Saturday, May 23, 2009

Review: Terminator Salvation


And we're back! Although busy, summer is nearly here, and my first summer blockbuster was Terminator Salvation. As always, never fear, as there are no spoilers here.
The first thing to begin with is the title. Several news outlets have stated that the title makes no sense without a colon. Clearly they haven't seen this movie. Moving on. Terminator Salvation's trailers showed a very dark film, including Nine Inch Nails music and all kinds of existential quandaries. Well, Terminator Salvation is not quite that same movie. It does stray from the usual sci-fi fare which actually made me proud of it, as it presented some interesting ideas within the Terminator world, however, it did not create any thought on a larger scale. This ended up being okay because Terminator is ultimately the most bad-ass of sci-fi action films. If there was one thing that I was disappointed about in Terminator, it would had to have been Christian Bale. He is one of my favorite actors, and I don't always expect much out of him, but in Terminator Salvation, Bale left me wanting more from his performance. Maybe someone was messing with the lights during his scenes, but in all seriousness the cinematography was excellent. The film has a darkly beautiful tone which is helped by the rich, obliterated environments. I must say that it was not visually exciting most of the time, as it just looked intriguing. A performance I was shocked at was that of Sam Worthington, whose character bears a great deal of significance throughout. Worthington also pulls out all the stops and his character Marcus becomes the bad ass that he was meant to be. Terminator is a very good movie, although I have yet to decide where it fits in the series. It is an enjoyable experience, having both the cheap thrills and memorable moments that we expect from the series, Terminator is quite satisfying for anyone looking for a great action movie. I must conclude with a warning that if you see Terminator, you must not expect the darkest of movies (tonally anyways, as the lighting is pretty damn dark) or you will be somewhat disappointed.

Emerson

2 comments:

  1. I think it would have been hard for Bale to really act out in the role of John Connors, since that character has already been so closely defined. Quite simply he was "boxed in."

    -Griffin

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  2. Griffin,
    You make a good point, but this is a series in which each installment seems to take liberties with the franchise. All kinds of things are messed up with the timeline because of four movies shared by three directors and a TV show. I think Bale could have made the character his more if he really wanted to.

    Emerson

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