A Machine Uprising? Terminator Salvation Review David, May 22, 2009April 30, 2010 The End Begins. That is the tag line of this film, directed by McG, starring Christian Bale and Sam Worthington. While the film critics may be ripping this film apart, they are not looking at the bigger picture of what yet can come. While this film disappoints, in many ways it delivered a message of hope and revision for this classic franchise. Read the rest of the review after the jump. Terminator Salvation in many ways has it moments of glory with amazing SFX and octane-filled action scenes. Especially with one of the opening scenes after the dialog given by the film about how Skynet infiltrated computer systems and military power by becoming self aware, destroying cities and wanting humans to not exist. I really thought the first 30 minutes of this film was done really well, but some of the interaction with the characters started to go downward when the film started to unravel its plot. The ‘Terminators’ were done really well in my opinion, including the T-600, Hydrobot versions. The Hunter-Killers were somewhat cool but the effects were iffy on some scenes. The Harvester was awesome, especially the noise it made while it hunted for humans during the gas station/desert scene. The Moto-Terminators were disappointing, even though the concept was really cool, it didn’t live up to that on the big screen. The big reveal of one the ‘Terminator’ models is obviously the T-800, or famously, what Arnold Schwarzenegger played in the previous ‘Terminator’ films. The characters in the film, were inconsistent throughout the film, especially Christian Bale playing John Connor. He was really mediocre in this film, over acting in some scenes, almost being a stiff, flat character in the film. John Connor is the leader of The Resistance but he didn’t show it for this film because of Bale’s failure of convincing the true meaning of the character. There were two bright spots that made up for Bale’s acting : Marcus Wright (played by Sam Worthington) and Kyle Reese. (played by Anton Yelchin) Sam Worthington’s performance was one of the strongest this year, using his emotions as a meaning of what he’s not, a human. Anton Yelchin was also great as Kyle Reese, having that strong leadership with the spirit of a young man with a mission. The rest of the cast was average, including Moon Bloodgood’s performance as Blair but i really liked Micheal Ironside in this film as the Resistance’s commander. The main problem i had with this film was that the climax was, well, anti-climatic. I was really surprised how this plot has so many flaws, even more shocking, the writers of this film are Jonathan Nolan and Paul Haggis (The Dark Knight, Crash). The original ending of this film would made the story more interesting and would of shocked many audiences but this ending didn’t really work out for me personally, i could’ve seen this by a mile away. Overall, this was a huge drawback for me of this film, it could have been much more but it wasn’t. Also it seemed a lot of scenes were cut in this film, it would be interesting if they release an ‘unrated’ version of Terminator Salvation and why McG had these decisions made. Finally, this franchise has been revived but the film didn’t deliver as i hoped. Coming in with low expectations, it still had a feeling that Terminator Salvation could have been more excellent but it’s probably because the previous films (except for T-3) are classics and really good films, it’s hard to convince people that it can reach that level of highness. As i said earlier in this review, while the film was disappointing and messy, the future begins with this franchise, especially if it makes good money in the box office (budget was $200 million btw), hopefully Warner Bros picks it up (that’s an if) and learns from the mistakes. Let’s just wait and see if McG can learn to direct better and not have stupid contests with Micheal Bay because he sure knows how to direct like him. Overall MovieViral Rating: 7.5/10 Reviews ReviewTerminator Salvation
A Beautiful Disaster – David’s Review of Watchmen March 9, 2009February 14, 2010This movie was a perfect example of how the graphic novel or original source is superior than what’s on screen. It came out with a whimper of excellence with Zack Snyder’s amazing visuals and breathtaking scenes of extreme violence and details of what the novel was all about. These are… Read More
‘The Last Stand’ Review: Schwarzenegger Comes Back To The Big Screen Guns-A-Blazing January 18, 2013January 18, 2013No matter what the final rating of this film is, we have to give one hell of a welcome home to the action icon known as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sure most the films he will star in – which will probably be all actioners – will have scripts that have him… Read More
“Fast & Furious 6” Review: You Won’t Find Much To Think About But It Sure Is A Lot Of Fun May 20, 2013May 20, 2013One thing every sequel should strive to do is improve upon its predecessor, which is also something nearly every sequel fails to deliver on. But sometimes in order to succeed, it helps when your predecessors already started at the bottom of the barrel, leaving the subsequent sequels nowhere to go… Read More
Jonathan Nolan and Paul Haggis did not write the whole story for this movie they only changed abit thats why they are Uncredited writters. Jonathan Nolan and Paul Haggis needed to writter 51% of the script to be credited. so basically if there is flaws in the story its John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris fault apart from that good review.
I felt the action was great, but the climax was lackluster. I didn’t mind the thin plot, but I thought having Marcus Wright as the main character was an interesting choice. I liked his character arc and how it fit into the story, but I’m surprised the film didn’t center more around Connor or Reese.Also, Skynet didn’t seem that smart.
I actually liked this review David and I completely agree with you on the “Boring Bale”. I actually barely made it into this movie, I missed the trailers in front but I made it for the opening credits. I also agree that Worthington and Anton Yelchin were better than Bale, I could have watched the movie without John Connor and only have in Wright and Reese! Their story alone could have made for it’s very own movie. I went into this movie a with no expectations, high or low, reason being I read a forum members (Matt) review and decided to just give up on the hype and see it. Bale was plain, underdone and boring in most parts, Worthington worked wonders around him, as did Yelchin and Bale is a supposed “professional”. Yelchin, in my opinion is Shia LeBouf 2.0, being that he’s the newest young male actor taking Hollywood by storm but with one major difference: He can actually act. This was also the first movie I had seen with Sam Worthington in it and, I believe I will be seeing Avatar now opening day. I love him in this film, he was almost flawless. I also had never seen a McG film and, now I know the reason why. There were more plot holes in this than an episode of ABC’s “Lost”. I wasn’t shocked by this ending and I really wish that they didn’t re-shoot it. The original ending would have been such a better twist and shocker!