Salvaging Salvation
Because Terminator Salvation Is Not the Failure That Critics and Fan Boys Proclaim
The first time I watched Terminator
Salvation (2009) was the fall it was released on DVD. But I didn’t buy it
on DVD – I streamed a grainy bootleg from my PS3 onto a cathode-ray tube TV. During
that viewing, I sat upright in my bed, straining to make out every scene – not
just because of the bootleg’s poor quality, but because I thought it was a damn
good movie that demanded my attention. I’m not a Terminator fan boy though, and
I soon forgot about the film and went on with my life, eventually investing in a
flat screen.
Move four years into the future. It’s 2013. I found a
portion of my summer’s extra-curricular studies analyzing science fiction novels
and films for philosophical and social commentary. So in other words, I watched
a lot of Star Trek. It was, however,
while reading “The Second Variety” back to back with “Imposter” in Philip K. Dick’s Collected Short Stories
that I recalled the fourth entry in The Terminator film franchise. All these stories share settings of post-apocalyptic futures where killer machines disguised as
humans are, themselves, unaware of their artificiality. So I gave Salvation another
watch, and, like Butters after watching Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I find myself in the minority, saying,
“I thought it was pretty good!”
I say the minority because Terminator Salvation currently holds a 33% approval rating on
Rotten Tomatoes [i]. In his
two-star review of Salvation, Roger
Ebert complained that “One of Hollywood's oldest axioms teaches us: The story
comes first. Watching ‘Terminator Salvation,’ it occurred to me that in the new
Hollywood, the storyboard comes first. After scrutinizing the film, I offer you
my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others,
fights. That lasts for almost two hours” [ii].
It’s from this kind of review that I would like to defend Terminator Salvation. I feel director
McG does tackle the philosophical commentary so often found in good science
fiction – one that seeks to define humanity by distinguishing man from machine.
It might just be harder to see this through all the explosions and smoke.
One can prove McG’s intention to make Salvation an intelligent sci- fi action flick: “I think intelligent
action films represent the magic of movies at a very high level and I'm
thrilled to throw my hat in the ring and be part of it”[iii].
Regarding Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), Skynet’s human-machine hybrid who
retains his human identity, McG stated, “[Marcus] is a real exploration of what
it means to be human . . . You can have metal bits and pieces running through
your body, but it doesn't make you any less of a man. And the question is,
where do you become a machine and let go of your humanity?”
Here I’d like to point out that in Salvation doesn’t just question the difference between man and
machine through the character of Marcus, the robot/machine hybrid. More
importantly, its through John Connor (Christian Bale), who condemns Marcus
based solely on his physical mechanization. The film is as much the story of Connor’s
salvation as it is Marcus’s, and in this sense, also The Resistance’s, which orders
the destruction of Skynet’s headquarters despite collateral damage of thousands
of human prisoners’ lives – a sacrificial act Conner disobeys: “Command wants
us to fight like machines. They want us to make cold, calculated decisions. But
we are not machines. And if we behave like them, than what is the point in
winning" [iv]?
In essence, Connor goes through much the same character arc as Sarah Connor does in T2: Judgment Day (1991), who starts as a paranoid militant bent on murdering an innocent software developer and becomes someone capable of trusting a Terminator as a father figure for John. Since no one in their right mind would criticize Linda Hamilton's portrayal of Sarah Conner for its intensity, I feel Roger Ebert misses the point when he complains that T2: Judgment Day’s Edward Furlong is “infinitely more human as John Connor than Christian Bale is in this film." Salvation’s John Conner is not intended to seem human. Marcus the robot-human hybrid is.
In essence, Connor goes through much the same character arc as Sarah Connor does in T2: Judgment Day (1991), who starts as a paranoid militant bent on murdering an innocent software developer and becomes someone capable of trusting a Terminator as a father figure for John. Since no one in their right mind would criticize Linda Hamilton's portrayal of Sarah Conner for its intensity, I feel Roger Ebert misses the point when he complains that T2: Judgment Day’s Edward Furlong is “infinitely more human as John Connor than Christian Bale is in this film." Salvation’s John Conner is not intended to seem human. Marcus the robot-human hybrid is.
This film is not the failure that critics and fan boys
proclaim. If you want an action sci-fi with big explosions, you should like Salvation. And although it’s no Blade Runner (1982), if you want to
ponder the difference between man and machine in the super cool Terminator
universe, you should like Salvation.
But if you want a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger with the tone of a James
Cameron film, you’re going to be disappointed – because that’s a stupid thing
to expect. It doesn’t star Arnold Schwarzenegger and it isn’t directed or
written by James Cameron. If Salvation did
suffer from misguided expectations, maybe it will garner respect in years to
come.
Just for the sake of things that could have
been, apparently, prior to Salvation’s
poor reviews, McG had plans to make Salvation
part of a trilogy:
“John Connor is going to travel back in time and he's going
to have to galvanize the militaries of the world for an impending Skynet
invasion. They've figured out time travel to the degree where they can send
more than one naked entity. So you're going to have hunter killers and
transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor
fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be
fucking awesome. I also think he's going to meet a scientist that's going to
look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick (who famously played the T-1000 in
Terminator 2), talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as
idealized, younger versions of ourselves" [iii].
Imagine that: a T-1000 origin story revolving around the
philosophical quest for immortality…and more explosions. If that sounds cool to
you, it’s unfortunate that this future will not come to pass. The fifth
Terminator movie which is currently in development with a summer 2015 release
date is set to star Arnold Schwarzenegger, while McG and company are out of the
picture [v].
I just find it so confusing why people would make another Terminator film
starring Arnold. He’s old now. It doesn’t make sense for Terminators to age.
They’re robots – they don’t age. I don’t even…
Also, notice how I wrote an entire Terminator article
without making any forced “I’ll be back” jokes. Discipline. Discipline is a thing.
[i]
“Terminator
Salvation.” Rottentomatoes.com. Web. Accessed
Aug. 2013.
[ii]
Ebert, Roger. “Terminator
Salvation.” Rogerebert.com. 19
May, 2009. Web. Accessed Aug. 2013.
[iii]
McG. "Salvation
By Cyborg" by Ethan Alter. Film Journal International 112.5 (2009):
14. Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. Accessed Aug. 2013.
[iv]
Terminator Salvation. Screenplay by
John Brancato and Michael Ferris. 2009. Dir. McG. Prod. Derek Anderson. Perf. Christian Bale and
Sam Worthington. 2009. Warner Bros, 2009. DVD.
[v]
Thomson, Iain. “Schwarzenegger
says 'I'll be back' for Terminator 5 reboot.” The register.co.uk. 29 June, 2013. Web. Accessed Aug. 2013.
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