Review : Terminator Salvation (2009)

So, this is it, T4, Terminator Salvation, the one that brings the audience to the most talked about post Judgement Day war. The war that before this we can only catch glimpses of it in flash back scenes in the first and second films. Now, we are in it, the movie is about it, how the war is fight, and how all the key characters get together and how the legendary John Connor becomes the leader.

A major departure from the previous trilogy, T4 no longer has any time travel plot. It is not the dark and grim tech-noir as in The Terminator, it is not the strong female lead extravaganza like T2 but it certainly more likable than Rise of The Machine, thanks to its casting.

John Connor is played by Christian Bale, our hyper realistic Batman. I'm very excited with the notion that John is played by a serious actor, but somehow rather disappointed by Bale's performance in it. Maybe it is because the script has been heavily rewrite to fulfill his wish to play Connor instead of Marcus Wright. The original play has more emphasis on this tragic character. Still, Bale manage to give us an acceptable performance as Connor in the war. The extra playing the adult him in T2 has no line, Edward Furlong is a brat, the although the character is interesting written in T3, the actor sucks. T4's John Connor is the John Connor that has endured T2 and T3, so he has almost all the knowledge and anticipation of what will come and should come. He already the right mindset and emotion for the war even before it become full scale. But ironically, this has made him to become less objective and speculative, and most probably made him less likable especially during his first time confrontation with Marcus Wright.


Well, originally, in the initial development, John is Jesus and Marcus Wright is Ben Hur. It will be a movie about John Connor's rise to power but attention will mostly placed on Wright. Reason being, he is the good new Terminator in the film. The role was offered to Bale, who in turns prefer to play Connor(Batman and John Connor, maybe he'll wish to be Bond next), so the role falls to Sam Worthington, who plays it perfectly and stealing the show away from Connor and the special effects. The brutal condemned convict with an extraordinary right mind offered his body of scientific experiment which in turn falls into the hand of Skynet and made into the best Terminator so far. He is a Terminator with a (literally) heart, who has emotion and will of its own, although the will is subconsciously affected by it's mission's programming. Never in the course of Terminator franchise that we can actually feel and identify with the cyborg, and Wright is the first who give us this feeling. From the title of this film, we know that it is about him. Salvation, it is about how this ex-criminal get his salvation, his second chance, to do something really good, to redeem to his past sins. One should say he pretty much died at the end, but I do hope he turn up again in the next movie, played by the same actor.


Then we get John's father Kyle Reese, play by "Wictor Wictor" the Russian crew in the new Star Trek, Anton Yelchin. With two iconic franchise in his resume, I think the future is rather bright for Yelchin. Unlike, Connor, which we saw him previously is mostly non-speaking or not-adult or not yet in the war mode, the only Reese we know is from the first movie, and he is a character we loved so much, the way he talks, the way he moves, he fights, thinks etc. Yelchin pull it off quite well that we can see it is the same character, but with younger mind and less experience. Yelchin did not impersonate the old Reese, but incorporated the characteristic defined by the previous actors into his own performance.

Unlike, T2, the female characters in T4 is completely ignorable. Who can replace Linda Hamilton anyway? The focus in on the intervening relationship between this three male figure. And sadly none of the female characters is memorable.

For fans of Terminator mode T-101, it never shown until near the third act, and we got some scene with it in Arnold's "body suit". The body is double by a body builder cum actor and the face is superimposed digitally using Arnold's scanned faced. No wonder he looks younger and more convincing that in T3. But the scene with his look is brief and sort of to connect some possible loose ends as well as nod to all the fans.

In T1 to T3, although the villains on screen are the Terminators of different model, but the boss is Skynet. All the while, Skynet is not represented by anything, since it is a computer network, like our Internet. There is not even a human commander or evil mad scientist present, since it is machine and computer codes. Skynet is not even represented by a physical manifestation like a chief cyborg or something like that. In T4, although it is not the boss, but there is at least some sort of representative of Skynet in the form of digital generated look of Dr Serena Kogan played by the gorgeous Helena Bonham Carter (OK, there is one memorable female character, she is). Although the real Dr Kogan is dead by the time Skynet revealing some truth to Wright, but the Skynet representative program choose Kogan's look because Wright know her. That I think is the only instance Skynet communicate to other character and speak.

Since this is a Terminator movie, there are a few convention that the past movies had and also present in this, like the line "Come with me if you want to leave" or its variation, "I'll be back" or its variation, a good Terminator, good Terminator with part of the flesh destroyed revealing the metal skeleton inside, constantly changing future and of course a final fight in a factory looking establishment.

Overall, nothing can top The Terminator and T2, but I think it is better than T3. Still a satisfying movie for the fans, but new audience might be a little lost - who is Reese? Why Reese is John's father? Why John's mother leave him some tape recording? What so big about T-101? etc. But sadly, the film hardly stay in your mind after the viewing.

P/S: The scene where the resistance taming down the hydro-bot what ever; the centipede like robot looks remarkably alike with the scene in Transformers where the soldiers are studying the tail of Scorponok. Even the ending of the scene where the leader (Connor for T4 and Lennox for Transformers) gives a command for his team to do something. Wonder why is it?