The fourth installment, like a never-ending loan payment, deals with John Connor (The Bale) in post-apocalyptic 2018. As we know -it feels firmly implanted like a nail in my skull- Connor is the answer to Jesus in humanities battle against the deadites, aka Skynet. Unfortunately, Connor's tunnel vision of mankind's future comes under shallow questioning with the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington). Connor must work out whether Wright has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet (US Branch, mind you) begins it's final onslaught, Connor and Wright battle into the brain of Skynet's operations, where all the terror is/isn't revealed.
I want to say John O'Connor and add an irish accent. An Irish take on the series might have been better. It would have featured Liam Neeson as John Connor, Cillian Murphy as the jittery, reawakened, death-row survivor Marcus Wright, and Helen Bonham Carter would remain, as she basically plays herself.
It could have dealt with Ireland's take on persecution from Skynet, and the fight-back, with echoes and parallels with the Irish Famine and Angela's Ashes combined. It could have had Skynet Robots with big, pompous British accents, jagged robotic teeth and mercury mustachios. The Skynet robots would have been fuelled by Guinness, much to the pleasure of John Connor, who, at the heart of London Skynet (which looks, suspicously like a massive guinness factory) destroys Gordon Browninator/the architect/Bonham Carter/standard Big-Boss LCD screen and is flooded with the black stuff.
They all get really pissed drinking the Guinness and it creates a drunken mirage of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Neggar tells them "NOW YU KEN KILLT DUR RUBOTS". Suddenly a gang of pommie terminators appear around the corner, "Ay feck, wat we gunna dai," purrs Murphy who is pissed out of his skull. As the Britbots go to fire their Lea and Perrin 47s, they come to a halt. Stopped. Neeson shouts 'Oi cun see thee ansa, dis Guinness lets mui disaiuble theei systems with mui mind.' Neeson then makes a point of destroying and scatting all over the dead british bots. They all get pissed and end the war with the machines. With Guinness.
Ok, seriously, Salvation wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't good either, and there are so many things that let me down in the Movie. I was gearing up for this one. The Bale is, make no mistake, one of the best actors of our generation- so what was he doing here, apart from upsetting lighting technicians; and why did he get so upset when the Film never actually required him to act?
Perhaps Bale's best acting scene in the movie takes place at the heart of Skynet. Bale is at the peril of, momentarily-fused, CGI T-500 (which looks disgustingly like a real-life 95' Arnold Schwarzenegger) and while he has knocked out Arnie, Bale knows he has moments before the terminator finishes him off:
Bale is crawling on the floor next to Worthington's cyborg corpse. Worthington signed a contract before death row granting Skynet permission to make him into a cyborg following his death- he is basically a human robot, a human that is stronger than a human. Anyway, Arnie really fucked up Worthington, and he looks gone- the red lights have left his eyes, but they haven't left the Terminator series as a clear convention for a 'Robot Comeback Scene'. Bale's Connor seems to know this, after-all, this exact same thing happened in the factory in T2 Judgement Day. Deja Vu. So Bale, desperately, pseudo-straddles Worthingtonborg and begins twatting him on the chest like a spoilt, angry actor. His face seems to sneer, an ugly, delicious, glibby grin on his chops. And he begins screaming while pounding him, 'CUMMARRRON, CUMMAIN, CUMMMON, AH WHATYA, COMMON, COMEEAN YA.' I think he screams it five times. It's classic Bale when he gets to scream, and it always makes me smile. This was the best moment in the film. Worthington's light powers on in the nick of time and all is well.
Apart from that great scene, here are the many errors of what could have been a truly enthralling visit to post-apocalyptica mit robots:
The biggest criticism is that it simply draws, almost completely, off of a film that is now 18 years old. Terminator 2: Judgement day created pretty much all the conventions and content for which Salvation draws any story, character depth, plot development or resolution from. Bale's Connor is modeled on Bale playing his blander-than-film self, as well as a little boy who still listens to everything Mommy told him- he is fearlessly shallow as a character to watch. There are no emotions except for hate of Robots, hate of people who don't love or adore his Prophecy and a general hate and disillusion for the whole time-traveling mess he has got himself into.
