? I could go on, I know it’s Hollywood, I know it’s action flick, I know they only have 2 hours to tell a story, but this is just lazy.

Nameless humans are lined up in a row reminding me of concentration death camps, a poignant scene which delivers a message about humanity, emotion and the solidarity of mankind. A man tries to escape and get mowed down by a T600, desperation and fear takes hold.

Sam Worthington does a great role as the support cast; I think he had the better character in the movie. Other than that, the substance and plot was pretty dull with a few loop holes (I suppose this happens when you deal with time travel), the ending was almost spew worthy (besides the fact you can see what’s going to happen before it happens, maybe a conditioning of too many cliched endings?), and you don’t feel the emotion and turmoil John Connor goes through. JC just tends to yell at people and be a lone marine, not Christian’s best acting (*gasp* another Australian actor usurping the screen with their acting). Young Kyle, I just couldn’t typecast him out of his role as the Russian pilot in Star Trek… he does well for a kid but it seems that maybe these movies were released too close with each other. There’s a CGI cameo of Conan as the T800. There’s no doubt there will be 2 or 3 more sequels; T800 was just introduced with this, the crappy short conclusion speech by John Connor saying there’s fragments of Skynet (I thought this place they infiltrated was the main HQ- it was certainly told this way), and the fact that I’m pretty sure they want to make boatloads of filthy money. But you should go see it, because it’s one of the better blockbusters, and there’s still some magic in the old Terminator beast yet. 4.5/10 (I rate harshly so make that a 7/10 in traditional ratings if you want to justify your 15 dollars).

Dystopic science-fiction movies always represent this question: “What makes us human?” Apparently having a human heart, it would seem.