Tags: "terminator four"

05/23/09

Movie Review: Terminator 4: Salvation- saving humanity from a boring Saturday night

Terminator: Salvation is both profound and profoundly silly- in an entertaining way.

In this Terminator installment, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is a robot-human hybrid (not unlike Al Gore) who comes in contact with an unofficial part of the human resistance movement, Kyle Reese who has yet to realize his importance in the the human salvation plan.

There's conflict between Connor and Marcus, as Connor's "naturally" reluctant to include a robot in his unit. Having been saved by Marcus from some surviving rednecks (surely subsisting on "survivor seeds") and intuiting something human about him, Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), who's a ringer for Sarah Connor Chronicles' Jesse Flores (Stephanie Jacobsen), busts Marcus out of human jail.

Marcus and Connor then head over to Skynet headquarters, prison, and grill to bust out captured Reese.

TS is a very clean production, with a straightforward story line, great special effects, and good acting. The robots are scary. I liked it better than Star Trek.

TS grabs a little profundity by dealing with a fundamental question: what makes humans, humans and why are they valuable? Unlike Battlestar Galactica, TS doesn't linger one meter below the depth at which it functions comfortably or, the philosophizing doesn't drag down the basic military story.

I liked the references to the previous Terminator movies. I would have liked a little more connection to the excellent Sarah Connor Chronicles. Perhaps Cameron Phillips as one of the prisoners.

TS is a very Martial movie, with good battle sequences, weapons and lots of soldier, "yes sir," "we're behind you, sir" stuff. Pro-military.

Silliness is present for those squids looking for it, but any movie dealing with time travel is ridiculous, inevitably.

Politics/Message:

Small, non-intrusive government. Power corrupts and power sure as heck went to Skynet's head. Wait until it gets it's circuits on our medical records.

TS takes the easy way out by saying that humans are different because we have "heart." The heart, as you know, is a biological machine. What separates us is that we are made in God's image and thus have a soul.

The Skynet prison is obviously a criticism of the conditions at Guantanamo.

Image from Amazon
Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season