Bale's Connor has a girlfriend apparently (the medic), and she also greets Worthington's Robot-Man incarnation with unintelligible hate and persecution. The characters don't stop for a second, and question the significance of a human heart perpetuating a living cyborg with super strength: something which could easily end Skynet. No, no cast him out, and whip him if you get a chance too.
The settings are also ridiculously unoriginal. The fighting scenes at the beginning of the movie take place in a conventional apocalyptic war-ground, which points to a complete lack of imagination; this is every apocalyptic, sand storm desert, old shack-gang hangout, every-man-for-himself, future you have ever seen. It just could have been so much more interesting if the Robots weren't dotted about in abandoned areas, like ready-made-action-scenes-in-a-box, for our Mad Max rip offs to dance and dodge bullets from. The robots also appear to groan when attacked, almost as if there are little midget men inside, who could not mute the impact of a gun immobilizing their metal chassis. *Guffaw*.
The fights with the Terminators feel really unthreatening. I think this is because the story has given no real 'meat' for truly understanding the Terminator's motives, or, for making you want anyone to survive their cold, destructive wrath. Basically we're following Kyle Reese, another nostalgic embrace and rehash of old, this time T1, material. It just feels like a big fan film, with nothing extending beyond the realms of imagination in the previous Terminators.
Reese's naive heroic nature is portrayed in the prodigal manner of Luke Skywalker on the Moisture Farm, and Worthington flits, with the spasticity of a retarded Han Solo: from completely untrusting and of fatal risk to Kyle Reese, on first meeting, to loyal, devoted comrade within ten minutes.
Reese gets dragged away in a flying, human-meat-box collector, and you feel like you're watching AI and The Matrix at the same time. It's that element of human persecution which post-apocalyptic films find really difficult to make look original and interesting anymore. It's always a great homage to Nazism- I thought we might be able to give the Robots a more interesting spin. No, it turns out they're hunting humans, to make more sophisticated robot-humans.
I'm inclined to believe they might have the answer here: If Worthingborg, the robot with a human heart, is ultimately the saviour of the film, then who gives a fuck about Bale's cry for preserving humanity. Worthington has humanity and the tin box to protect all of our fatal flaws. Perhaps the Robots have a good hunch here, and therefore the movie-makers have detracted completely from what should make this film gripping- to humans, atleast.
T3 made the mistake of blurring the fight between Humans and Robots with the creation of Worthington's character- an obvious middle ground in which the basis of the film revolves. It takes alot of fight out of the film, because there is no enemy to get all riled up at- and this is what you need in an action movie- something to just want to die and explode. I didn't feel like that. Perhaps they should have just aimed for the older style Terminator movies in general and leave the good-bad philosophical intellect out of this action film; it feels like they've generally derived everything else from the older films, so why not?
Salvation opted for a 'Saving Private Ryan' style war-scene, action movie approach to the film, whereas older Terminators have taken a more thriller, suspenseful approach to the creation of action. I think the latter approach captures the essence of Terminator movies because it gives time for the humans to recoup, get all heart-rendered (like Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong in T2), remind us of human nature and then *METAL CRUNCH, RED LIGHTS, COLD NIGHT* the Terminator appears with all of his antithetical, valueless existence to sever the mother-son bond. That is the nature of what made me grit my teeth for Arnie to do what he is programmed to do, and protect our humanity- it's the stark contrast.
I didnt get any of those vibes when Worthingborg's programming to kill 'John Connor' was piss-easily overridden via a quick, LCD-screen montage of human memories. And who was he saving, an angry prophet trying to save a world with barely a tear of humanity portrayed for the last hour and a half. A mute, black girl is thrown in like a spanner for cliched emotional kicks during the movie and that's about the extent of the movie to touch this cinema full of emotionless, action-centric idiots, apparently.
