Terminator Salvation

This was highly anticipated - but why? Because we loved the original Terminator. Because it was a LONG time ago that we loved the original Terminator. Because our memories have forgiven the franchise for other Terminator movies that followed. And maybe because it's been a bit of a dry movie season so far.

Christian Bale plays the adult John Connor, the savior of the human race against the machines.

Here's the good, bad and ugly of this film. The good is that it had a spark of an idea. A little seedling about seeing John Connor as an adult, in a timewarp where his father exists as a teenager and he must save him. There is a little kernel of an interesting plot line with a mass murderer... there's a nice couple of scenes with Helena Bonham Carter ('Fight Club') that made me wish she had been in more of the movie. The other good part is a recreation of young, strong, Ahnold - the Original Terminator. That was fun.

But you wade through an intense amount of muck and crud and dirt and CG to get to those little kernels. That's the bad AND the ugly.

The demographic for this movie must be 10 - 12 year old boys who are so hopped up on ICEEs that their eyeballs are bulging going in. I think only that mind can absorb this kind of crash, fire, explode, metal on metal, fire, machine gun, crash, explode that just never ends. It's one big CG scene. There's actually very very little acting in this entire movie. Instead it's ruled by stunt people - all we see of our 'actors' are their stunt doubles falling, rolling, dodging, shooting, diving, plummeting.

Very soon into this your brain just checks out.

A key thing that action movies must create is some connection to the core characters, creating some desire on our part that they make it out okay. Frankly I didn't care, and I already knew they'd be fine. They had to be - after all there's another movie showing them in it and we know how that one goes so we know who lives to go on. Taking away that element of suspense just leaves you with.... a couple of hours of things exploding, things on fire, things shooting or being shot at, lots of fast camera takes and flashing stuff on a black and white dismal backdrop.

This was a lousy movie.

Popcorn at Pueblo Tinseltown was fresh, hot and fast - served up by the fast and helpful young Eden at the concession stand. That was the only redeeming thing to going to the show today. Oh, that and getting to see the Sherlock Holmes trailer - wow what a franchise Robert Downey, Jr. has gotten himself into! It looks promising and if it takes off, he could do sequels forever with that one!

Earthdad and I both gave this one a '1'. We feel kind of tired and beaten up from sitting through it. :P