Audio By Carbonatix
Both warning and advertisement, the Terminator films are
technophobic teases, selling tickets by promising this decade’s model
of killing machine: the classic V8 1984 Schwarzenegger; the
bullet-streamlined, liquid-metal ’91 Robert Patrick of T2: Judgment
Day; Kristanna Loken’s 2003 T-X (with burgundy pleather
upholstery).
Terminator Salvation, a departure in many ways, is the first
Terminator with no upgrade. The hardware is clanky, and runs on
diesel. Schwarzenegger is present only as a CGI mask. The franchise’s
creation myth — the toppling of humanity by Skynet computers
— has finally come to pass. It’s 2018 — time enough,
apparently, for survivors to start dressing like drum circle squatters.
Christian Bale’s John Connor is a maverick officer in the human
Resistance. Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright, last he remembers, donated
his body to Cyberdyne before a lethal injection. He wakes to a blasted
world, carrying a plot twist familiar to anyone who knows their Philip
K. Dick.
To hear director McG tell it, this is nothing less than
Terminator Salvage, a mission to “re-establish credibility”
(a.k.a. consumer confidence). The obvious models are Chris Nolan’s
po-faced Batmans. McG, who started off directing videos for
frosted-tip bro bands, is stripping down, getting “dark.” He’s stricken
color from the screen and book-clubbed his cast with copies of The
Road. The visuals cite a checklist of 20th-century catastrophes:
Worthington, in a Soviet-issue greatcoat, walks a Dresdened L.A.;
oilfield fires à la Kuwait darken the horizon; human tissue is
harvested in Holocaustic cattle-car roundups. There’s even one of those
simple nudges at contemporary commentary — “We are not machines,
and if we behave like them, then what’s the point in winning?” —
that industrial-filmmaking liberals honestly believe alchemize
entertainment into Art, like lead into gold.
Change was inevitable — the established Terminator
formula has been squeezed dry in Fox’s prime-time The Sarah Connor
Chronicles. But among the many things junked in McG’s chop shop is
the notion of pleasure: The director describes cutting that “gratuitous
moment of a girl taking her top off in an action picture” (God forbid)
to get a franchise-first PG-13. He does, however, begin his film with
the hook of Worthington clammily kissing a vampire-complexioned,
bald-pated Helena Bonham Carter. T3 director Jonathan Mostow,
trained on submarine and trucking thrillers, knew he was covering a
greasy headbanger classic, not writing scripture. I went to his movie
effed up and had a hoot; anyone planning the same for T4 will
drop before the credits.
Salvation rolls along with Marcus on the road, his journey
toward Resistance radio transmissions honoring the series’s paranoid
momentum (The Terminator actually had more in common with the
implacable, unstoppable slasher pic than sci-fi mythos). The action set
pieces, cut with overdone hectic percussion (as on a Neil Peart-size
kit), are engaging enough. It’s when Marcus and Connor intersect
— trekking to strike at Skynet’s Silicon Valley nerve center,
which looks to be somewhere between Mordor and the Port of Houston
— that the movie slackens, with McG tugging at emotional
connections he never stuck in place. There’s a bit with Worthington
smashing a monitor that I realized — with embarrassment as it
went into slow motion — was actually supposed to be
cathartic.
The Terminators have always respected female durability, from
commando-mom Linda Hamilton to T3‘s intimation of masculine
obsolescence, with effeminized Arnold modeling a pair of Elton John
sunglasses. Salvation is comparatively anti-girl. Moon
Bloodgood’s pilot is introduced shaking a luxuriant mane loose from her
flight helmet, making a Jennifer Beals-in-Flashdance shocka out
of something the preceding movies took for granted. She’ll later face
an arbitrarily staged menace; her would-be rapists are the only
yee-hawing rednecks in the movie, though any American Resistance would,
realistically, be Scottish-Irish gun nuts. Bryce Dallas Howard, as
Connor’s wife, is here just to set up the all-time most convoluted
“I’ll be back.”
But the essential problem here isn’t the ladies — or the lack
thereof. It’s the no-frissons Bale-Worthington pairing. Bale, doing the
“Grrr” voice, is a lesson in how clenched effort does not equal effect.
What’s remarkable about his leaked freak-out — mostly
embarrassing in revealing a director who can’t Alpha up on his set
— is that it’s over a performance in McG’s Terminator
Salvation. Did the dude sweat this much over Reign of
Fire? Worthington, half-burying his Aussie accent under gruff
bluff, is of the blunt Jason Statham-Daniel Craig genus, with a bit of
Ricky Hatton thrown in (with Hatton’s level of resourcefulness). These
Commonwealthers are dull trudgers, all — can we get a tariff?
Judgment Day alloyed pathos and explosions by matching
Arnold’s impassivity with Eddie Furlong’s silent film-dolorous reaction
shots — for those of a certain age, it’s impossible to remember
the sentimental gambit of that final thumbs-up without getting misty.
Salvation, terminally gray, all macho bark, doesn’t do
contrasts. This means monotony — as predictable as, when the
movie tanks, McG telling an interviewer it was “too dark” for the
multiplex.
