Tuesday 16 June 2009

Terminator: Salvation - Sci-fi Film Review


Is this film (the fourth in the Terminator series) better than the legendary first 2? The answer is no, but thankfully it is a lot better than the terrible Terminator 3.

The film is set in the future, after judgement day. The humans are fighting the robots, who are controlled by Skynet. John Conner (played by Christian Bale) discovers orders by Skynet to assassinate a young man called Kyle Reese, who of course as is know from Terminator is John Conner's future (or should that be past) Dad.

The film is very much an action film, there is hardly any quiet moments. As an action film it works well though. The character of John Conner is not very sympathetic, he comes across as quite an arse which makes it kinda hard to root for him. Bale kinda makes his lines unintentionally funny sometimes by the hyper gruff way he delivers them.

The film has kinda Mad Max feel in places, the film takes place out in desert mostly, and events seem far more sedate than the flash forwards Sarah Conner has in the originals. Here there is no almighty war, or mounds of skulls, the humans use guerrilla tactics, and the robots only seem to turn up when trouble occurs.

Like all the other films there is a cyborg concerned in a main role. This time the Cyborg seems to be Skynets original version, in stasis he is released near the start of the film after a huge explosion awakenings him. Part of the film follows his journey.

Arnie makes an appearance! He looks the best ever! He only appears in CGI form! He looked far too old in Terminator 3, so using a CGI version is ace. He's modelled on the original Terminator look (so young) but has been buffed up and made taller to look like a monster, entertaining. Lots of references and quotes are made in the film, which is a nice nod to the fans, and a mixed version of the iconic theme tune features in the film also.

Worth watching, not fantastic, but entertaining in a brain dead kind of way.

SCORE:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought it was awful! Worse than the 3rd one. Where were the big battles against loads of Terminators? What's that about?

The only good thing was that weird human\terminator - but not only was it pretty obvious what he was, if you hadn't guess it was even revealed in the trailer! Sheesh.

I want to see John Connor punching a load of Terminators in the face. Anything less than that is rubbish.

RZ said...

Everyone who has seen the trailer said the same, luckily I have never seen the trailer : )

I agree the apocalyptic visions in the first two were conspicuous by thier abscence in this, but I think it was a far better film than I expected it to be.

Everything just seemed so more calm than the desperate struggle for survival envisioned in the originals.

Still, I thought it was fun enough