A Review of Terminator Salvation

So…..Was the Terminator series salvaged by this installment? If you go by the standards of the third one, HELL YEAH!!! The Terminator franchise which actually “fell” with “Rise of the machines” received a shot in the arm with T4. But before you get your hopes up too high, let me add here that T4, while being waaay better that T3, still pales in comparision with T2, plotwise and pacewise. (Don’t even compare it with T1. That movie was filmed in the 80s with stop-motion animation which is a far cry from present day CG).

The movie begins with a death row convict Marcus who agrees to let his organs be harvested. The scene then cuts to 2018 where all hell breaks loose with the protagonist John Connor smack in the middle of a melee of helicopters whirling noisily, random explosions, barking soldiers and of course, killer terminators.

The movie wears a serious tone throughout with a perpetually frowning Connor and a wooden faced Marcus, with the sole comic line coming in the form of a joke about “2 day old coyote tasting better than a 3 day old one” (No Shea LaBeouf quips here). The audience get to hear all the trademark lines like “I’ll be back” and “Come with me if you want to live” and experiance a sense of déjà vu during the Truck chase and Metal factory sequences which pay heavy homage to T2. One also gets to hear the legendary GnR track from T2 played on a stereo during a movie sequence.

Somehow Christian Bale again ends up playing a somewhat secondary role of a one-dimensional John Connor, while Sam Worthington steals the limelight as the conflict-ridden Man-Machine, Marcus (a la the Joker stealing Batman’s thunder??). The movie has many negatives in the form of a needlessly dragged ending, utterly unnecessary female leads (one of whom keeps giving big-glassy-eyed dumb ass looks) and an occasional overdose of CG sequences (probably an attempt to cover a weak plot). On the plus side, theres a CG Arnold (who drew the maximum hoots and whistles from the audience, including me), some badass bike sequences, the T2 tributes, and most importantly, IT WASN’T T3.

I would give it a 6/10 for plot, 8/10 for effects and an overall 7/10.Watch it.It aint as bad as some reviews make it out to be.