I won’t be back.
For sure, we won’t (for the next version of Terminator, that is).
No Drama
Folks, there’s no gripping drama in Terminator Salvation, the latest instalment of the Terminator franchise.
Absolutely none.
All there is to this movie is the thud, thump and screech of metal, guns blazing and frenetic, mindless and mindnumbing action across a bleak, hostile landscape.
How can there be any drama when there’s a mere fig leaf of a story accompanying all the loud noises and huge fireballs.
One wonders if this movie of Machines vs Man was made by a machine. Sure looks it.
Set in 2018 and filmed mostly against a greyish backdrop in low light, Terminator Salvation is the familiar account of the battle of humans against the self-aware Skynet computer system that now rules the world through its army of machines except for isolated pockets of resistance by small collections of humans who survived the big nuclear fire.
Yes, the machines are many, hulking, ugly and fast. And the humans arraigned against them are few, puny, outnumbered and outgunned.
Familiar Names
Since this is a Terminator movie, there are of course the familiar names of John Connor (Christian ‘Batman’ Bale) and Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). Wouldn’t be a Terminator movie otherwise, would it.
Yes, Sarah Connor is here too.
Remember Sarah? The Los Angeles waitress in Terminator I, who had the Arnold ‘Cyborg’ Schawarzenegger after her in 1984. Actually, Sarah is not here in flesh and blood since it’s already 2018 but we do hear her familiar voice on tape advising son John.
None of the main actors in Terminator Salvation stand out in any way. Not Bale. Not Worthington. Not Yelchin.
Plain Trash
No, we didn’t find the character of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) endearing either since there was more flesh on this machine and less in his role.
Bottomline, all the pyrotechnics on a lunar-like, semi-dark landscape not only can’t salvage this piece of trash but gets tiresome quickly.
Dejavu at best and ennui at worst. That’s Terminator Salvation for you.
Maybe, it’s time to put this Terminator baby to sleep. Once and for all and spare us a reprise of this drivel, four or five years from now.
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it could be 10 times worse than love story 2050, and id still watch it. Hey, as long as its got the word ‘terminator’ anywhere near the title, im in.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Love Story 2050. Now, that was an abomination, a curse on the human race.
No, Terminator Salvation is not as bad as that but not worth $6 either.
Hey, when is Terminator Salvation releasing in your country?
dunno if you know, but theres a producers vs multiplex owners strike going on.
So the steady supply of movies is drying up. Terminator salvation is slated to release on the 29th here in india, but you cant say…it may or may not.( x men origins still hasnt made its way here.)
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: So the steady supply of movies is drying up
Lucky You.
No big Bollywood movies for several weeks here too.
The last high-profile Bollywood movie here was Delhi 6, which was trash.
Oh come on…Worthington’s character was the best in this movie.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Worthington’s character didn’t hit us like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 where he plays the hero.
Worthington’s role was not well developed enough for us to either empathize with him over his situation or worry too much that he might be a Trojan Horse capable of inflicting deadly damage on the resistance.
Also, the confrontation between Worthington & Christian Bale was not a home run, both in Bale’s hideout and later in the ensuing fire-fight.
Finally, Worthington’s confrontation with the Skynet system was again nothing to write home about.
This was expected, the terminator campaign lost its charisma even in the previous sequel… only thing made it a bit interesting is the female (well built and sexy…) opponent…
The sequels shoudl unveil some unexpected knots in the story… so the story becomes the center point not the action.. this is why each of the sequel in Matrix campaign was successful.
Terminator II was the perfect blend of action and stunning story.. a perfect sequel.. then it lost track … and concentrated only on action..
and as you rightly said for Arnold the ‘machine’ role suits well as no need to ‘act’ much in this role which makes his life easy…
thanks SI… you saved me $6.75
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Let’s see how Kambakkht Ishq (Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor) turns out.
According to Wiki, Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards and Brandon Routh appear in cameos in Kambakkht Ishq.
SI… I heard Kambakth Ishq was a cheapo remake of the Tamil movie ‘Pammal K Sambandam’..
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Added Pammal K Sambandam to our Netflix queue.
joeantony said: only thing made it a bit interesting is the female (well built and sexy…) opponent…
T-X was the lamest among the three terminators sent to kill Sara/John Connor. T-1000 kicked major ass!
SI said: Worthington’s character didn’t hit us like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2 where he plays the hero.
