Review: Terminator Salvation

Being a fan of the Terminator series and leading a busy working life have culminated in my catastrophic disapointment, in the latest installment in the terminator franchise.

Please let me explain where this disdain comes from.

I recently found myself with a spare afternoon (and a friend!) and decided to go to the cinema and watch TS the 4th film in the Terminator series. Prior to the screening, I had not kept up with any of the news surrounding the film or read any reviews. So I went with a completely open mind.

Immediatly alarm bells rang before the film began, when I noticed the 12A certificate. My mind raced ahead to all the gore and distruction that would be missing from the movie. I mean the whole premise of the film was about killer robots, but still I told myself to be positive. Maybe the emphasis would switch to the narrative?

The story is based on a paradoxical time continum where a man in the future(John connor) sends back in time his own father to protect his mother from killer robots(skynet). This opens up huge questions like...."how can he exist in time before his mother and father had ever met"?

The other key premise off the film is the AI known as skynet. This is an AI that was created by the U.S military but becomes self aware and sees the whole of humanity as a threat to its existance, and then decides to destroy humanity in a global nucular holocaust.

This installment of Terminator takes place just after the nucular holocaust, just as John Connor is about to meet his father for the first time. The story also has a new mysterious character. A pre apocalyptic murderer (Marcus Wright) who was publicly executed for his crimes, but wakes up in the future in this post apocalyptic landscape with no recollection of how he got there or why he is alive.

Well to say the story is complicated would be an understatment, and then to ask the question is the narrative explained well? The answer to this is a resounding no! There is no effort to explain the paradoxes, and the writers seem to exude the problem with even more non -sensical story lines.

If you add all of the above to the fact that the film is aimed at 12 year olds who would not be legally old enough to watch the original films, it begs the question "who is this film intended for"? But my biggest disapointment comes when you cast your mind back to memories of the first film, which was very well written.

To sum it up in brief, the visual effects are incredible, but the storyline is lacking.

2/10

Review: Michael Johnson aka Free Speech