Patwoman Reviews Terminator Salvation

Still catching up on my movies...

Terminator Salvation (though the title is not the best) was actually pretty good. I was a little worried, since we had not seen much of this movie beforehand. The trailer I saw on TV last week was basically the same trailer I saw 6 months ago at the theater. That's usually not a good sign.

Plus, I'd heard the movie got a major rewrite when Christian Bale signed on. Like, the movie wasn't supposed to be about John Conner, but he insisted John Conner's part be bigger. But the rewrite seemed to work. I can't imagine what the movie would have been like if it had been more focussed on Marcus and less on John Conner.

I like Bale in this movie, too. (Don't care that he "Baled out" during production. I'm sure a lot of other celebs are assholes, too.) He brought the same kind of intensity to John Conner that he brings to Bruce Wayne. Same kind of character, too. Both guys are guys that are chosen/drawn to a life of hard choices and bitter heartbreak. Yet, both of them have remained on this side of the line. Both have kept their humanity.

Some people I talked to didn't like this darkness. I don't know what they expected. The world has been taken over by machines who want to kill us. There's no way that's not a dark movie.

Some people don't like that the timeline is different, or that it gets changed in this movie. Listen, Kyle Reese says (in the first movie) that John Conner taught him "The future is not set. What we do has the power to change it." You know, that says to me the timeline can be messed with and the movies still have continuity. (Some of the people who had trouble with this, I'm sure, just don't get the concept of non-linear time.)

Some people I talked to just didn't like Bale. Whatever. I think he's a good actor. I'm pretty impressed with his performance.

Some other things of note in the movie:

* Sets looked awesome. I'm sure McG took a page from Ridley Scott's book on using that yellow filter to make everything look worn.

* Most of the CG looked good.


* The Swarzenegger lookalike looks a lot like him.

* There is a quick shot of Terminator peen. (I don't know if it is a Swarzenegger lookalike, though.)

The bad thing about the movie: Made me think "The Wolverine movie should have been this good."