Terminator: Salvation

The Terminator. More cultural lexicon than a mere dusty cinematic footnote, the 1984 film that launched Arnold Schwarzenegger, for better or worse, into global superstardom. The movie did reasonably well in theaters but eventually became a home-video juggernaut that helped sell VCRs in the 1980s. Seven years later, director James Cameron would return to the war against the machines in Terminator 2:Judgment Day. That film would usher in the age of digitally-driven special effects, again...for better or worse.

I love these films and the story of Sarah and John Connor. For me, the themes of technology gone awry and the powerful bond between mother and son resonated deeply. Not to mention both films featured perhaps the scariest, most iconic movie monster design of all time: The Terminator endoskeleton. That thing blew my little mind when my grandpa took me to the theater when the original came out...and the liquid metal menace of the second movie did much the same.

I could waste time talking about the third, but it isn't worth doing.

Now, in the year 2009, the Terminator franchise is again revisited. A lot of my friends have been very skeptical about this new film, and rightfully so after the debacle that was T3 and the Star Wars prequels. You can only fuck over a righteous Gen-X movie geek so many times. Thankfully, despite his questionable 'Charlie's Angels' pedigree, it was painfully obvious that director McG not only knew the Terminator mythos very well, but he loves it just as much as I do.

The story takes place in the post-apocalyptic Western United States, about 11 years before the 'Future War' events depicted in the first two films. The resistance against the self-aware defense network known as Skynet is threadbare, and just struggling to stay alive. John Connor himself is an adult now, and battle-weary, but not yet the leader of the human forces. In fact, the leadership of the resistance is a bit skeptical of his underground status as a prophetic leader. This leads to some major friction that drives the story, as he ends up crossing paths with a mysterious stranger and a teenage Kyle Reese, whom he knows to be his future father.

I'm doing my best to write this sucker free of spoilers. All I can say is that the story and action scenes are very well-crafted, and that even people who have never seen a Terminator film will probably enjoy themselves a lot. The strange thing about this movie is that even though the Terminator films helped usher in the age of CG, this film has a very dark, gritty, real-world sort of low-tech vibe that makes it stand out against all of its plastic-fantastic summer competition.

For longtime fans of the franchise, this film will REALLY hit the spot. There are some sublime moments that really link and recall T1&2, my favorite being when John sets up a trap for one of the motorcycle Terminator units while blasting Guns N' Roses 'You Could Be Mine' on a boombox. There's a few others that I won't mention...but one in particular that WILL have your theater making a metric fuckton of noise in record time. I'll be back indeed.