It's been a few years since the Terminator canon was slightly weakened by the third instalment. We've made it right round the wheel of rehashings again, and Terminator Salvation has popped its head up. We're post-apocalypse now, following a grown-up John Connor (Christian Bale) in his struggle against the machines. He's part of a rag tag bunch of resistance fighters, desperately battling the vicious Skynet. The bonus storyline told in tandem concerns Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who received the death penalty back in 2003 only to wake up in this futuristic hell.
The two storylines are pretty much unrelated and spend the bulk of the film this way. The writers have ignored many opportunities to forge them together, instead relying on a parallel structure that is quite awkward in practice.
Terminator Salvation is a reasonable action film. It overuses CGI and has more explosions than plot points but it has the power to keep you entertained. That is if you can get past the disappointment of it following in the footsteps of some of the greatest sci-fi/action/thrillers of all time.
The first two films are, of course, brilliant. The third is passable but with this offering we're officially in a scripting slump. Story and character have been sold to Wile E. Coyote in exchange for a hell of a lot of TNT. If this were the only film, and the others hadn't invested us in the struggle, I don't know that we'd even remember John Connor's name once the credits had rolled. Director McG is currently developing Terminator 5 though, so it can only get better - right?
