Apparently, in the future, the robots are taking over. And whether it ends up being the Cylons or Skynet, humans are pretty much screwed.The culprit in the Terminator series is, of course, Skynet. According to the Terminator timeline, we have until 2016 before the robots become sentient and start blowing us up and enslaving us. The one hope for humanity is John Connor, who organizes the resistance against the machines and saves the human race.
In the original Terminator, the machines sent back the original Terminator robot to destroy John’s mother, Sarah Connor, before he was born. In this, the fourth installment of the movie series, John Connor (Christian Bale) must prevent the death of Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), now a young adult, who is destined to father him when he’s sent back to the past to protect Sarah. Confused yet?
It’s not really that confusing in the movie. The backstory is spelled out well enough to keep from losing a casual fan of the series, and probably enough to orient someone who hasn’t seen any of the other movies. There are several nods to the original movie, including stills of the original Sarah Connor, Linda Hamilton, and an appearance I wasn’t expecting at all.
The plot itself is fairly simple, woven around plenty of action, explosions, and loving shots of John Connor being thoughtful, angsty and/or heroic, as well as dirty, sweaty, and banged up. The entire movie has a burned-out, apocalyptic feel—appropriately enough—with a partially desaturated color palette and barren, desert landscapes. The performances are reasonably good, most notably Sam Worthington’s turn as Marcus Wright, the cyborg who thinks he’s still human (although Worthington, an Australian, suffers a bit of accent slippage here and there). Bale is as pretty as ever, though he has a disconcerting tendency to slide into his Batman voice, which is a little over the top even for Batman.
Speaking of Batman, Salvation marks Bale’s entry into a second major franchise. It also offers the same opportunity to Yelchin, who plays not only Kyle Reese in this film, but can also be seen as Pavel Chekov in the new Star Trek.
Overall, Salvation is one of the better installments in the Terminator series, though I’m still partial to the recently and unfortunately canceled Sarah Connor Chronicles. Salvation is intended to be the first in a new trilogy, and offers a promising start if this plan plays out.
