"Terminator Salvation" is a boys-and-their-toys-gone-wild, eardrum-shattering, metal-shredding vision of a post-Judgment Day world at war that up to now we've mostly glimpsed in Sarah Connor's fever dreams. (For anyone asking, "Sarah who?," we'll get back to that momentarily.)
This fourth edition of the franchise that forever shaped Arnold Schwarzenegger's film and political career ("I'll be back" and "Hasta la vista, baby" worked surprisingly well for both) comes at us with what can only be called McG-force. The director, whose reputation was first made in 2000 on the restyled bounce and jiggle of "Charlie's Angels," has found in "Salvation" a world that will almost, almost contain his unrestrained energy and rabid optimism, which makes for a movie mash-up of everything that manic imagination and money will buy.
Christian Bale stars as John Connor, now grown and finally living out his destiny to save the world from the blunt force of the killing machines that began in 1984 with Schwarzenegger's well-sculpted, sunglasses-loving, time-traveling, single-minded cyborg killer. The Terminator's failed mission to eliminate Sarah Connor, then just a lonely waitress with a no-count future, spawned not just son John and a successful franchise, but a mega-career for writer-director James Cameron.
Cameron discovered a million-dollar sweet spot between the virtually unstoppable mechanical killers he'd created and a very human story of survival. T-800, T-1000 or any other models that rolled off the assembly line were fearsome in their relentlessness, but also funny, and surprisingly adaptable because they "thought" in their lethal, but mutable way.
In McG's new world order, the machines now rule with enforcers of every shape imaginable roaming the land -- they fly, swim, search, chase, harvest, transport, jail, crush, and on and on, but there's not a strategic thinker or a standout personality among them. In the countless battle scenes, a sort of metallic madness takes hold, but the tension of the chess match between hunted and hunter has been lost (for this, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who also wrote "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," must share in the blame).
Though we've been waiting for John Connor, it is Marcus Wright who turns out to be the warrior the film needs and the salvation it seeks. Played by a scene-stealing -- make that movie-stealing -- Sam Worthington, Marcus carries within him the question, and possibly the answer, at the heart of the series: What is it that truly separates man from machine? So it is fitting that the story of "Salvation" begins and ends with him.
