Terminator Salvation delivers decent action eye candy–too bad the story gets blown away in all the explosions.

Terminator Salvation
**1/2
Directed by McG
Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Common, Moon Bloodgood

Let’s get this out of the way right upfront: McG is not the reason that Terminator Salvation disappoints.  It goes without saying that, as a filmmaker, he’s no James Cameron, the man that got the franchise rolling with the first Terminator film back in 1984 and followed it up with one of the best sequels in film history, 1991′s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.  Despite–or perhaps because of–his titanic ego, Cameron remains one of contemporary cinema’s premiere action directors and both Terminator movies highlight his skill at staging large-scale set-pieces that fuse white-knuckle intensity with a compelling emotional hook.

If nothing else, McG at least gets the first part of this equation right.  The action sequences in Terminator Salvation are big, loud and generally well-executed, offering all the bombast—giant explosions! gunfire! car chases!—audiences expect from a summer blockbuster.  And unlike X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the studio clearly gave McG and his crew a sizeable special-effects budget.  The various Terminator models that make up Skynet’s robot army are convincingly brought to life onscreen via an almost seamless mixture of practical and CGI-effects.  McG also makes some interesting, if entirely derivative, choices behind the camera, choreographing a wild Mad Max meets Transformers car chase and shooting several sequences in long takes that echo Alfonso Cuaron’s modern-day sci-fi classic Children of Men.  That Terminator Salvation turns out to be a solid action flick is all the more amazing when you remember that McG is best known for directing the widely loathed Charlie’s Angels movies, which were deliberately silly and over the top, the very opposite of the grim war picture this one aspires to be.

So, no McG hasn’t ruined the Terminator franchise—the Terminator franchise has ruined the Terminator franchise.  By that I mean that this story is over and has been over since the credits rolled on T2 almost two decades ago.  Cameron’s movies said all there is to say about John Connor (played here by Christian Bale), his mother Sarah Connor (who is only heard hear as a voice on an old audio tape) and the killer robots from the future that are constantly hunting them down.  Thus, the latter-day sequels—the misbegotten Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and now Terminator Salvation—do nothing beyond filling in blanks that don’t need to be filled in.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that if you’ve seen the first two Terminator films, you already know everything that happens in Salvation, which picks up 14 years after Judgment Day in the midst of the war between Skynet and the ragtag Resistance army.  You already know that Connor will successfully find and rescue teenage soldier Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) from Skynet’s clutches, because if he doesn’t, he’ll never send him back in time to impregnate Sarah.  You already know that Connor will go from a mere soldier to the leader of the Resistance because he’s had this destiny drilled into him ever since birth.  Hell, you already know that Connor ultimately defeats Skynet and restores control of the Earth to mankind.  There’s no suspense, no drama to the film because Connor is a narrative dead end—his past, present and future are pre-determined, which makes him a thoroughly dull hero.  It doesn’t help that Bale delivers such a leaden performance, stalking through the movie growling and grimacing like he’s in the middle of history’s worst hangover.

Perhaps realizing they had a scowling blank where a dynamic leading man should be, the screenwriters throw a second protagonist into the mix, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a convicted murderer on death row who unwisely donated his body to the Cyberdyne Corporation—the company responsible for Skynet’s creation—before his execution.  In the intervening years since his death, he’s been transformed into an experimental hybrid of man and machine: he appears human on the outside, but underneath that layer of skin he’s all metal…save for the human heart that beats within his steel chest.  Released into a post-Judgment Day world, Wright crosses paths with Reese and, inevitably, Connor, who is all too eager to put a bullet in his cyborg brain.  Word on the street is that Marcus was supposed to be Salvation‘s main character, but when Bale turned the role down and made it clear he was only interested in playing Connor, the script was heavily re-worked to shift the focus to John.  That’s a shame because Marcus Wright is the only interesting person onscreen, largely because he’s the one wild card in an otherwise stacked deck.  Unfortunately, the film is unable to explore his personality in depth as it’s forced to regularly cut back to humanity’s humorless savior and his crew of equally stone-faced soldiers, whose ranks include Barnes (the rapper Common, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role), Blair (Moon Bloodgood) and John’s pregnant wife (Bryce Dallas Howard), a character of such little importance, her name is never actually mentioned in the movie.

