So yeah, the Terminator films don’t really hold together all that well if you stop and think about them. But, for the first two films at least, there was so much going on that your attention never strayed far enough to wonder about a couple of minor logical inconsistencies that, let’s face, you pretty much had to buy into if you were sitting down to watch the films in the first place. Plus, there was plenty else to occupy your mind if you wanted to delve into the backstory and mythology (the whole question of John Connor’s provenance, for instance).
What always grounded the films (even the much maligned second sequel, Rise of the Machines) was that they made sense on a scene by scene basis. In fact, I would argue that the only reason those previous films were successful was precisely because their internal logic was airtight. Without that they would have completely fallen apart under the weight of their ponderous backstory.
Unfortunately McG’s Terminator Salvation is the first film in the series that has no such internal coherence, asking its audience to ignore glaring inconsistencies in scene after scene. For instance, how can the resistance’s massive runway and air force base have remained undetected all this time when a thirty second snippet of an Alice in Chains song is enough to bring the machines’ running? Why don’t the humans seem all that worried about conserving ammunition? And from where exactly are they getting all those machine guns and helicopters and fighter planes in the first place? I can’t imagine they still have manufacturing plants in operation somewhere that the machines don’t know about.
Usually in a film like this it’s only after the fact that questions such as these arise. During the film there’s usually far too much going on with everything moving far too quickly for the audience to stop and think about whether or not what they’re seeing makes sense. Not so Terminator Salvation which, though already groaning under the weight of three films’ worth of convoluted backstory, is further burdened with an incredibly slow pace. Each scene takes forever to develop and meanders for a while before reaching its conclusion, allowing the viewer ample opportunity to ask some of the more inconvenient questions.
And really, the film shakes out to be little more than a long series of unanswerable questions, starting with the title, Terminator Salvation, inexplicably divested of a colon, which would seem to imply that the terminators are somehow going to be saved. Then there’s the question of why Bryce Dallas Howard’s Kate Connor is pregnant? She never gives birth in the film and no mention is made of the baby. Is it really just so that the audience can see how masculine and alpha male John Connor is that he was able to get a woman pregnant in the midst of this war? And then there’s the question of why Skynet would build their headquarters with hallways and chairs and viewscreens and speakers. Once the humans infiltrate the building (something they do far more easily than should be possible) they don’t encounter any machines roaming the halls or sitting at their desks or anything, so why build this stuff in the first place? It seems really odd that machines would make buildings that look anything like the buildings humans would create.
Not helping matters is a plot that meanders all over the place before going to exactly the place everyone knew it would all along. Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) has been kidnapped and taken back to Skynet headquarters in San Francisco. Marcus Wright (the cyborg who doesn’t know he’s a cyborg) wants to go to Skynet to get him back. John Connor (Christian Bale), not trusting this cyborg, hems and haws for half an hour before reaching the inevitable conclusion to let Marcus infiltrate Skynet and then follow him inside where they’ll look for Kyle who is destined to become John’s father (if you don’t know how that’s possible, tough shit, this film’s not about to explain it, which all but invalidates the idea that this film is a decent entry point into the series).
From the moment John Connor and Marcus Wright first meet up, all but the most braindead members of the audience know that they’re going to team up to free Kyle. That is going to be the plot of the last act of the film. It’s a foregone conclusion. That they take nearly thirty minutes of screen time to come to this conclusion is just infuriating. In truth it probably isn’t really a half hour before Connor makes his decision. It just feels like it because the audience is so far ahead of him. There’s nothing worse than knowing exactly what’s going to happen before the characters do and having to watch them agonize over a decision that couldn’t possibly go any other way.
If this all seems like I’m beating up on the film, that’s probably because, despite knowing better, I really did have some hope for it going in. And when that hope was so thoroughly and methodically crushed, I found myself hating the film more than I might have otherwise. But I should have known better. I should have known that McG (the director of such shining cinematic turds as the Charlie’s Angels films and We Are Marshall) was never going to make a decent film. Hell, he calls himself McG for chrissakes. But somehow, in the two years since this film was first announced, McG managed to make me believe that he might be able to pull this off. Maybe it was because he was involved in both The O.C. and Chuck, two shows I’ve rather enjoyed. Maybe it was because Jonathan Nolan (co-writer of The Dark Knight) was on set to rewrite the script on the fly. Or maybe it was just because McG is a great salesman. Whatever the reason, I was actually a little hopeful for Terminator Salvation. Sometimes I’m just an idiot.
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If you didn’t already know, The Terminator is a brilliant film with a very strict and rigid internal logic. In the future (now past) there’s a computer defense system called Skynet that’s hooked into everything. Under Skynet’s control, America’s national defense system is streamlined; unmanned fighter jets with a perfect operational record patrol the skies and life is grand… until Skynet sees all humans as a threat and decides to kill everyone. Skynet then nukes Russia knowing that Russia will counter strike and eliminate Skynet’s American enemies. A war between man and machine breaks out on August 29th, 1997, AKA Judgment Day. Just as the humans are about to become extinct, a man named John Connor pulls the human race up by its bootstraps and manages to pull out a victory. He and his soldiers destroy the Skynet defense grid and the war is won. HOWEVER, just before losing the war, Skynet is able to send one infiltration unit called a Terminator back through time in an attempt to kill John Connor’s mother, Sarah, before John is born. The Terminator looks human because he’s surrounded by living tissue (which is necessary because the time machine is generated by a living organism and nothing dead will go through). Skynet has only that one chance because after the Terminator and Lieutenant Kyle Reese (Sarah’s human protector personally chosen by John Connor) are sent back through time, the humans destroy the lab and Skynet is no more. That’s the back story of The Terminator in a nutshell. Everything follows a believable logic and there aren’t any inconsistencies.
