Salvation of What?

3.5/5

The post apocalyptic future for humanity foretold in the previous three Terminator movies is finally brought to life. In the latest installment we meet John Connor (Christian Bale) as a passionate and aggressive military leader of the last remaining survivors of mankind. The story revolves around John's need to save Kyle Reese and his conflict with trusting a mysterious cybernetic man named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington).

Terminator Salvation is filled with intense action from beginning to end. McG's (Charlie's Angels, We Are Marshall) use of both steady cam and free cam was very well executed. The decision to use both methods of cinematography helped you be a participant during the action sequences and a viewer during the rest of the film. I hope that the rest of Hollywood's action directors take note of this and follow suit, because frankly I am tired of listening to dialogue while the camera has seizures.

It has been quite a long time since I watched a movie that seemed to move the action genre forward in any direction. And though Terminator doesn't accomplish anything truly revolutionary, it brings (what I feel) is a fresh feel to action scenes. I was amazed with a number of the action scenes. What was so new and amazing? It's actually something simple, objects have weight. This isn't anything new, but in most action movies most objects seem to have no weight to them, primarily because they are indeed made of styrofoam. This was achieved in two different ways. The main reason were the sound effects. They were intense. When there was an explosion, you felt it. When something crashed to the ground, it shook. The other thing that really helped was the camera work. Whenever something would indeed rock your vision, the camera shake was noticeable enough without becoming the focus.

Though the previous two things were great, it wasn't all... None of the characters were developed at all. We didn't really get to know anyone at all. All of us that had watched the previous movies knew John Connor, but even his character wasn't really explored thoroughly. One of the worst examples of this was Bryce Dallas Howard's character, Kate Connor. Unless you read the credits it would only be an assumption that she was his wife, because they never explored that at all (or that fact that she was apparently pregnant with his child). Then there were the multinational leaders of the world's military. Who gave them the positions they had? Because apparently they didn't even have enough clout to convince anyone in the movie that they had any authority...

Pros:
Excellent cinematography, mixing free cam and steady cam effectively (especially the helicopter crash in the beginning).

Cons:
No character development. Some special effects aren't that great. Spoiler (highlight to view): Arnold's digitally created face was quite... terrifying.

Bottom Line:
A well shot action movie with little to no character depth. Filled with intense and gritty action scenes from beginning to end. Hopefully the next movie about John and Kate's child (just a guess) will have better character development and still maintain the same intensity in all of it's action sequences.