Yes, I agree. If you actually see the director’s cut of T2, you get to see a lot more dynamic interaction between T-800 and John, and why he has this bonding with a machine. However, I think people have ripped apart any further continuation of the saga beyond T2, so I went without such bias. As a stand-alone flick, it’s good summer action fun and Worthington delivers.
That said, I agree the story was weak and it’d been tackled differently. I think a better story would have been John Connor and Kate Brewster journeying to form what would give birth to the human resistance and encountering the mysterious Marcus Wright in their journey. In T2 we saw John Connor finding an emotional attachment towards a machine and in T3 we were made aware that this very emotional attachment was the one that led to his death (he was killed by the Arnie T-800). So, now you have a John Connor who is conflicted in the way he views machines and you have an equally conflicted Marcus Wright, who is a machine but believes he’s human. This set the stage for some dynamic character interaction between Connor and Wright that the writers of TS failed to exploit. Such pity!
Lastly, whether you like it or not, T5 has already been announced for 2011 :D. I just hope it’s not McG directing, but who knows.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Besides failing to exploit the John Connor-Marcus Wright confrontation, the writers could have also lifted the Wright-Blair romance angle up one or two notches. As it stands, way too brief and failed to have an impact.
T5? – Boy, they really need to work on the script if it has to have any impact.
Our feeling is T4 would end up a dud but for the Memorial Day weekend.
Our favorite review line is from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times:
SI Said: Besides failing to exploit the John Connor-Marcus Wright confrontation, the writers could have also lifted the Wright-Blair romance angle up one or two notches. As it stands, way too brief and failed to have an impact.
I don’t know about the “upping the romance angle” between Wright-Blair the attachment most likely was used only as a precedent for John Connor to remind Blair that Wright’s not a “HE”, but an “IT.” This is again an ode to a brilliant deleted garage-scene in T2, shortly after Sara Connor’s rescue from the asylum, when John and Sara Connor remove the chip from T-800’s head so that he can re-boot and re-learn, which forms the basis for the T-800 learning some human emotions. Sara is about to smash that chip with a hammer, and John prevents her saying that they need “HIM” and she says “IT, John…not HE.” Besides paying ode to that scene from T2, I didn’t see any need for their “romance” to develop.
That said, for all the talent Bryce Dallas Howard has, she was under-utilized as Kate Brewster and I was disappointed. I expected to see her develop from the Kate “you remind me of my mom” Brewster we saw in the last half of T3.
SI said: “Our favorite review line is from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times:
It gives you all the pleasure of a video game without the bother of having to play it.”
Yeah, that Ebert’s review is pretty spot-on. It ended up looking like a Michael Bay film. Like I said, as a summer action flick, it delivers, but as a legitimate entry to the Terminator saga, it fails.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Now, our most anticipated movie is The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (John Travolta & Denzel Washington). – June 12.
unaku vera velaye iulaya
movie review panradha vida?
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Scoot.
Transformers is going to be good.
Impressive trailer.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Seen the Transformers trailer a few times. Wasn’t impressed.
The truth is there are ‘Murugadases’ in Hollywood too. I wouldn’t expect much from the Charlie’s Angels’s guy. Do you know what Joseph McGinty and Sanjay Gadhvi have in common? They both made a commercially viable movie (Charlie’s Angels and Dhoom respectively) made a sequel to it which made money from the hype of its prequel but offered nothing more than the prequel and then went around for few time to sign in a producer who spend a lot money to prove that they are just one film wonders. (Terminator salvation in Joseph’s case and Kidnap in Sanjay’s case).
As per me, the most directing disasters vis a vis promising earlier works are:
Marc Forster – Stay is an exceptionally well made movie, Monster’s Ball is gripping but Quantum of Solace was a total waste
Sam Mendes – American Beauty was classic. Road to Perdition lacked all the beauty that American Beauty had. Jarhead, did some one else ghost direct it? Haven’t seen Revolutionary Road.
Would love to see what SI has got to add on to this list.
P.S – Jean Pierre Jeunet’s name came to my mind. He directed Alien Resurrection followed by ‘Amelie’ and ‘A very long engagement’. Both are classics. Amelie gave us the best actress of our times, Audrey Tautou. A very long engagement is the first non-English movie produced by Warner Bros. Both are must watch, please.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: Would love to see what SI has got to add on to this list.
Offhand, we can think of Ron Howard.
After the acclaimed A Beautiful Mind, came mediocre movies like Da Vinci Code and recently Angels & Demons.
Prabhudeva:
After the hugely successful Pokiri, we got the revoltingly bad Villu.
agree with a4apple. QOS is a trash.
if you have watched, Munich, Kite Runner and Bourne Ultimatum, you hate QOS so much.
