Terminator: Salvation

RATING: B-

So this might be a bit hard to imagine, but they made a Terminator movie... without Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know, crazy right? Despite the fact that the series is actually a bit of a convoluted mess of time travel and paradoxes and confusion pretty often, Arnold has been the main force holding this series together. We had two great movies and one good one before this, but those movies probably would not have done well without Arnold. But they made one without him anyway. (Well... mostly. Arnold himself does not appear, but there is a wacky use of CGI involving his likeness briefly.)

This is actually a very different Terminator movie altogether. The previous three movies all dealt with cyborgs time traveling from the future--for one purpose or another. Time travel was a main theme, for better or for worse. And T2 and T3 both dealt with fighting against fate and the seemingly inevitable--both with very different endings on the matter. This one actually takes place almost completely in 2018, during the war between the humans and machines that had only been teased in the last three movies. And no one (or nothing) really time travels in this movie. The character Marcus Wright kind of does--but only in the sense that he wakes up in a new time/world unexpectedly. So this is pretty strictly a sci-fi post-apocalyptic war movie--which definitely has its benefits. 

In this different Terminator movie, John Connor is a figurehead of the "resistance"--but he's not actually the leader, oddly enough. Apparently that comes later. The humans think they may have found a way to finish off Skynet. While Connor is dealing with that and trying to keep Kyle Reese alive, a newcomer shows up: Marcus Wright, who is something totally new to either side. A machine that actually thinks it's human. (That may sound like a big spoiler, but for some reason the marketing was not too concerned with keeping that a secret... therefore, it is fair game as far as I'm concerned.) Connor and company have to figure out if Marcus can be trusted, and find out what role he has to play in the war. 

Despite the lack of Schwarzenegger, the movie still is pretty entertaining to watch. We have some great special effects and camera work, as well as some cool design on the machines (although at this point the question of how any human is still alive with machines this powerful around comes up). There's some exciting action scenes, including another thrilling automobile chase (because apparently it wouldn't be a Terminator movie without one) and a pretty exciting final act. The story, though once again a bit convoluted, is still pretty interesting--especially with Marcus being thrown to the mix which leads to an interesting plot twist near the end that the marketing thankfully did keep under wraps. 

Also, there's a couple of things regarding the cast. Christian Bale is easily the best John Connor yet. After the mostly annoying performance from the kid in T2 and the perfectly "meh" actor in T3, we finally get a more convincing version of the important character. Anton Yelchin is also a worthy Kyle Reese, and Bryce Dallas Howard is a better version of John's wife than the actress in T3. Sam Worthington is okay enough as well and Helena Bonham Carter is also there in a small role. Despite a merely okay script, we still had a couple pretty good performances. 

Terminator: Salvation does also have its problems, but the biggest one is the same problem that has plagued almost the entire series: the convoluted timeline. There may not be really any time travel, but this movie is still a little confusing at times. Namely, when Skynet is implied to have knowledge of all of the events of the previous three movies--which is totally impossible for a multitude of reasons. Basically, Skynet seems to know way more than it should about everything at this point. And really, if it knows that much and has all the robots we see at its disposal (cool as they are), they should have already won the war themselves--possibly without even ever sending anything back in time. There's some other issues as well, such as some other characters that aren't very fleshed out and some impossible survivals that sometimes really stretch the limits of suspension of disbelief (a guy actually gets impaled through the chest and does not die immediately). And although the movie does at times actually kind of compensate for the lack of Arnold, the lack of Arnold and his charisma is still noticeable.

Terminator: Salvation is actually a pretty decent and entertaining movie. It has its problems, but many of them amount to the utter confusion and convolution that is this series' timeline, which has also changed more than once. And honestly, they've already dug themselves so far at this point with plot holes and paradoxes that it really can't be fixed anymore. While this movie (and T3) still showed that this series can be entertaining and fun to watch even when the timeline makes no sense, it's still quite likely that this franchise's best days are long behind it.