Terminator Salvation

City Paper Grade: C

by Shaun Brady

HASTA LA VISTA: John Connor (Christian Bale, complete with Batman voice) takes down a Terminator in McG's Terminator: Salvation. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

[City Paper Grade: C]

In its fourth iteration, the Terminator series finds itself facing the same conundrum that bedeviled the Planet of the Apes sequels. With the basic parameters of its story having been set by the original films, each new chapter can only illustrate details hinted at by its forebears. Where Jonathan Mostow's Rise of the Machines was basically a drive-in-worthy dumb-down of T2, McG's instead plucks the brief glimpses of the post-apocalyptic future from the previous films and injects them with steroids, more concerned with hardware than with flesh. The result doesn't lack for spectacle, with sequences that could be edited into the upcoming Transformers sequel without clashing. But that's precisely the problem — most of what has made the franchise stand out in the past is wholly lacking here. James Cameron certainly didn't shy away from major setpieces, but he always maintained the tone of a kid with the most expensive toy box in the world. McG, whose past efforts have always seemed to be helmed with a frat-boy smirk, has made an utterly joyless Terminator film, monochrome and devoid of even a single bad pun. Equally at fault is Christian Bale, who for some reason always translates "action hero" as necessitating a throaty growl, barking orders in the same rasp he uses as Batman. Aside from a few overt references — echoed catchphrases, a fondness for Guns N' Roses (which begs the question of whether the film's timeline ever allowed him to hear Chinese Democracy) — Bale's John Connor bears little resemblance to the reluctant hero of previous films, which makes the climactic cameo appearance of a certain familiar face fall flat. Bale is largely sidelined, as it turns out, by Sam Worthington's Marcus, a part-man, part-machine whose redemption story becomes the film's focus. This all culminates in our first glimpse into the machines' HQ, revealing that their programming includes a need to explain their plots Bond-villain style — with Helena Bonham Carter's face, no less.