Screenhead

I remember back in high-school, when my friends and I “discovered” cinema after watching Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. We were so besotted by Tarantino’s pop-culture sensibilities that we grasped onto his world by attempting to write sequels to Reservoir Dogs. Surprisingly, none were optioned by Hollywood studios. And since the internet reigned supreme since then, the concept of fanfiction has found and a home and even some acceptance. Every major film and book has spurred writing from people who want to keep that world alive, but of course generate status-quo-maintaining slop. Yet you can’t criticise it for its lack of innovation, as it doesn’t aspire to be anything beyond someone’s fantasy. You can however, criticise it when it’s given 150 million dollars and continues one of cinema’s most potent franchises, which is exactly what Terminator Salvation is.

The most defining aspect of fan-fiction is that it usually tries to generate new stories but without having to alter the characters or environment so much as to disrupt the feel of the source material. And this is done by having a new scenario but recreating the defining moments of the original. So on to McG’s vision of Terminator Salvation, the first Terminator film to be set in the future, during the war between men and machines. The film attempts to scare with a batch of new and unseen machines, from the skeletal robots we all know, to giant harvester robots and tiny water-based snake-like bots, and even motorbike robots (more on that later). But what strikes you about the film is how deeply unambitious it is, especially the third act. As our hero John Connor finds himself deep in Skynet territory, escaping a terminator factory, he finds himself being chased around. The scene almost completely recreates the climax of The Terminator, with Kyle Reese being chased around a robotics factory. The metal foot ascending the grated steps, the metal bar as a weapon, it all feels like we’ve seen it before. And there’s also a molten lava scene as well, just like in T2’s climax. There’s even a few references to Aliens in the set design and characters (spot the new Newt).

Terminator Salvation also commits the cardinal sin of a sequel in not being faithful to the internal logic of its original. As a comparison, look at what happened to the Alien franchise. The first two films painted the “xenomorphs” as so deadly that once you see them, you’re as good as dead. The sequels ruined this by showing  too much and having the aliens pause for a dramatic moment, often leaving the hero to escape. T4 does the same. The machines in the first two films were terrifying, because they were not only relentless but also very, very deadly. You’d be dead before you knew what had happened. In T4 the machines are very un-machine like. In one early scene a terminator crawls after John Connor (T1, anyone?), but once it catches up with him, it decides to swat him away and crawl after him again. The same thing happens later, where a pursuing machine bats away John instead of being a logical machine and just grabbing him and crushing his fragile human skull. There are ways for creating tension without corrupting the sense of danger that made the originals so great, so it’s a big let-down to see T4 ignore its own logic just to extend an action scene a bit more. And why… why on earth would Skynet create Terminator motorbikes? They’re unbalanced, so easily defeated with a length of rope or any sort of object. It makes you realise they only exist to please McG’s motorbike fetish rather than stem from the mind of a deadly and downright scary machine that wants to obliterate humanity.

The actions scenes in the film also fall foul to this disassociation from reality. In the original films the action never felt contrived, yet managed to be explosive and exciting. In T4 the film takes too many steps beyond believability. Some of the action sequences (such as the harvester assault at the gas station) are initially tense, but often ruined by such contrivances. A truck’s winch hook manages to catch a flying machine. Marcus, the real lead character, gets propelled off a bridge and manages to land on a flying aircraft. It’s these kinds of contrivances that take us away from the possibilities of this being a real world, and deeper into the realm of video games, which are fun but lack the resonance to make us truly care.

And speaking of caring, the plot does more than enough to make the moments between the big explosions feel drawn out and boring. John Connor is reduced to one long scowl, and Christian Bale gives the worst, most unvaried performance of his career. The main story is one of a hybrid Terminator that acts as an infiltrator, and the film attempts to hide this despite giving it away for the very first scene. Sam Worthington, who plays the outsider Marcus, is slightly better than Bale but fails to make us truly care about the atrocity committed to his body and soul. But the plot is flimsy, at times baffling (Skynet creates a conscious being because that’s the best way to infiltrate the humans, and knows that person will lead them to it- but if it was that wise why would it need to create such an infiltrator in the first place?), and it certainly feels that neither the writer nor the director really cared that much. The characters are nondescript and non-existent. Bryce Dallas Howard appears as John Connor’s wife, but her role has no function. For eye-candy there’s Moon Bloodgood as the tough-cookie who betrays her fellow man for a just reason, yet we’re never given time to justify her decision or understand her. And of course there’s the cute kid to appeal to those who fit the 12A rating.

To be fair to McG, director of such “classics” as Charlie’s Angels 1 and 2, the fault of the film certainly feels to be at script level. There’s no ambition to deepen the story of man versus machine, just a feeble connection between action scenes. And while McG does hold back on his MTV-aesthetic, and opt for bleak metallic colour tones and a dark mood, even as a summer blockbuster the action isn’t particularly memorable, it really does owe a lot to the original films and doesn’t even strive to take the franchise in new directions. And so, Terminator Salvation is indeed fan-fiction, merely a rehash of what the Terminator films once were, with no desire to add anything new or develop the storyline. And in replicating those iconic moments of the original, it renders itself useless, and without doubt it’ll be the biggest disappointment of the summer.

by Eoin O’Faolain

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