Terminator Salvation

This franchise was on life support after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and I had high hopes for this film after seeing the bleak post-apocalyptic and Nine Inch Nails scored theatrical trailer. Sadly, I was disappointed. This franchise is now dead.

Let's imagine that, a year ago, McG (yes, that's the director's actual name) had approached me to fashion for him a moneymaking sequel to this franchise. If I was to think of ways to fuck up this franchise before this film was created, I would have suggested the following:

- We need to sell as many tickets as possible. This film is the fourth in a series of all R-Rated films, but we should still make it PG-13. This way, kids under 18 will be able to see it. Let's ignore the fact that they would have had to see three R-Rated films beforehand. This will also allow us to get rid of all the horrible things in the previous films like gratuitous violence and intense action sequences. I don't think anyone enjoyed those.

- There was too much focus on character development in the previous films. For example, in Terminator there were only 3 characters: Sarah Conner, Kyle Reese, and the Terminator. This allowed for way too much character development and puts too much demand on quality story telling. We need a solution to this. You know what's all the rage today? Large rag-tag groups of people from all different backgrounds. This is what made films like Resident Evil and Doom such a great success. We can have one Black guy, one butt-kicking girl, one devoted wife, hell... we'll think of some others. The point is that with all these people we won't have to focus on character development at all!

And thus this film would be written. Hopefully in twenty years Skynet can send a terminator back in time to kill me so this film will never be made (and I will never have to see it).

Everything that's wrong with this film is the fault of it being put in the hands of the MTV generation. The director's previous credits include such ADHD-fests as Charlies Angels (and the sequel) and numerous music videos. Because of his idiocy, this film is all over the place. One minute it's chugging along as a great post-apocalyptic action film (the first third is genuinely good). The next minute the film plays like a generic summer action movie, complete with "the rag-tag group of people from many backgrounds" and a music score perfect for the next Will Smith release. With such a large cast of characters, the story is all over the place and never really gets developed.

The film could have been redeemed by upping the action to ultra-violent levels, but alas... PG-13. That isn't to say that the action sequences were all bad. There were some enjoyable moments in between the banal conversation, including an awesome cameo at the end. But it came short, partially due to the rating restriction, partially due to the MTV director, and partially due to the complete lack of care I had for the undeveloped characters.