Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation is the fourth installment to the Terminator film series, and part of the science fiction franchise consisting of a series of films and ancillary media created by Director James Cameron, who also wrote and directed the first 2 films - The Terminator and Terminator 2 : Judgement Day. Cameron's original concept consists of Skynet, an artificially intelligent machine network created by man, that becomes self aware and sees mankind as a threat whilst trying to destroy us in the process. The first two films follow the story back in time, or present time to us, with Skynet sending a machine back to kill Sarah Connor, mother of John Connor, the leader of the resistance.Salvation takes us into the future after Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, a group of survivors led by John Connor (Chirstian Bale) struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job. Thats about as deep as it will get for those of you who are new to the Terminator saga but if like me, you're a bit of a fanboy and really loved the first 2 films (not so much Terminator 3) then surely theres a lot more for you to see... or is there?

Character Development

You might be looking forward to getting to know more about John Connor becoming a leader and heading the resistance and also seeing the development of Kyle Reese becoming a part of the rebellion. However you wont be very pleased as both of these characters are not fleshed out at all. In fact character development seems to have been put on the shelf. Director McG has obviously gone to the Michael Bay of filmaking school forgetting about the roots of the franchise and instead creating a series of big action set pieces with as much noise and explosions as humanly possible. The directing on this movie is actually fairly competent from a strictly visual point of view, the second unit directing was also not too bad, but the story had no drive and you don't really care about what happens to anyone.

The atmosphere that James Cameron and Stan Winston had created for the first 2 films in the franchise is what really hit me and still does to this day. I think that was the key component along with consistency and approach that gave the Terminator film it's unique style and attractiveness. It's metallic-blue overlay, infused with creepy whines of music and heart pounding edge-of-your-seat suspense was what really created this secondary reality if for only an hour long. It made us have a connection to these characters. A sense of believability in what was really going on. But it was those elements that were able to harness the inner workings of this dark dreamland. In essence the first two Terminators were projected nightmares in a sense, as if you were running and running, but no matter how fast you ran, the shadowy figure on your toes just keeps closing in. THAT is what made those films so captivating. Another issue of course is that most of the scenes were in broad day-light. I understand that McG wanted to get a different take on the war, but I don't think this was pulled off in any respects to what James Cameron had in mind for the war.(Shouldn't the sky be filled with pollution and dark particle matter from the nuclear explosions creating an ever-dark wasteland? And how come you only ever see one terminator on screen at any given time, this is a war for godsake so surely you'd see multiple terminators walking around) This was crucial and they blew it. I don't see why they didn't go with more night scenes. It is one of the strongest representative thematic elements portrayed in the Terminator 1 & 2.(I am not even going to mention T3 because of the ridiculous amount of mistakes made) Another qualm would have to be the 12 rating it was given, for obvious reasons they have done this to appeal to a much wider audience but in doing so, they lost that true grit and darkness that T1 & T2 had. Any rating below 18 just wouldn't do the franchise justice. Its called Terminator for a reason, they are killing machines!