Terminator Salvationfeels both familiar and new – for a while, writes DONALD CLARKE
SEQUELS AND cyborgs have much in common. The challenge is to develop a new machine with hitherto unimaginable abilities that still contains enough essence of the original model – a human being for the robot; Star Wars, Garfieldor Ace Venturafor the movie follow-up – to bear its name without embarrassment.
The two concepts came together nicely in 1991, when Arnold Schwarzenegger's kinder T-800 skirted conventional notions of what a human should look like in the durable, bombastic Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A decade later, in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, James Mangold did little more than slap a lick of paint on James Cameron's 1984 original, and, following shrugs from the fans, the series began preparing itself for (ahem) termination.
Now, we have the strange colon-free beast that is Terminator Salvation. Directed by the preposterously named McG, progenitor of the amusing Charlie's Angelsfilms, this diverting, cacophonous film is very definitely not a reboot in the style of Star Trekor Batman Returns. The series' mind-bending chronology is maintained, and the dictates of Terminator canon are rigorously observed.
Nonetheless, for much of the first hour, we are in a very different universe to that of the first three episodes. This is because Terminator Salvation(arguably both a prequel and a sequel) details the beginnings of the conflict between Skynet, an artificially intelligent network that controls much of the world's computers, and a growing band of human rebels that includes their future leader, John Connor (Christian Bale).
It is 2018, but nobody is talking about the World Cup or Bulgaria’s presidency of the Council of Europe. Connor, whose life has already been both saved and threatened by different models of time-travelling Terminators, is still battling away as a junior officer with the resistance. His times as a punk kid are passed. His destiny as a global General de Gaulle is still to come.
The first surprise, however, is that Connor barely counts as the hero of Terminator Salvation.
The picture begins with a glum prologue, set contemporaneously, in which a pale, sickly Helena Bonham Carter puts a slightly ambiguous proposal to a jailed murderer named Marcus. When, back in the main body of the flick, Connor raids a Skynet base, somebody who looks a lot like the prisoner emerges from the rubble.
Marcus is played by Sam Worthington, a charismatic amalgam of Burt Lancaster and a petrified tree, and, blessed with better jokes and juicier action sequences, he proceeds to steal the film from under Christian’s furious nose. For this glorified supporting role, that poor cinematographer had his extremities chewed into mince? It hardly seems fair.
The second shocker is that the film appears happy to spend most of its time far away from Terminators. As Marcus ventures into the ravaged wasteland and makes friends with the spirited Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, Chekov from Star Trek), it becomes clear that McG is aiming more towards the post-apocalyptic road wars of Mad Max IIthan the man-on-robot action of Cameron's first two classics.
And it must be admitted that he pulls it off very well. The depictions of ravaged Californian cities are thick with authentic dust, and the ear-bursting car chases demonstrate that the director has a modest but undeniable talent for marshalling chaos. Indeed, for the first two acts of the movie it looks as if the film- makers have managed the difficult business of staying within the Terminatoruniverse while revising the series' tones and rhythms.
Then, suddenly and jarringly, one hears a studio executive bursting onto the soundstage and screeching with horror at what he discovers. Where’s The Terminator? Where’s Schwarzenegger? I’ll, give you “post-apocalyptic dystopia” Mr McG!
Sure enough, the last act, in which Connor and Marcus attack Skynet, suggests a semi-competent Terminatortribute band bellowing its way through the series' greatest hits. After encountering a facsimile of Arnold, Connor finds himself – you're way ahead of me – battling a strutting, metallic endoskeleton in a warehouse similar to the one we encountered at the close of T2. Ho hum! Hasta la vista, new dawn.
Still, there's enough innovation in the earlier part of the film to make us optimistic about a fifth episode. Mind you, the American box-office returns have been sufficiently disappointing to call such a prospect into doubt. Night at the Museum 2and Star Trekmay yet prove more of a threat to the T-800 than John Connor.
Directed by McG. Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Bryce Dallas Howard, Common, Jadagrace, Moon Bloodgood, Helena Bonham Carter, Jane Alexander, Michael Ironside 12A cert, gen release, 115 min