Interestingly, this film would have gone down well in a post-apocalpytic, post-humanity, cinema of Skynet's Terminators, sipping fizzy oil/Guinness and eating poptin.
(Real Robots were pain-stakingly made for the film...and this amounted to nothing)
There were no cogs in this machine.
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I want to say John O'Connor and add an irish accent. An Irish take on the series might have been better. It would have featured Liam Neeson as John Connor, Cillian Murphy as the jittery, reawakened, death-row survivor Marcus Wright, and Helen Bonham Carter would remain, as she basically plays herself.
It could have dealt with Ireland's take on persecution from Skynet, and the fight-back, with echoes and parallels with the Irish Famine and Angela's Ashes combined. It could have had Skynet Robots with big, pompous British accents, jagged robotic teeth and mercury mustachios. The Skynet robots would have been fuelled by Guinness, much to the pleasure of John Connor, who, at the heart of London Skynet (which looks, suspicously like a massive guinness factory) destroys Gordon Browninator/the architect/Bonham Carter/standard Big-Boss LCD screen and is flooded with the black stuff.
They all get really pissed drinking the Guinness and it creates a drunken mirage of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Neggar tells them "NOW YU KEN KILLT DUR RUBOTS". Suddenly a gang of pommie terminators appear around the corner, "Ay feck, wat we gunna dai," purrs Murphy who is pissed out of his skull. As the Britbots go to fire their Lea and Perrin 47s, they come to a halt. Stopped. Neeson shouts 'Oi cun see thee ansa, dis Guinness lets mui disaiuble theei systems with mui mind.' Neeson then makes a point of destroying and scatting all over the dead british bots. They all get pissed and end the war with the machines. With Guinness.
Ok, seriously, Salvation wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't good either, and there are so many things that let me down in the Movie. I was gearing up for this one. The Bale is, make no mistake, one of the best actors of our generation- so what was he doing here, apart from upsetting lighting technicians; and why did he get so upset when the Film never actually required him to act?
Perhaps Bale's best acting scene in the movie takes place at the heart of Skynet. Bale is at the peril of, momentarily-fused, CGI T-500 (which looks disgustingly like a real-life 95' Arnold Schwarzenegger) and while he has knocked out Arnie, Bale knows he has moments before the terminator finishes him off:
Bale is crawling on the floor next to Worthington's cyborg corpse. Worthington signed a contract before death row granting Skynet permission to make him into a cyborg following his death- he is basically a human robot, a human that is stronger than a human. Anyway, Arnie really fucked up Worthington, and he looks gone- the red lights have left his eyes, but they haven't left the Terminator series as a clear convention for a 'Robot Comeback Scene'. Bale's Connor seems to know this, after-all, this exact same thing happened in the factory in T2 Judgement Day. Deja Vu. So Bale, desperately, pseudo-straddles Worthingtonborg and begins twatting him on the chest like a spoilt, angry actor. His face seems to sneer, an ugly, delicious, glibby grin on his chops. And he begins screaming while pounding him, 'CUMMARRRON, CUMMAIN, CUMMMON, AH WHATYA, COMMON, COMEEAN YA.' I think he screams it five times. It's classic Bale when he gets to scream, and it always makes me smile. This was the best moment in the film. Worthington's light powers on in the nick of time and all is well.
Apart from that great scene, here are the many errors of what could have been a truly enthralling visit to post-apocalyptica mit robots:
The biggest criticism is that it simply draws, almost completely, off of a film that is now 18 years old. Terminator 2: Judgement day created pretty much all the conventions and content for which Salvation draws any story, character depth, plot development or resolution from. Bale's Connor is modeled on Bale playing his blander-than-film self, as well as a little boy who still listens to everything Mommy told him- he is fearlessly shallow as a character to watch. There are no emotions except for hate of Robots, hate of people who don't love or adore his Prophecy and a general hate and disillusion for the whole time-traveling mess he has got himself into.
