Movie Review – Terminator Salvation (2009)
Terminator Salvation (2009) McG* / Brancato, Ferris
Release: May 21, 2009
Scoring: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 (4,081 votes)
Well…I promise no spoilers…but where do I begin?
First of all, what do we know about the future (er, past):
In 1997, Cyberdyne Systems invented a thinking machine and put it in control of our military forces under a project named “SkyNet”. On August 29, 1997, SkyNet became self-aware and it suddenly launched an unprovoked missile attack on Russia. Russia retaliated and the nuclear event comes to be known as “Judgment Day” to the few human survivors.
That begins the war between man and machine with struggling human forces waging a losing battle against the formidable machines of SkyNet. The machines employ robotic cybernetic units called “Terminators” to infiltrate the human compounds and assassinate the humans within their own hideouts.
At some point in the early to mid 2020’s, under the leadership of John Connor, the humans have all but defeated the machines. In an effort to cripple the human resistance before it can take root, SkyNet successfully sends a T-800 series Terminator, Cyberdyne Systems Model 101, backward through time to kill Sarah Connor, John Connor’s unsuspecting mother, before John Connor is even born.
The movie series picks up at that point with the original Terminator film from 1984. That movie was followed by Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003.
Now, slingshot us to the year 2018:
John Connor is a unit commander in the resistance forces but his most recent mission went horribly wrong. Not only did his entire force get wiped out in an ambush, but he learns that the machines are capturing human prisoners. And they’re going far out of their way to do it. Something doesn’t seem right, the machines appear to be hunting for someone.
Meanwhile, the resistance command intercepts a coded machine signal and learns of a “kill list” – the machines are on a mission to hunt down the people who are on the list and kill them on sight.
On the list, are the names of the entire resistance leadership council…which does a very good job of keeping hidden and mobile. But when John learns of the list, what bothers him most is not that his name is on it…but that he is #2 and a civilian named Kyle Reese is the machines’ most wanted. All that John knows about Kyle is that Kyle will one day go back in time to protect his mother from a Terminator assassin. And if Kyle doesn’t live long enough to go back in time, then he will never become John’s father.
That’s the general setup for Terminator Salvation. The producers, writers and director all do an excellent job of picking a point in the Terminator timeline to interject a new event and let us experience a little heart-stomping action and one or two thrill rides along the way. Sarah Connor never got the chance to learn the full history of the war so she certainly couldn’t warn John about everything that he needed to know even though John still has all the tapes that his mother left him (interestingly he still uses an old cassette recorder to play the original tapes his mother gave him even though they use modern day computers and thumb drives to transport vital information everywhere else – haha)
So John is on his own. He’s never met his father, Kyle Reese, but he knows that he’s out there somewhere. And he knows that he has to save him no matter what the cost.
That’s it, that’s all I’m gonna say about the plot…I’m not even touching the obvious twist that you already know about from watching the trailers…I don’t have to. This movie doesn’t even need that story arc to be a success. That’s just icing on the cake!
If you’re a Terminator fan, then this movie is a MUST SEE! If you’re not a seasoned Terminator fan or if you have never seen a Terminator film, then go rent the first Terminator and then go see this movie.
It’s worth it!
*Special Note
McG directed the movie “We Are Marshall” and directed and produced one of my favorite all time TV series, “Chuck“!
