Movie Review: TERMINATOR SALVATION: THE FUTURE BEGINS - McG still Sucks

You all know how much I wanted ‘Terminator Salvation’ to kick-ass and be the Terminator movie we have all been waiting for. We finally get to see the battle of future, John Connor all grown up leading the resistance to take down Skynet, thus releasing the world from its burning iron grip. I liked most of what I saw in the film clips and movie trailers, and I thought this movie was going to be awesome! I even thought that the director McG could have pulled it off! Well, he didn’t. He is still a crap filmmaker and he managed to brutally kill the Terminator franchise for me, much like Brett Ratner utterly destroyed X-Men 3.



Before I go on and tear this movie apart, this is a movie that the average movie goer is going to love. It has all the big action special effects that Hollywood is grooming the audience to accept, rather than watching a good story. In the theater I went and saw it in the majority of audience cheered and applauded when the movie ended. I sat in my seat wondering why. Then realized these were the same people that brought  a couple of beach balls into the movie theater and everyone was annoyingly hitting it around.



I was so disappointed with the majority of the movie. The action sequences in the movie were the best part, but even the special effects were still very much on the cheap side, some looked like they were unfinished and there were these very obvious blue screen background effects that were not blended well with the live action. I wasn’t even trying to look for that stuff, it just stuck out like a sore thumb.



I am convinced the script was written by a 12 year boy. The dialogue in the movie was atrociously bad. I can’t even describe to you how bad it was, you will have to see it for yourself. The timing of the dialogue and the way it was delivered by the actors didn’t help either. It just fell flat. I couldn’t help but laugh several times through the movie while the actors were delivering their lines. I swear they must have been reading strait from the script.



This is by far Christian Bales worst performance in a film. I did not like him at all in the role of John Connor. My first seed of excitement for this movie was planted when he was cast in the movie, but he was as mediocre as an actor can get. As for Sam Worthington as Marcus, the guy kept going in and out of accents in the film, and there were times where I couldn’t even understand what he was saying. Common was just a wooden puppet delivering one of the worst lines in the movie "It's Beautiful".  Moon Bloodgood did the best with the material she was given, Bryce Dallas Howard wasn’t in the movie enough to make a judgment, but Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese was the best actor in the film. He was the only one that took the dialogue and made it somewhat real. Honestly, I was embarrassed for the actors that had to act from this awful script.



McG is still on my douche director list. He was obviously the weakest link. A movie is only as good as it’s director and McG failed. Some of the scenes in the film were right out of ‘Charlie’s Angels’. And he obviously can’t direct actors or develop a good story.

Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger made his short little CGI debut and it looked like it was really good video game cinematic. I wasn’t really impressed by it, but the audience was. I didn’t think it looked like him at all. They made him much wider. On top of that there was really no point to add him in the movie. It was just a way to connect him with the other movies it could have been done without it, and you would have never missed it.



As for this controversial ending McG has been hyping up I have no idea what in the hell he was talking about. After the movie ended the only thing worth discussing was how bad it was and how he ruined the Terminator franchise for the fans.

If you go back and watch the original Terminator films you will see a huge difference because they are actually great well rounded movies that have everything that Terminator Salvation lacks... most importantly a good story.



The movie had its moments, mostly in the action sequences. But you can see most of those on all the clips that have been released. McG's version was jumping all over the place with awkward cuts, which didn't help the fact the the movie had a bunch of holes in it.  Everything else in the movie, such as the story and drama, just didn't go beyond a laughably bad script.

So did I enjoy it? Believe it or not... yes, but not in the way I would have liked to. This wasn't the movie I wanted, but it still offered some decent action and a few laughs. I have no need to ever watch this movie again. If I watch it again it will just piss me off even more. Like I said earlier, the average movie goer has a better chance of liking this movie more that the hard core movie geeks like myself.

Damn! I wish this movie would have been better!