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Terminator Salvation (2009)

Director: McG

Time Out rating

Average user rating

66 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

There’s a chase scene half way through ‘Terminator Salvation’ that rivals anything in the series. A breathlessly paced, pulse-pounding desert escape, it lasts about five minutes and single-handedly earns the movie an extra star as sleek robotic motorcycles pursue our heroes, who are fleeing in an armour-plated pickup.

But stretching interminably on either side of this set piece is an ideas wasteland more barren than any of the blasted post-apocalyptic landscapes in the movie. ‘Terminator Salvation’ isn’t the gritty, futuristic blitzkrieg for which fans of the first two films have been salivating. It isn’t even the slick, entertaining Hollywood blockbuster most were realistically expecting. It is a shambolic, deafening, intelligence-insulting mess, a crushing failure on almost all counts.

It’s the year 2018. Christian Bale (whose on-set ballistics seem even more laughable in context) plays John Connor, self-prophesied leader of the human resistance against Skynet, the machine which rules the planet following a nuclear apocalypse. Sam Worthington plays Marcus Wright, a former Death Row inmate who harbours a dark secret.

The plot comes straight from the ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…’ school of screenwriting: scenes and incidents slam into one another with no logical context or motivation. The characters are neutral: Bale growls and frowns, Worthington frowns and pouts, while other grime-spattered actors wander on screen, look perplexed, and are quickly forgotten. For kids under 14, or extremely undemanding adults, ‘Terminator Salvation’ might just pass muster as a temporary, forgettable Friday night distraction. But for fans of the first two movies, this is a disappointment of ‘Phantom Menace’ proportions.

Author: Tom Huddleston 2009-06-02 12:00:29

Time Out London Issue 2024, June 3 - 10, 2009

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User reviews of this film

GARFOOLS said...

Posted on Jan 27 2010 13:23 What is done now is that a screenplay is made that satisfies execs enough. A director is sourced and vfx crew is sourced...blahblah actors/ other crews. Whatever. What is wrong? They take good and bad apples and set them on a rotten tree. No one cares enough to sort out their mistakes. What mistakes? Any new ideas hung on an old tired event line(standard plotline) fail completely. They seem added on while the crud train rolls on. Thats whats wrong with the story/plot. Next:interactions(ie dialogues/combats) dialogues should stem from the plot because the plot is poor, the dialogue is too. Combat: giant terminator cant kill its target, why? The crap plot is bad and too rigid, plus the director uses it to create tension, it does in respect of logic being strained.Combat:bike chase, same thing applies. Combat:T800 takes out Tmarcus with one heart punch, heart punches john conner 20 metres, connor ok. (plus deciding its better to throw him about instead of just kill him.Same thing applies, crap and illiogical. rewrite needed. actions like these litter the movie and are the sysmptoms of 'franchise sickness' If you base a films success on its action, then please, please obey the logic of your created world, machines should be not made to miss or act illogically to create tension, find a way around by writing better scripts and stop wasting good cg/actors/equipment with bad direction and plot. End of.

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Thomas Noctor said...

Posted on Oct 12 2009 19:16 This felt more like Transformers than Terminator. Very bad and not true to the original plot. Best actor was the CGI Arnie. As a huge Terminator fan this was a massive let down. First three were class.

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Rhoops said...

Posted on Jul 25 2009 23:33 Been looking forward tothis moviewfor 20 years, and what happens...cliche ridden hollywood drivel. The contirved dramatic tension between the characters is sub moronic in its unreality. I gave up about half way through, I can enter a far more imaginative and realistic post apocalyptic world in Fallout 3 thanks.

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terminator said...

Posted on Jul 20 2009 16:18 I'll be back bigger and better soon! :)

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blib said...

Posted on Jul 17 2009 08:43 Was John Connor's squeeze supposed to be pregnant or did she just happen to be during filming and did she have a name I don't recall. Poorly edited. A hotch potch of ideas thrown together. Subtle as a flying mallet refernces to earlier outings and the CGI Arnie? There was a puddle under my seat when I left. Poor

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Connor said...

Posted on Jul 12 2009 16:17 Peter...you can get that bad taste out of your mouth by not talking crap! A good movie I thought.

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Chuggy said...

