The Terminator… one of the best sci fi movie franchises that has ever existed. I think it’s fair to say that 1984’s original Terminator was a masterpiece by director James Cameron made on a shoestring budget of only $6 million. After the films release it quickly became a cult classic, with a massive following all over the world.

Then Cameron did a brave thing and made a sequel to this cult classic. We all know that if you do make a film like The Terminator, with so many fans. You open yourself up to criticism for becoming too mainstream or losing what you tried to say in the first film.

But Cameron did it. In T2 he took possibly the most menacing villain from any film ever and turned him into a hero. The film is just as much as a masterpiece as the original, going further into the emotional side of the characters and yet still retaining everything that’s good about the original.

Then in 2003, tragedy struck. Jonathan Mostow took over from James Cameron in the franchise and released the monstrosity that is Terminator 3. Which proved to be possibly even more disappointing than Alien Resurrection (another franchise Cameron played a major role in).

It sucked balls (in a metaphorical sense), destroying the key themes of non-fatalism and destroyed the Terminator that audiences fell in love with in T2 who was able to take a sideways look upon humanity and eventually come to terms with our values even better than we do. To top all that off it didn’t even explain why the events in the film even took place. After the whole fight to destroy Sky net in T2, the T3 script-writers were unable to think of any way round the destruction of Cyberdyne, other than one line… ‘Judgement day is inevitable’… PURE GENIUS GUYS!

So now it’s 2009. Most of us have gotten over the pain of T3, which was only second to the agony that was the Phantom Menace. Under a new director, taking the franchise in a totally new direction. T4 is basically a reboot after the disappointment of T3, with another two movies to come to make a new terminator trilogy.

Ok, let’s think about this. Reboots have worked before, in fact very well recently. After Batman & Robin, Christopher Nolan returned to the gritty Frank Miller style Batman that was closer to Tim Burton’s original Batman. I think I speak for the vast majority of film fans when I say that both films were tremendously good. Then more recently we have Star Trek; a huge franchise that was nearly destroyed by the two turkeys of Star Trek Insurrection and Star Trek Nemesis. The reboot took the series in a new direction, giving old fans enough nostalgic references to the classics, but not taking itself too seriously to alienate the general audiences.

So thinking about it, a reboot for The Terminator series sounds pretty good. It’s a chance to see into the future depicted only in brief sections of the first two movies, which I have to admit, were pretty cool. It’s also a chance to get to grips with John Connor as an adult. Throughout the series we hear about the John Connor the leader, which we can now see, as well as many other characters that we haven’t seen before.

The first thing that gave me worries (other than the fact that the guy directing this film calls himself McG) was that the certificate given to the film was a 12A. Usually this is incredibly superficial, as there are fantastic U films and SHITE 18 films. But here’s my point.

What do we love about the Terminator films (the first two I mean)? It’s the fact that the films are very character based, with most shots focusing on the actors/actresses. These characters are then set up against a terminator that is incredibly tough. With only the occurrence of a miracle being able to destroy it. More than any theme of time travel or robots, the great thing about the films is how our heroes manage to deal with their foes. But apart from that what do we love?

It’s the stuff like when Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to his motel room and tears out his eyeball. Or when he marches into a police station and ruthlessly kills every cop in the building. It’s the bits like when Robert Patrick disguises himself as the floor and kills a man who he stabs through the eye with his finger. Or the moment where Arnie tears off his skin to prove to Myles Dyson that terminators exist. These graphic images are more important to the films than you might think, giving us a perfect way to see how inhuman and strange these machines are.

You can’t put this stuff in a 12A film. The producers have wanted to target younger audiences as well. But you just can’t do that because it removes the violence that brought excitement and suspense to the films.

So after all these things have gone through my head I sit down in the cinema not really knowing what to expect. And the first thing that really strikes me (other than the lack of original theme tune as in all reboots) is the cinematography. John Connor fights against huge machines that look more like Megatron than a T-800. And I’ve already said that one of the best things about the classics is how personal it is. You’re never really going to get Megatron to follow Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton through a factory are you? This alone made one side of my mouth droop a tiny bit. So then as the film goes on you start seeing resistance fighter jets chasing round HKs through mountainous regions. Giant robots, combined with fighter jets chasing futuristic looking aircraft doesn’t really make me think of Terminator. It makes it seem like a cross between Transformers and Independence Day.

