Movie Watch: Terminator Salvation

I'm going to through in some spoilers here because, well golly, as I've said before some things just deserved to be spoiled.

Terminator: Salvation starts off pretty strong. One of the early action sequences is actually a pretty impressive showing of cinematography and directing. A lot of the premise elements make it seem like the movie is trying to build into something more than just an action movie - something almost like a Philip K. Dick novel in places.

And then, about half way through, the entire movie gives up completely on all of the above and turns into a vapid Hollywood blockbuster before turning the corner to being blind, stupid and annoying.

I'll try to be vague, but let's just say that about the time John Connor decides to napalm an entire forest - it's about time to bail. It doesn't entirely make sense, and just serves to set up another (this time much more banal) action scene and worse - opens the plot to numerous blunders of the movie's progressive downfall.

For one thing - it begins to baffle the viewer as to why John Connor, who should have more advanced knowledge of Skynet, Terminators and hacking phones for free service (though that last bit is probably of little use anymore) acts like such a dimwitted grunt for most of the movie. Gone is the intelligence that we've seen in previous movies, in its place is a role that feels like a boilerplate from every other action movie. Bale's strategy through all of this is to give us his angry puppy dog look through most of the movie.

When the movie reaches its "twist", the wheels have officially come off the bus. There's the right way to do a twist - which is the careful seeding of hints and foreshadowing, and there's the Terminator: Salvation method which is to just wait until you need a nifty plot moment, make up a bunch of crap and hope the audience is still impressed with all that napalm blowing up.

As the movie moves into Skynet Central, you might think to yourself: "this can't get any worse". Surely all these computer interfaces designed for humans in a machine world gone made is bad enough. Or maybe that in a city full of human killing machines, the incredibly powerful AI decides to send a lone robot to kill off its most wanted prize. Or maybe the revelation that all terminators are, in fact, just walking nuclear bombs. Or the "salvation through electrocution" scene.

I won't spoil the ending - but I will warn you. Yes. Yes, it gets worse.

It's a horrible movie. Highly, highly not recommended. Seriously, Terminator 3 was much better if only because it knew it was just a stupid action film from the beginning.