Bale's Connor has a girlfriend apparently (the medic), and she also greets Worthington's Robot-Man incarnation with unintelligible hate and persecution. The characters don't stop for a second, and question the significance of a human heart perpetuating a living cyborg with super strength: something which could easily end Skynet. No, no cast him out, and whip him if you get a chance too.
The settings are also ridiculously unoriginal. The fighting scenes at the beginning of the movie take place in a conventional apocalyptic war-ground, which points to a complete lack of imagination; this is every apocalyptic, sand storm desert, old shack-gang hangout, every-man-for-himself, future you have ever seen. It just could have been so much more interesting if the Robots weren't dotted about in abandoned areas, like ready-made-action-scenes-in-a-box, for our Mad Max rip offs to dance and dodge bullets from. The robots also appear to groan when attacked, almost as if there are little midget men inside, who could not mute the impact of a gun immobilizing their metal chassis. *Guffaw*.
The fights with the Terminators feel really unthreatening. I think this is because the story has given no real 'meat' for truly understanding the Terminator's motives, or, for making you want anyone to survive their cold, destructive wrath. Basically we're following Kyle Reese, another nostalgic embrace and rehash of old, this time T1, material. It just feels like a big fan film, with nothing extending beyond the realms of imagination in the previous Terminators.
Reese's naive heroic nature is portrayed in the prodigal manner of Luke Skywalker on the Moisture Farm, and Worthington flits, with the spasticity of a retarded Han Solo: from completely untrusting and of fatal risk to Kyle Reese, on first meeting, to loyal, devoted comrade within ten minutes.
Reese gets dragged away in a flying, human-meat-box collector, and you feel like you're watching AI and The Matrix at the same time. It's that element of human persecution which post-apocalyptic films find really difficult to make look original and interesting anymore. It's always a great homage to Nazism- I thought we might be able to give the Robots a more interesting spin. No, it turns out they're hunting humans, to make more sophisticated robot-humans.
I'm inclined to believe they might have the answer here: If Worthingborg, the robot with a human heart, is ultimately the saviour of the film, then who gives a fuck about Bale's cry for preserving humanity. Worthington has humanity and the tin box to protect all of our fatal flaws. Perhaps the Robots have a good hunch here, and therefore the movie-makers have detracted completely from what should make this film gripping- to humans, atleast.
T3 made the mistake of blurring the fight between Humans and Robots with the creation of Worthington's character- an obvious middle ground in which the basis of the film revolves. It takes alot of fight out of the film, because there is no enemy to get all riled up at- and this is what you need in an action movie- something to just want to die and explode. I didn't feel like that. Perhaps they should have just aimed for the older style Terminator movies in general and leave the good-bad philosophical intellect out of this action film; it feels like they've generally derived everything else from the older films, so why not?
Salvation opted for a 'Saving Private Ryan' style war-scene, action movie approach to the film, whereas older Terminators have taken a more thriller, suspenseful approach to the creation of action. I think the latter approach captures the essence of Terminator movies because it gives time for the humans to recoup, get all heart-rendered (like Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong in T2), remind us of human nature and then *METAL CRUNCH, RED LIGHTS, COLD NIGHT* the Terminator appears with all of his antithetical, valueless existence to sever the mother-son bond. That is the nature of what made me grit my teeth for Arnie to do what he is programmed to do, and protect our humanity- it's the stark contrast.
I didnt get any of those vibes when Worthingborg's programming to kill 'John Connor' was piss-easily overridden via a quick, LCD-screen montage of human memories. And who was he saving, an angry prophet trying to save a world with barely a tear of humanity portrayed for the last hour and a half. A mute, black girl is thrown in like a spanner for cliched emotional kicks during the movie and that's about the extent of the movie to touch this cinema full of emotionless, action-centric idiots, apparently.
Interestingly, this film would have gone down well in a post-apocalpytic, post-humanity, cinema of Skynet's Terminators, sipping fizzy oil/Guinness and eating poptin.
(Real Robots were pain-stakingly made for the film...and this amounted to nothing)
There were no cogs in this machine.
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