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In a message from the grave (or, technically, an ancient recording), Sarah Connor wonders how much to tell her son, John, about his life amid the tangle of time-travelers, Terminators and a futuristic father.
"God, a person could go crazy thinking about this," she confesses.
That's the truth, especially if you're trying to think when the explosions in "Terminator Salvation" are so loud that they make your seat and chest rumble, as if you were in a helicopter instead of just watching one. Or maybe the place secretly was wired for Sensurround, the gimmick that juiced audiences for disaster flicks such as "Earthquake."
"Terminator Salvation," opening today, is the fourth film in the franchise that started in 1984 and helped to transform bodybuilder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and writer-director James Cameron into superstars. Even if you've seen the first three, you may feel somewhat lost; if you're a newcomer, abandon all hope ye who enter here.
This is about cataclysmic confrontations between Man and Machines and trying to plot the four-movie timeline will just give you a headache. The director known as simply McG ("Charlie's Angels," "We Are Marshall") is at the helm now and Christian Bale has taken over the role of John Connor, a man fated to lead the Resistance against the machines.
- Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin
- Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and language
- Web site: terminatorsalvation.warnerbros.com
The movie opens, briefly, with a Death Row decision in 2003 by a prisoner named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) and then quickly shifts to 2018. Nuclear war has wiped out life as we know it, and small pockets of people are on the run from Terminators looking to kill or imprison them in scenes reminiscent of the Holocaust.
The Terminators, bigger and badder than anything that's come before, are controlled by the artificial intelligence network Skynet, which became self-aware 14 years earlier.
Bale's Connor is torn between the prospect of defeating the Terminators and living with the human sacrifice that may involve. And a revived Marcus must decide if he is Connor's friend or foe or somehow both.
Some familiar names, if not faces, reappear in Kyle Reese (now portrayed by Anton Yelchin), a man introduced in the first film, along with John's pregnant wife, Kate (the under-utilized Bryce Dallas Howard).
Sure, there is some speechifying about second chances, human hearts and superiors who want men to fight like machines, "but we are not machines. If we behave like them, then what is the point?"
The point, however, is to create over-the-top explosions, fireballs, fights, falls, chases, crashes, and Terminators, ranging from the 80-foot-tall spidery Harvester to Moto-Terminators (based on Ducati motorbikes) and underwater weapons called Hydrobots.
When it comes to the screenplay, by John Brancato and Michael Ferris ("Terminator 3"), man is subservient to machines and sorely lacking is a sense of humor, a signature of the first two films. Bale and Worthington, an Aussie who coincidentally will turn up in James Cameron's "Avatar" later this year, wring the most from their thinly written roles.
The action scenes, stunts and special effects are wildly impressive and there is a brief nod to the Governator. But it may be time to quit trying to plug gaps in the story line and simply say "Hasta la vista, baby."
