Terminator Salvation

Can anyone explain to me the phenomenon behind the Terminator resurrection? Judgment Day was, is, fantastic and probably always will be; a piece of cinema that will live on forever. Twelve years later we would get a sequel, where Cameron isn't really involved but Arnold is. Unfortunately it just didn't work out. We get a television series, of all things, that I neglected to watch. I kind of feel like I was finished with the whole Terminator series, until Salvation. And perhaps the only reason this was worthy of excitement was one of my favourite actors, Christian Bale. This guy picks his roles well, right? If he's going to get involved in another entry in a series that was revitalized in 2003 for what seemed like financial reasons alone, it must be worth a viewing.

I know it's a couple of years "too late" but I caught a bit of this on satellite and figured out that I really enjoy it. I had to come home and watch it properly with big sound and on my new plasma set. I really appreciate the scenes that parallel some of the original films: the truck "chase" scenese; the biker fight, and of course all the little mannerisms Marcus does that would "later" be replicated by the other terminators.

What really sets this movie apart from the others is that it takes place entirely in the future. The film is gritty, and full of machines. Machines that scare me. When I was younger while I perused one of my video game magazines, there was an image of Arnold half human, half cyborg, with the glowing red eye staring directly into your soul. It definitely touched mine. It's like when you look back at the exact moment you developed a fear of goats or spiders: perhaps one attacked you while you were young and you have since been afraid of them ever since. That moment I saw the Terminator staring back at me resurrected some repressed memories of watching The Terminator when I was younger. Those scenes where the metallic skeleton emerges from the flames. When the torso is still chasing them. That unstoppable force that will stop at nothing to get you; that's the stuff of my nightmares.

What I really love about Salvation are all the terminators in them, and just how horribly terrifying they look. The T-600 wearing those beat up old boots with a gattling gun was great; the intro scene where Connor is basically fighting a torso was great but more significant because it showed that these machines could be destroyed. And hence, some of the scariness - and magic - was taken away. In fact the whole first intro scene is so video game-like that it borderlines parody: they walk through some kind of sewer in waist high water, when a giant machine emerges behind them. The troop turn around, empty half a clip into it and turn back. Within three seconds that beast was destroyed. Something's just not right about that.

There are varying degrees of themes regarding fate, and of course time travel, but the movie knows it's place and doesn't get brainy. The post-apocalyptic world that is painted here goes under appreciated; we go into detail talking about The Book of Eli and The Road but pay no heed to the dirt-covered world of Salvation. Everything really does look like it's been through a war: we even get a nice wide shot of a fallen Los Angeles. But what really sums up this world in one word is: hopeless. These people are barely surviving; the "resistance" really doesn't stand much of a hope. It has, to a degree, captured part of that intense fear that was instilled in me as a child with the original movie.