Arnold Schwarzenegger, you should have come back. And Christian Bale, you should have stuck to being The Dark Knight.
Either scenario might have salvaged Terminator Salvation from being a tired reshoot instead of the thrilling sci-fi adventure it could have been.
Bale stars as John Connor, who is destined to be the leader of the resistance against Skynet, the computer program that went nuts, took over the world and got machines killing humans. The year is 2018, and Connor is not that leader yet, just a cog in the resistance movement.
Soon, he comes face to face with Marcus (played by Sam Worthington), a mysterious man who turns out to be more machine than human (or is he?). Also in the mix is Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). Fans of the Terminator series know that Reese was once played by Michael Biehn in the 1984 classic who goes back in time to save Connor's mother, Sarah, from Arnold and then ends up getting her pregnant before getting himself killed. Her child? John Connor.
You get all that because this time travel business can get a bit confusing. Eventually, Connor and Marcus will have to work together to save Reese because if Reese dies, Connor won't exist.
This could have been all heady cool stuff but director McG paints the whole movie in a dull gray that is supposed to represent how apocalyptic everything is.
Bale plays Connor with an unceasing intensity. What marked the first two Terminator movies was a quirky sense of humor underneath all the world-is-ending foreboding.
Not here. Things are just dark. Which makes the movie a long, lumbering, angst-filled experience for the audience, with sparks of well-filmed action thrown in.
Star Trek, on the other hand, is everything a sci-fi movie should be. It is a true reboot, finding something in the classic television series that's fresh. We see old characters in new light, mostly because they're played by younger actors. But also because we see them at the beginning of their lives: Spock as a young man struggling between his human and Vulcan sides, Kirk as a James Dean kind of rebel looking for purpose in his life.
J.J. Abrams directs the movie with a verve, ably bringing new insights to old material. And all the while, he makes a damn good action movie, one filled with thrills and characters you care about.
Abrams succeeds where McG fails. He builds characters. He shows relationships. He makes their struggles relatable. McG gives us a Connor who keeps us at a distance, who we are never allowed to see inside. So in the end, we don't root for him. We don't care about him at all.
Only through Marcus do we get a glimpse of a compelling character, a man/machine who causes all around him to question who is really human.
Emotion rules the day in Star Trek, spilling all over the place just as easily as the blood that's spilled. But in Terminator Salvation, only blood is spilled, and the emotions are kept firmly in check.
And we are so much the less for it.
