Terminator: Salvation

Both warnings and advertisements, the Terminator films are
technophobic teases, selling tickets by promising the decade’s model of
killing machine: the classic V8 1984 Schwarzenegger; the
bullet-streamlined, liquid-metal ’91 Robert Patrick of T2: Judgment
Day; Kristanna Loken’s 2003 T-X (with burgundy pleather
upholstery).

A departure in many ways, Terminator Salvation is the first
Terminator with no upgrade. The hardware is clanky and runs on
diesel. Schwarzenegger is present only as a CGI mask. The franchise’s
creation myth — the toppling of humanity by Skynet computers
— has finally come to pass. It’s 2018, time enough, apparently,
for survivors to start dressing like drum-circle squatters. Christian
Bale’s John Connor is a maverick officer in the human resistance. Sam
Worthington’s Marcus Wright, last he remembers, donated his body to
Cyberdyne before getting a lethal injection. He wakes to a blasted
world, carrying a plot twist familiar to anyone who knows their Philip
K. Dick.

To hear director McG tell it, this is nothing less than
Terminator Salvage, a mission to “re-establish credibility” (aka
consumer confidence). The obvious model is Chris Nolan’s po-faced
Batman. McG, who started off directing videos for frosted-tip
bro bands, is stripping down, getting “dark.” He has stricken color
from the screen and book-clubbed his cast with copies of The
Road. The visuals cite a checklist of 20th-century catastrophes:
Worthington, in a Soviet-issue greatcoat, walks a Dresdened Los
Angeles; oil-field fires à la Kuwait darken the horizon; human
tissue is harvested in Holocaust-like cattle-car roundups. There’s even
one of those simple nudges at contemporary commentary — “We are
not machines, and if we behave like them, then what’s the point in
winning?” — that industrial-filmmaking liberals honestly believe
alchemize entertainment into art, like lead into gold.

Change was inevitable. The established Terminator formula has
been squeezed dry in FOX’s prime-time The Sarah Connor
Chronicles. But among the many things junked in McG’s chop shop
is the notion of pleasure: The director describes cutting that
“gratuitous moment of a girl taking her top off in an action picture”
(God forbid) to get a franchise-first PG-13. He does, however, begin
his film with the hook of Worthington clammily kissing a
vampire-complexioned, bald-pated Helena Bonham Carter. Terminator
3 director Jonathan Mostow, trained on submarine and trucking
thrillers, knew he was covering a greasy headbanger classic, not
writing scripture. I went to his movie effed-up and had a hoot; anyone
planning the same for T4 will drop before the credits.

Salvation rolls along with Marcus on the road, his journey
toward the resistance radio transmissions honoring the series’ paranoid
momentum. (The Terminator actually had more in common with the
implacable, unstoppable slasher pic than sci-fi mythos.) The action set
pieces, cut with overdone hectic percussion (as on a Neil
Peart–sized kit), are engaging enough. It’s when Marcus and
Connor intersect — trekking to strike at Skynet’s Silicon Valley
nerve center, which looks to be somewhere between Mordor and the Port
of Houston — that the movie slackens, with McG tugging at
emotional connections he never stuck in place. There’s a bit with
Worthington smashing a monitor that I realized, with embarrassment as
it went into slow motion, was actually supposed to be cathartic.

The Terminator films have always respected female durability,
from commando-mom Linda Hamilton to T3‘s intimation of masculine
obsolescence, with an effeminate Arnold modeling a pair of Elton John
sunglasses. Salvation is comparatively anti-girl. Moon
Bloodgood’s pilot is introduced shaking a luxuriant mane loose from her
flight helmet, making a Jennifer Beals-in-Flashdance shocka out
of something the preceding movies took for granted. She’ll later face
an arbitrarily staged menace; her would-be rapists are the only
yee-hawing rednecks in the movie, though any American resistance would,
realistically, be half Scottish-Irish gun nuts. Bryce Dallas Howard, as
Connor’s wife, is here just to set up the all-time most convoluted
“I’ll be back.”

But the essential problem here isn’t the ladies — or the lack
thereof. It’s the no-frissonsBale-Worthington pairing. Bale,
doing the “grrr” voice, is a lesson in how clenched effort does not
equal effect. Worthington, half-burying his Aussie accent under gruff
bluff, is of the blunt Jason Statham–Daniel Craig genus, with a
bit of Ricky Hatton thrown in (with Hatton’s level of resourcefulness).
These Commonwealthers are dull trudgers, all — can we get a
tariff?

Salvation, terminally gray, all macho bark, doesn’t do
contrasts. This means monotony — as predictable as, when the
movie tanks, McG telling an interviewer it was “too dark” for the
multiplex.