Premise: After Judgment Day, John Connor leads the human resistance fights Skynet and its army of terminators.
Stars: Christian Bale * Sam Worthington * Moon Bloodgod * Anton Yelchin
Story: After Judgment Day, John Connor (Bale) leads an army of human resistance fighters against the machines of Skynet. On one of his raids on a Skynet base, the human fighters discover experiments being done upon humans in order to create better infiltration units (the terminators of the previous movies). After Connor escapes, a lone survivor from the site stumbles out into the world.
Marcus (Worthington), the survivor, wanders until he ends up in devastated Los Angeles, where he is nearly attacked by a terminator. Saved from certain death by young Kyle Reese (Yelchin) and his companion, Marcus ends up traveling with the duo in an attempt to reach other survivors.
Meanwhile, Connor faces opposition to his plan to save humans being experimented on by Skynet from the leaders of the resistance, and works on rigging a signal designed to stop the terminators so that his team can stage a rescue.
Marcus and Connor cross paths after Reese is captured by the terminators and taken to the Skynet base. The stage is set for a showdown as it is revealed that Marcus is one of the prototypes for the cyborg terminators. However, the two reluctantly team up to save young Reese and to find out who made Marcus into a cyborg.
Review: Christian Bale has not expanded his repertoire. Capable of gritty and serious (Reign of Fire, Batman Begins) and borderline psycho (The Machinist, American Psycho) it appears that acting human has escaped Bale - although the writing doesn't leave much for him to expand in this direction. Bale's Connor is a grizzled, borderline psychotic action hero but has none of the humanizing qualities one looks for in a story such as this.
Instead, Marcus (Worthington) fulfills the role of the wandering mysterious hero - both human and different. He recalls Jean Claude Van Damme in the Cyborg movie - and bears more than a passing resemblance to the old action star. The bonding with both Kyle Reese and Blair Williams (Bloodgod) make the cyborg seem much more human than even Connor.
This dueling characterization - the machine as the hero, the hero as the machine - may seem to reflect an aim of the writers to make the movie more of a debate about the nature of heroism, but it fails. There is no bonding to the character of John Connor by the audience, and the forced ending kills much enthusiasm for the scant storytelling.
With the lack of solid characterization on the part of the humans, the storytelling heavily relies upon the effects departments - sound and CGI. The world looks more like the setting of a video game - one can honestly pick out what levels the adventure takes place on - and the sound and violence is loud and explosive. Of course the audience is really looking for the terminators, the endoskeletons, what Skynet looks like, etc. And for the most part, the terminators are men in suits - clearly visible in a few scenes - or model robots - motorcycles, planes, and even snakes.
There are obvious shots that are throwbacks to the three earlier movies - the diesel tow truck here, the motorcycle there, even Guns & Roses 'You Could Be Mine' is heard, along with a surprise appearance near the end. It's like the writers had a checklist and went down the line, marking off the requisite effect.
Instead of this, it would have been more appealing to make a movie where the John Connor storyline is in the background, and focus on Marcus Wright. He's really the only character you begin to care about in this movie, and a well-written story centered on him would've easily been a more welcome entry in this franchise. As it stands, there is very little humanizing about the movie, and the obviously forced ending removes any appreciation for characterization. Including departures from the established Terminator storyline, the film feels like a further notch on the downward spiral since Terminator 2, the obvious high mark in this effects-driven franchise.
Overall: Bad
Other Sites: IMDb * Wikipedia * AllMovie * Rotten Tomatoes
1 comment:
Another good review.
I will not see any movie with Bale in it. I liked him until his blow up at the lighting director.
These overpaid actors need to realize they are nothing without the "support" people around them and that there is another actor just as good waiting in line.
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