The two subsequent Terminator films progressively skew this logic with each new entry. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Skynet is apparently still around and it’s able to rebuild the time displacement equipment to send another (more advanced) Terminator back in time to kill John when he’s only ten years old. Now, in The Terminator, Skynet was on the ropes and only able to send the one Terminator back through time before the humans took the lab and destroyed everything. One of the main problems with T2 is that if Skynet wasn’t destroyed, it could’ve sent several Terminators back to kill John, and it isn’t likely it’d only send one. Also, it seems that this new time machine is no longer generated by a living organism because the all metal T-1000 goes through just fine (although he still jumps through time naked). These aren’t exactly deal breakers. T2 director James Cameron doesn’t really mess anything up because the film never really addresses any of the back story. He just left everything ambiguous and focused on making an action film with true next level special effects (which, by the way, still hold up nicely eighteen years later).
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, on the other hand, is inconsistent in odd ways. In T3, John Connor claims that the T-1000 tried to kill him when he was thirteen—not ten. We learn in T2. that John was born in 1984. If he were thirteen, that would mean that the events of T2 take place around or slightly after Judgment Day. Why didn’t anyone catch this? Also, Skynet once again sends only one (still pointlessly naked) all metal Terminator back through time. Odder still and the most grievous of the film’s many errors, is that T3 breaks all ties to the other films by replacing Cyberdyne Systems (the company that originally created Skynet) with some new fangled company called CRS.
My guess is that the filmmakers figured that since Cyberdyne was partially destroyed in T2, they’d go with a new company. Why they didn’t just have Cyberdyne rebuild its lab is beyond me. Changing companies contradicts everything mentioned about the history of Skynet in the other films. That said, most of these problems are really nothing more than fanboy bitching and moaning; Terminator Salvation, in contrast, royally fucks up everything.
Terminator Salvation is just a big ball of ridiculous. For some reason, Connor is baffled when he learns that Skynet is using human tissue to cover its newest infiltrators. Doesn’t he remember his mother stitching up the human flesh of his boyhood BFF, the T-800? I guess he’s just the kind of guy who forgets the most influential moments of his life… which would also explain his need to constantly listen to his mother’s soothing yet cryptic messages about the future recorded on cassette (by the way, the recording played in Terminator Salvation is, for some unknown reason, slightly different than the one recorded at the end of The Terminator). Also bothersome is that John isn’t the leader of the resistance; there are several people who have a higher rank (including that one bald dude (Michael Ironside) who apparently hasn’t aged a day since Total Recall) and bark orders at him. Why?
But the biggest and most frustrating problem with Terminator Salvation is the machines themselves. The film features all kinds of super advanced looking Terminators never so much as hinted at in the earlier films. What’s worse is that, although they look advanced, they’re easily the most awkward and inefficient machines ever devised by Skynet’s R&D.
The first two films lead us to believe that there are three main types of killing machines: Hunter Killers (in two varieties- upright tank and hovering jet) and Terminators (humanoid infiltrators). They are ruthless killing machines and highly effective. The Terminator Salvation robots include a giant skyscraper-sized Terminator that has the sole purpose of capturing humans. Why on earth does it need to be so big? These robots don’t even store the humans. Another favorite of mine is the ridiculous motorcycle Terminators that appear to only be effective in high speed pursuits. Are there really that many situations that call for something so fast? Lastly, the humanoid Terminators in this film are non-communicative pussies.
When the new 800 series (the one that looks like Arnold) steps out of his room with the intention of killing Connor, the most important human and Skynet’s greatest enemy, he takes his time to knock John around for several minutes. This is odd behavior for a killing machine that can rip a man’s heart from his chest with ease. And when Connor manages to escape, only one Terminator goes after him. Here’s an idea, why not call a friend or two (or five hundred) to help kill the leader of the resistance?
You see where I’m going with this— each new film grows exponentially more ridiculous than the one before it. Think of it this way: The Terminator makes sense, Terminator 2 pretty much makes sense, Terminator 3 not so much and Terminator Salvation is a disaster.
Now with all that said, this latest Terminator flick is not without its positives. It’s essentially nonstop action. It’s got a great style. And the special effects are top notch. The problem is that it just doesn’t make any sense. And worse, it’s a slap in the face to fans of the earlier films because the more of a fan you are of the Terminator series, the less likely you are to enjoy Terminator Salvation.
i very much agree that salvation is a slap in the face of the real die-hard fans of the series. and that's especially weird considering that if you don't know a fair amount of the plot and backstory of the other films, there's a pretty good chance that most of this movie won't make any sense.
it seems that the film is aimed at casual fans of the series and doesn't care about newbies or die-hards. that's weird and a little insulting.
if anyone's interested in what this film might have looked like if not for mcg and christian bale, head on over here:
http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/19577/1/EXCLUSIVE-WHAT-WENT-WRONG-WITH-TERMINATOR-SALVATION/Page1.html
it's a pretty interesting point by point analysis of the original version of the story / script (pre-bale and mcg) and the finished film.
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