by Myles Fish
The title may have been Terminator Salvation, but the only thing the audience was saved from was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s thick Austrian accent—and that is not necessarily a good thing. The film, the fourth installment in the Terminator franchise, premiered in Tokyo on June 4. Director McG, Christian Bale, and other stars made the trek to Japan to promote the high-budget blockbuster.
This feature is set in 2018 in a world still reeling from ‘judgement day’ years before. Protagonist John Connor—this time played by Bale—is back to lead the resistance movement against Skynet and their all-powerful terminators. Connor is joined by a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who was sent back in time in the first film and actually fathered Connor, and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a one-time death row inmate who was given a second chance to live as a half-human, half-cyborg being.
Worthington delivers a solid performance as a dedicated soldier facing dissent from the other humans once they discover his mechanical endoskeleton, or cyborg-ness. But unfortunately, this episode lacks an Arnie-esque villain, relying instead on faceless robots to do the fighting. There are also too few scenes seen through the bots’ eyes, one of the best features of the previous three installments.
Action movie and Terminator fans will enjoy the fast pace, the fire fights, and seeing the much-anticipated and hyped T-600 robot, the predecessor of the T-800 of previous films. This one’s not much of a date movie, but delivers the way a big-budget Hollywood action film should: through extensive CGI and shameless battles over a world on the brink of total destruction.
(Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment)