Might be its the production compulsion for Marc Forster, not to try anything new, but to assemble previously tried stuff.
But I dont complain A&D, i found it very good, as the whole movie is set on few hours of incidents.
I liked it so much, gonna watch it again.
It had the blend, no drama is the plus I found.
don’t give the credit to prabhu deva for pokiri, if you watch the original version in telegu, tamil pokiri is already stupid.
a4apple said: “QOS is a trash.”
Definitely trash compared to the more compelling and engaging Casino Royale before it. That “fuel-cell hotel in the middle of nowhere” that was used as the setting for the climax was utterly ridiculous in its conceptualization.
“don’t give the credit to prabhu deva for pokiri, if you watch the original version in telegu, tamil pokiri is already stupid.”
Touche!
BTW, Terminator Salvation only pulled in $56.4 million over the Thur-Fri-Sat period. Considering the $200 million budget, that’s rather disappointing for an opening “weekend.” Even a shoddy movie like Wolverine took in $80 million plus over the Fri-Sat weekend.
Unless GI Joe, Pelham 123, and Transformers 2 really bring in the crowds, consider this the “summer of flops.”
SearchIndia.com Responds:
We’re betting on Pelham 123.
SI Said: “We’re betting on Pelham 123.”
It’s rated R and it’s a remake of the 1974 original (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072251/). I doubt that this movie will save an already disappointing summer.
The safe bets are Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, which can bring in more crowds..
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Saw the previews of Transformers 2 and Pelham 1 2 3 during Terminator Salvation. Didn’t think much of Transformers 2. Also, getting tired of hulking machines.
How embarrassing for Terminator Salvation. On a huge weekend for movies, basically Memorial Day Weekend is the start of the summer movie season, it was beat out for first place in its opening weekend by Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. $43 million dollars and second place for a movie in the Terminator franchise on opening weekend should see some people get fired.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: second place for a movie in the Terminator franchise on opening weekend should see some people get fired
From your lips to God’s ears. What a mediocre movie.
What SI said on Ron Howard is cent percent right. If I were you, I would have avoided Prabhu Deva from the list. We are talking about directors here and not dancer turned actor turned director turned …when you turn too much you loose ‘direction’!
I personally loved Mani Ratnam sir’s Kannathil Muthamittal even though some believe it offered nothing more after dissecting terrorism in Roja ,Bombay and Dil Se. Mohabatein and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, classic examples of how deep somebody can fall from the heights of DDLJ. Anjathe from Myshkin (or Mr.Skin what ever his name is) offered nothing more from his earlier work Chithirum Pesuthadi. He just replicated his style. My personal favorite (for the lack of correct vocabulary) is Dhurai. In 2000 he directed Mughavari, a very good movie and heard nothing ever after. Sources say he directed Simbhu starred Thotti Jaya, but I can’t buy that info.
Thanks Satish Kumar for picking up Bourne Ultimatum. May be a coincidence that I re-saw Bourne Ultimatum over this weekend to stay away from Terminator Salvation. Paul Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy, United 93) directed it. I have never seen the usage of handheld camera so perfectly in a movie. Greengrass is basically an English documentary maker. Bourne Identity directed by Doug Liman (Mr&Mrs Smith) was mediocre. What I find most striking about the Bourne trilogy is the versatility of Oliver Wood, the cinematographer for the series. I beg you to all to watch Bourne Ultimatum one more time and concentrate on camera work. Can you spot at least a minute when the camera is idle? But at the same time the work of art doesn’t seem amateurish but look realistic.
(Cinematographer to director – sir, heroine is jumping to the pond, where do you want me to keep the camera?; Director – Let the camera jump with her! – Chinthavishtayaya Shyamala (Malayalam movie – recently remade into tamil with Karuna Das as hero and Karthika as heroine, can’t remember the title though)
Please excuse me (and when you excuse some body you don’t use filthy words) if this post reached you earlier. there seems some mishaps with the server.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write: I would have avoided Prabhudeva from the list. We are talking about directors here and not dancer turned actor turned director turned …when you turn too much you loose ‘direction’!
Classic (the second sentence above). 🙂
Thanks SI and sorry for the defamatory intenedo in the last para of my post. I reckon we finally reached ‘talking terms’ and don’t want to spoil it.
SI:Added Pammal K Sambandam to our Netflix queue
Good that you finally watching it.
I liked PKS very much.
Simran & Sneha are too good in this movie.
Kamal & his Grandpa talking is funny.