Terminator Franchise

The Terminator

I like to consider myself a true Terminator fan. I think when people use terms like “true” or “original” what they are aiming for is a sense of closeness to origin. The reason why I like to label myself as such is that I was introduced to the franchise not by a huge Hollywood blockbuster but instead by a low budget monophonic film in which the premise of the movie was that the human race was facing annihilation if not for the efforts of a few individuals who were the heroes of the movie. This was no laughing matter and was just about as weighty a responsibility as anyone could imagine any human being to carry. This was serious business.

T2

Seven years after The Terminator the second installment came out. Unlike most fans, I did not think that T2: Judgment Day was a great movie. In fact I was very disappointed with it. I felt as though big-budget Hollywood whiz-bang special effects took precedence over being true to the original movie. I was especially disappointed with the lightheartedness of the movie evidenced by forced one-liners such as “Hasta La Vista Baby”. Also the need to up the ante seemed to me the only plausible explanation for the liquid metal T-1000, or perhaps an unyielding desire on the part of James Cameron to show off his The Abyss technology which did not make any sense in the Terminator universe. What stood out to me as the lone attempt at restoring consistency with the first film was the intensity that Linda Hamilton brought to her reprisal of the Sarah Connor character. Her character seemed like the only one who was taking this thing seriously.

T3

T3: Rise of the Machines was for the most part a train wreck. It took me years after seeing it in the theater and then flipping through channels while it was playing on TV to gain even a shred of respect for the film. The cheese factor was slightly dialed down from T2 but there were still unforgivable inconsistencies with the mood of the first film such as the foolish looking sunglasses worn by Arnold and the acting was incredibly poor. The only respect that I was able to gain was for how the movie ended — and I’m not trying to be facetious. They managed to stay true to The Terminator storyline and didn’t completely hijack it by allowing Judgment Day to proceed just as predicted from the first film. The final scene of T3 shows John Connor and his future wife Kate Brewster taking in the seriousness of the fact that an all out Nuclear attack was underway. Seriousness of the matter restored.

TSCC

Despite the low depths the Terminator franchise had fallen into, in 2008 there was new hope. It came in the form of a new TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I was initially very skeptical but was curious so I purchased the first Season DVD set with some coworkers and tore through them while home sick with the flu recently. I was in love again! The writers of TSCC had been true to the original movie. They created a series which I felt was consistent with the mood and tone that the first movie had captured. I have not yet watched any episodes of Season 2 as I am eagerly awaiting the DVD release but from what I’ve heard it is on par with Season 1 and I doubt I will be disappointed.

Salvation

When I heard the first rumors of a fourth movie installment, again I was skeptical. But when I heard that Christian Bale would be playing the role of John Connor I couldn’t resist my excitement. Earlier this week I went to go see Terminator Salvation.  I was very nervous, in fact I even uttered those words to my wife as she sat next to me as we waited for the movie to start playing in the theater. My nervousness was primarily fueled by the previous two film installments and by all of the critical reviews that were being posted online.  There were bloggers bashing the film to the extent that they could not decide which film was worse, T3 or T4. I’m not sure if all the negativity online directed towards Terminator Salvation was because of the bad taste T3 left in everyone’s mouths or if people were legitimately dissatisfied with the film.

When I would watch The Terminator, the scenes which really captured my imagination were those of the flash-forwards (back?) to the future after Judgment Day when the human rebels were fighting the machines. The apocalyptic imagery from even the low-budget first film made me yearn for an entire movie dedicated to that time frame. Terminator Salvation delivered to me that future which I wanted to learn more about. With that alone, it started off on the right foot for me.  While some of the reviews about Salvation criticize it for being inconsistent with the franchise, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the unique path this film took. Suddenly the binary storyline of good and evil was grayed. In Salvation there was a entirely new Terminator, Marcus Wright, a cyborg convinced of his humanity.

An important theme from the Terminator franchise was that of the transformation of the main character. In the first movie that transformation for Sarah Connor from happy-go-lucky Los Angeles waitress to futuristic machine fighting warrior was carried out in various stages. By the end of the movie Sarah Connor was hard as nails. In T2 and also in T3 John Connor continues to make progress towards his eventual role as leader of the rebellion against the machines. In Salvation, we are shown yet another stage in that evolution of John Connor. This time he is a lowly lieutenant in charge of the San Francisco branch of the rebellion. He is expected to take orders from elderly, more seasoned commanders but he struggles with this and must forge his own path. The pivotal scene where this growth into the eventual role of leader of the rebellion is when he gets on the radio and requests all battalions to stand down and allow him to carry out the rescue of the prisoners from Skynet. He does this in direct opposition from higher command but knows that he must act. However, this aspect of the movie is also my strongest criticism of it.  There simply was not enough time devoted to whom I expected to be the star of the movie. Instead just as many online reviews have pointed out, Sam Worthington stole the show but not because he out acted Christian Bale, but because the movie didn’t spend enough time focusing on John Connor. The growth of John Connor should have been illustrated in far greater detail. Every scene with John Connor in it was fantastic and all I wanted was more of it. Much more!

Eventually, what really made me appreciate Salvation though was how this movie rang true in terms of the consistency of the mood with that of the first movie. While there were one-liners which payed their homages to the first movie, they were not forced and were well chosen and timely. Lines such as “Hasta la Vista Baby” and foolish looking sunglasses would not fit in the first movie and certainly would not fit in Salvation. The mood was dreary, dismal, bleak and yes at times depressing, but that’s what you would expect of a movie that takes place after a Nuclear holocaust of the entire world. I expected John Connor to have now grown up to be a very serious no nonsense character much like his mother from the end of the first movie and throughout T2 and in TSCC. Christian Bale delivered that John Connor superbly.

Terminator Salvation restored the sense of seriousness that was created with the first film.  It was for true Terminator fans.

Tags: John Connor, Sarah Connor, T2, Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Terminator, TSCC