Terminator Salvation‘s actions sequences are strong enough to keep the film from being a complete waste of time.  But it’s a largely empty moviegoing experience because the characters and story don’t demand any emotional investment.  As action-packed as the first two Terminator movies are, Cameron never lost sight of the fact that the core of the story was the relationship between a mother, her son and a surrogate father figure (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator).  Deprived of that kind of dramatic heft, Terminator Salvation is little more than a series of big explosions in search of a point.

Verdict: Rent It

2008 is in the history books, so here are the flicks and TV shows that have us looking forward to the year ahead.

9. The Tonight Show Starring Conan O’Brien (June)
It took sixteen years, but that red-headed goofball who pals around with a masturbating bear and an insult comic dog finally becomes NBC’s main man in late night.  Victory would be sweeter if former host Jay Leno had departed the airwaves for good instead of simply moving to the 10pm slot, but look for Conan to make the Tonight Show timely and relevant for the first time in more than a decade.

8. The Brothers Bloom (May 15)
Originally set to be released last October, Rian Johnson’s quirky con-man comedy—which features a career best performance by Oscar winner Rachel Weisz and an awesome supporting turn by Japanese starlet Rinko Kikuchi—reaches theaters at last.  Because a smallish distributor is releasing the flick you might have to look hard to find it, but you won’t feel ripped off after its over.

7. Shutter Island (October 2)
Martin Scorsese follows up his Oscar-winning crime drama The Departed with a ’50s-era action flick starring Leo DiCaprio (yes, again) as a U.S. marshal searching for an escaped mental patient on the titular secluded island.  Although it sounds closer to Cape Fear than Taxi Driver, every Scorsese picture is a must-see.



6. The Return of Geek TV
I can’t remember the last time I was this excited to see ABC’s Lost return to the airwaves.  The two-hour premiere kicks off on January 21 and the advance word is that the show is better than ever.  And with only one more year to go before its final batch of episodes, you know we’re in store for some major, major revelations.  I have seen the first episode of Joss Whedon’s highly anticipated new show Dollhouse (debuting February 13 on Fox) and I’m happy to say the Buffy creator is off to a strong start with his latest venture.  Between these two shows and the return of Battlestar Galactica (see below), geeks will have three good reasons to say inside glued to the TV during the cold winter months.

5. Watchmen (March 6)
While I’m not completely on board with all of Zack Snyder’s choices for the big-screen version of Alan Moore’s brilliant, groundbreaking, swoon-inducing graphic novel (for the love of God, stop with the slow-mo Zack!), I already know that I’ll be seeing it at least three times in theaters.  Of course, thanks to recent legal issues, we might have to wait a little longer to see Watchmen brought to life, but don’t freak out too much fanboys: this movie will get released.  It’s just going to cost Warner Brothers a heck of a lot of money.

4. Mad Men Season Three (Summer)
Instead of bailing out Detroit, why doesn’t the Fed give $700 million to Matthew Weiner so he can produce weekly episodes of Mad Men for all of 2009?  Because this year long wait to see the continuing adventures of ad man Don Draper is just not cool.

3. Avatar (December 18)
It’s been more than 10 years since James “King of the World” Cameron directed a feature film.  In that time, he’s released multiple versions of Titanic on DVD, helped get buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger elected governor of California and played himself on Entourage.  Some might call this creative loafing, but Cameron insists he was just waiting until CGI-technology caught up with his grand ideas for his next movie, Avatar, a top-secret sci-fi epic about a futuristic female warrior (played by Zoe Saldana).  Will the final product be worth the long wait?  You got me—all I know is, I’m buying my advanced tickets now.

2. The End of Battlestar Galactica (March)
Okay, so Battlestar Galactica as a franchise won’t be signing off for good two months from now.  There’s still a direct-to-DVD movie due out later this year and a prequel series Caprica launches in the fall.  There’s also a comic-book series and endless amounts of fan fiction all over the web.  But the show that launched this cult phenomenon is going away in March and television will be the poorer for it.  Memo to creator Ronald Moore: If Adama turns out to be a Cylon, I’m tossing my TV out the window.

1. Inglorious Bastards (August 21)
Holy crap, Quentin Tarantino has finally done it!  He’s made the World War II movie he’s been talking about since Pulp Fiction came out.  And somehow he convinced Brad Pitt to star in the damn thing.  So Quentin, does this mean we’re going to be seeing The Brothers Vega in 2010?  Travolta and Madsen aren’t getting any younger…