COMMENCE BOMBING OF SKYNET!Michael Ironside belts out this gem from deep beneath the ocean in a nuclear submarine. Yes, humans still have those in their fight against the machines, who are once again out to kill John Connor's father in "Terminator: Salvation."
T4 opens with a shot of Marcus, a convict on death row for killing his family. He's talked into donating his body to science by a cancer-stricken Helena Bonham Carter. He does so for a kiss, to which he adds gracefully, "Now I know what death tastes like."
Needless to say, a decade later Marcus turns up in a post-apocalyptic earth, where man is fighting machine and John Connor is leading the resistance. Marcus winds up fighting on the same side of the battlefield, until Connor finds out Marcus is more metal than man. Can he really trust a robot? What about a robot with a beating heart? A robot who just wants a second chance to right the wrongs of his life, wrongs that sent him to the death house? Oh the chrome-plated humanity! It's 2018, and not even a nuclear holocaust can wipe about sad blockbuster sap.
As far as the Terminator mythology goes - NOTHING HAPPENS. And when I say nothing happens, I literally mean that nothing happens. There's something that happens at the end of the film that leads you to believe that maybe all of this is coming to a close and either man/machine (won't spoil which one) has finally got the upper hand. But then, a character provides a few lines of narration just before the closing credits that tells us "Hey, all of that stuff you just watched? That pretty much didn't mean anything. Thanks for watching us spend $100 million blowing s--- to high heaven. See you in two summers.""Terminator: Salvation" is just a dumb movie. I was shocked that somebody like Christian Bale, known for taking his time picking his scripts and making big-budget movies with brains, would sign on for something this silly. How many times does he need to tell characters to "get to the transport?" Or how about "run?" If there's a seven foot man of metal storming at you, can't people figure it out for themselves?
On the positive side, at least the effects are pretty solid. There's a fun scene with a towering harvester bot picking people up one by one, even though it's directly ripped out of "Transformers." I still don't understand why machines would want to collect humans, wouldn't they focus their time on developing better, stronger machines? And don't even get me started on the talking computer!
The tagline for "Terminator: Salvation" seems to be "Everybody deserves a second chance." I'm willing to grant this to Mr. Bale, but to the film's director Mr. McG? I think this would be more like a 5th chance. I'll take a pass on that.
A ticket to "Terminator: Salvation" will cost you $10. I think that's way too much money. T4 gets a LeShock Value of $2 out of $10.
2/10
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