You also have to wonder that after a nuclear war that must have finished about 10 years or so before this film. How the FUCK does the resistance who are a tiny band of humans (who are fighting against machines that probably took out any military complexes before anything else) managed to get hold of fighter jets in the first place?

The next thing that bothers me is that when the new character is introduced into the film Marcus Wright a terminator with a human heart and brain (Sam Worthington) he walks straight up to a terminator with a bloody MACHINE GUN attached to its arm and shouts ‘hello’. And when the young Kyle Reece (Anton Yelchin) comes to his rescue, it’s not the boy that has managed to survive with only a small child as a companion that asks the obvious questions such as ‘are you a fucking retard for walking up to that?’ or ‘how could you possibly have missed the nuclear holocaust that destroyed most of the world’s cities and population?’ it’s the clueless Marcus Wright that manages to get Kyle to tell him everything about the last 15 years without question.

Then we move onto our main character, the military leader John Connor (Christian Bale). You’d expect that the writers of the script would have at least dedicated some time to developing the character that has obviously changed since most of the world’s population has been destroyed. But no, Connor’s character is left paper-thin with no insight into why he would make certain decisions other than some of the very few references to the earlier films. I find it hard to imagine that Hollywood writers could possibly think that you can leave out characterisation just because there have been previous films. Did no one ask them the obvious question ‘what if someone hasn’t seen T2 or T3?’

Connor also seems to have a girlfriend, who I can only assume is Catherine Brewster from T3, whose only role seems to be to get Christian Bale to say ‘I’ll be back’ for a few smiles in the audience.

Even though I do find it implausible that Kyle Reece would not ask questions about him, I am of the opinion that Marcus Wright was actually an extremely good character. Even though when it is revealed that he is actually a terminator it had been blindingly obvious. He does provide the driving force of the story line and the main theme of what makes someone human. Then they kill him off… in possibly the most ridiculous ending ever. Watching the film I really got the feeling that someone imagined a machine like this, and the rest of the movie was built around this idea.

One of the best scenes from the first Terminator films is where, the adult Reece falls asleep under a bridge and dreams about his life in the future. What is shown is starving families trying to get warm by burning old TV sets and feeding themselves with dead rats. In this film we never see this side of the future, all we see is explosions, idiotic characters and rubbish terminators. At no point is there any scene where we are able to empathise with how difficult life must be in the future and how much suffering actually goes on in this time.

There are also a couple of unintentionally hilarious moments. Particularly when Reece and Wright arrive in a petrol station filled with a small group of resistance fighters and are then ambushed by a 50 ft tall robot that makes a gigantic buzzing noise when it moves and causes near earthquakes when it takes a step. Or when the unstoppable terminator rides a bike and is taken down by a bit of nylon wire. And who could forget when John Connor breaks into the prison and leaves the door open and an Ethernet cable is left hanging from the control panel that a terminator walks straight passed the open doors (easily able to shoot Connor in the back) and decides that the leader of the resistance is not really worth his time and walks away.

I do have to commend the effects of the final scene, where a functioning T-800 finally appears. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face is blended in perfectly to create the image of a new terminator, the endo-skeleton is perfectly depicted and really gives the sense that it truly is an unstoppable machine that puts the human race in extreme peril.

But while I do notice that the Y-800 was amazing and for me boosted the film immensely the actual Sky net facility it covered with control panels that are obviously there so that anything with two arms and five digits on both hands can operate the release of a prison cell. Doesn’t that seem a little pointless when Sky net is a computer programme that is hooked into everything it makes and is therefore able to open the cells remotely?

Well every villain needs a ‘foil the plan’ button I suppose.

But above all what the filmmakers do seem to have totally ignored is that the Terminator films are characterised by Arnold Scharzenegger and Linda Hamilton. Those two are responsible for providing the whole point of the franchise with the themes of non-fatalism, the dangers of machines, along with the problems with the destructive nature of humanity. As soon as Linda Hamilton rejected her part in T3 the franchise was finished. And now Arnie has become the Governator, there seems little hope of getting him back.

All in all I have to say that even though there were things to like about the film, it was not good enough as a sequel to the classics. If Mcg had wanted to make this film he should have created his own franchise where he was free to create his own universe rather than clawing at James Cameron’s genius.




Rating 3 out of 5

I liked: Good effects, Marcus Wright making a very interesting idea and character, t-800 portrayed perfectly.

I disliked: Inappropriate cinematography, predominantly undeveloped characters, large plot holes, shot as a day time film when the others were reliant upon the night for their atmospheres.