Robust McManlyPants on Average Display

The Boyf and I went to see Terminator: Salvation this weekend with Katastrophes, Mr. Pink Eyes, Mr. Saturday and Pants Wilder. I have always been a fan of that setting for its uniqueness within sci-fi: while man vs. machine may be well-trod territory, the Terminator movies never actually fix the future. Each one simply delays the war. No movie claims to prevent it. I find that fascinating, that it’s a story about different forces struggling over the timing of an otherwise inevitable tragedy. That puts an interesting spin on the usual fight-the-big-bad-to-save-the-world finale of people vs. robots.

Prior to the jump, which will be used to prevent accidental spoilers, I will simply say that there were a lot of things I liked about it and the things I didn’t like could have been a lot worse.

Below the jump are spoilers galore. Be warned!

In the “pro” column, I’ve got the following:

Yay! Hot guy! The Terminator series (note: I never actually saw T3) has in a lot of ways resisted using women as sex objects and has never been bashful about showing off hot guys. I find that an interesting reversal, a part of the psychology that led to allowing Linda Hamilton’s character to be such a complete ass-kicker in T2, the thing I most love about that movie.
Yay! They think of things that most big action movies don’t! They find themselves explicitly incapable of blowing up fuel tanks by shooting them. When they dumped a bunch of fuel at the feet of the big robot I thought, “That’s stupid, why would a little fire slow that thing down?” Sure enough, it didn’t. The movie wasn’t afraid to be smart about things… sometimes.
Yay! Chekov!
Yay! It made me reminisce about Fallout 3 and that’s always a good thing.
Yay! Exciting action! Biff, zoom, pow, kablooey!
Yay! The image is not being crowded out by an onslaught of product placement in every scene!
Yay! Fun shout-outs to previous entries in the series!
In all seriousness, yay! This isn’t about the new guy’s back-story from when he was a criminal before the war, it’s about how the things he does in the here and now (there and then? whevs) are more important than his past. Is the movie itself a subtle prosecution of the death penalty? That is, after all, exactly the kind of question for which science fiction is made.

In the “con” column I’ve got these items:

Cyclebots have USB ports? Why don’t the machines just engineer a new standard the humans won’t be able to exploit? That’s sloppy design there, fictional robot engineers of the future.
VAIO? Really? Oh, honey.
OK! Enough with the shout-outs to previous entries in the series already!
I like how they put in a cute kid for the sole purpose of providing us with a character whose fate has not already been conclusively decided by the previous three movies. I especially like how they made her mute so she didn’t even have to speak to fulfill her purpose.
How much of an idiot do you have to be not to realize you’re a robot when you (a) wake up in the future, (b) after being put to death, (c) suddenly have sophisticated knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, (d) and are invulnerable to damage from things like falling hundreds of feet into a shallow river and washing up on a rock bed? Did they sentence him to death for being criminally dim?
The cross in the execution chamber about made me gag.
The ending about made me gag twice.
Of all the cars to be running in the future, one of them is a Saab?
Speaking of automotive product placements and/or unsubtle and perhaps unintended opinions, I borrow from The Boyf’s take on all the Jeeps that kept popping up and then getting blown up or taken away: “Did Jeep’s check bounce?” I kept wondering, myself, whether that would wind up being the most ironic product placement of all time: all means of effective escape turned out to be Jeeps or tow trucks. Our Heroes can get out of town in an old Jeep and that’s a good thing… but that Jeep is going to be simple enough to steal that a guy still steaming a little from the deep freeze can get the engine to turn over and you’re going to need to stop for gas really soon.
I would have really appreciated a scene in which the future image of Helena Bonham Robot Carter had been shown addressing her metal minions and asking, “OK, seriously, who gave New Guy the root password? Come on, facsimiles-of-people!”

Hamilton-Lovecraft says:

June 2, 2009 at 11:53 am

I’m in fairly close alignment with most of these points.

The Big Robot made me roll my eyes a bit — it was awesomely cool on its own merits, one of the best big mecha I’ve seen in a live action movie, but it just felt out of place in the Terminator timeline.

Up until the minefield scene, I was assuming Wright was a purely organic clone rather than a robot. Partly due to his facial resemblance to Schwarzenegger and partly due to his globetrotting accent which seemed to have a stopover in Vienna for a couple of lines, I assumed his genome was going to provide part of the flesh wrapper for the classic Arnie T-800-101. Surviving the long fall into a river was just par for the action movie course, but I didn’t like the way he alternated between human-hero-strong and Terminator-strong in later action sequences.

Agree twice about the ending. A dusty field hospital is a fine, fine venue to do a heart transplant without so much as checking whether the patients’ blood types match, right? I thought/hoped we were going to see John tell everyone else to give him and Reese a few minutes, and have John tell Reese exactly what he needed to know to score with Sarah, and then die, driving home the primacy of the “if you are hearing this, you are the resistance” message over the “John Connor is our savior” alternative.

Anton Yelchin was a great casting choice for Reese; passable actor, similar features to Michael Biehn’s (esp. distinctive upturned nose), and at the end of the movie, the makeup department gave him just a hint of the gauntness and thousand-yard stare that his older self had.

Michael says:

June 2, 2009 at 12:44 pm

his globetrotting accent

No kidding. I kept wanting someone of whom I could ask, “OK, which is it: Kansas or Australia? I need some boundaries around this guy’s biography.”

Agree twice about the ending.

One of my fraternity brothers from undergrad days was sitting next to me and I heard an audible clap when he slapped his hand over his face at the whole random organ transplant bullshit.

have John tell Reese exactly what he needed to know to score with Sarah

Ah, but in the first one he doesn’t know he’s John Connor’s father, does he? That’s my memory of it, anyway. No, no, I am putting away the nerd dildo. Regardless of that detail, I thought the same thing at the time but would have been equally annoyed: it would have made John Connor the Christ figure instead of New Guy and I’m put off by the whole Christ figure angle either way. I would have vastly preferred that New Guy save John’s life, fine, great, whatever, and then die because, I dunno, they don’t know how to fix his throbbing metal rods or whatever, but he dies knowing he committed a heroic act. I would have liked that a lot better. Yes, I am a sucker for happy endings.

Anton Yelchin was a great casting choice for Reese

He was absolutely perfect. Reese’s hero worship of Connor in the first movie struck me as the last expression Reese had of innocent faith in anything good and Yelchin very easily plays a character to whom that can happen.