Posted on Jul 04 2009 15:29 Sorry but this is a movie painfully unaware of it's own premise.
Robots from the future are hunting down people who will bother them later.
I kept waiting for the film to realize that...
sadly, it never did.
Well, okay, Kyle Reese was on the hit list. Which means that the Skynet of the present (in the future) knows that Reese will cause trouble (in the past) by going back in time and fathering John Connor, who in this movie seems to be a low level staffer, but who is, I'm told, going to save humankind (further in the future... or maybe in the past).
So why doesn't Skynet just send a Terminator back to kill Reese's grandfather in WW2 or something (maybe they did or will do when they get around to it)?
And if Skynet does have time travel capability, why fight the resistance with the old, clunk-a-naters? Why not send their best-o-naters (that they make in the future) back in time to stomp out the resistance (which will be lead by that genius John Connor at some point)?
And if TIME TRAVEL is the key, why isn't JC (that's John Connor) more interested in looking for the time machine? I kept waiting to see THAT in this film. I mean, so what if Skynet kills Reese... It's only a problem if time travel works like it does in Back to the Future, then JC will disappear as the past is changed and he ceases to have ever existed. But if we're not dealing with BTTF time travel effects, he can find the time machine and go back in time and stop Reese from being killed.
But if Terminator time travel works like it does in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, then JC can just promise to invent a mega-powerful killer robot later, send it back in time to just that moment and... poof, it suddenly appears. Using that system, the he could have a stud farm of killer robot babes all to himself. And why not, really?
But really, the dirty little secret to the Terminator franchise is this:
John Connor will ultimately realize that if he DOES succeed in stopping Skynet from unleashing Judgement Day, then that will prevent him from ever being born. So it's in his own best interests to help Skynet along to that point even if it means everyone dies.
Finally, I think this movie should have ended with John Connor being turned into a cyborg.
Wouldn't that have been a twist...??

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Scott said...

Posted on Jul 02 2009 13:45 T3 was far more enjoyable than this, it actually had a storyline. T4 is just all out war and little else, no twists or anything memorable, i can imagine the terminator ride at disneyworld giving out the same, "try it once but never again" experience. Great for the young ones (the movie isnt even a 15 cert so thats fine for them but a bit of a problem for any all out film fan expecting a no holds barred experience without limits to merely make more money and also please those that grew up with the tellytubbies)! ;) a bit lame, and i imagine if there is ever a T5, expect more of the same.. and compared to the first 3 movies.. thats alot less.

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ronald m said...

Posted on Jul 02 2009 13:29 Much like the directors name, "McG", like any McDonalds meal, it initially looks great, fills you up for your $6, the kids will no doubt love it, but after a while comparing it to what else you could have gotten for the same money youll begin to regret it and feel like spewing. Lol

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Bobby said...

Posted on Jun 29 2009 13:34 THEY LET YOU REVIEW MOVIES? LOL...HOPE THE RIDE ON THE BANDWAGON ISN'T TOO BUMPY

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Evan Annelias said...

Posted on Jun 28 2009 12:31 As a diehard Terminator fan, the movie was scrap metal. But as an occasional action flick fan, this movie wasn't all that bad. McGee was able to cover up the lack of a decent story with extremely well done CGI, including new robots that we had only heard of, and an extremely well done chase in the middle of the desert with Kyle Reese and Marcus Wright.
At the very least I suggest you could see the movie for Sam Worthington. The void left my Arnie was , in my opinion filled by the performance of Sam. Christian Bale fans may be a bit dissapointed (as I was), but he does a good job considering the (Very) less number of lines that he had in the movie.
Simply put, the movie kind of clears the the bad taste that T3 left in my mouth, but it come nowhere close to the ones by Cameron.

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Andy S said...

Posted on Jun 25 2009 07:17 Really don't know what the negativity is about. I've loved the first 2 films since 1991 and this was a great return to form after the mostly awful T3 (well, it wasn't that bad). Great ideas and loads of spooky Terminators about aswell, plus the action scenes were sunning. The people who hated this...what were they expecting? Loads of cool references as well, esp the GNR song, and the ending mirroered the great T2 finale.

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shaun said...

Posted on Jun 19 2009 12:41 Great film all action. Clearly setting up the next film which should then complete the franchise.

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Woodsy said...

Posted on Jun 19 2009 12:24 I had been looking forward to seeing this film for ages. As a huge fan of the originsal 2 movies, and thinking that the third was average, I expected more from this latest installment. What a fool I was! This film not only insults our intelligence as an audience by literally throwing together a pile of so called 'wouldn't it be cool if this happened in a Terminator film...' scenarios, but it fails miserable where the other films succeed in that one does not care what happens to any of the characters. Where's the humour? Where's the constant impending doom? Where's the story? The only bright light in this entire film is Sam Worthington's performance as Marcus, however the script dictates that, unlike the other Terminator films, you don't really care if he ends up on the metal scrap yard at the end.
Save your money by not buying an over priced cinema ticket and go rent out the originals.

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Oliver said...

Posted on Jun 19 2009 12:06 The film was ok/pretty good, somewhere in between the two. Very different kind of film to the first 2 (im going to ignore no. 3) The story is ok, the characters are ok but lacking in the depth department a little, some good scenes that terminator fans will like, a would have prefered a little less cgi on the terminators i think. But yeah, over all its enjoyable, not great by any standards but is definantly worth a watch of you are a fan of the series.

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