John Conner, considered by some to be the saviour of mankind, fights as solidier in the battle against Skynet, the computer network that at some point started to consider its human creators the enemy. A man from the past appears and leads Connor to meet the boy that will become his father, Kyle.
Every Summer has its surprises and its disappointments. If this Summer will be the same, then we are looking forward to some astonishingly great movies over the next months. So far, each blockbuster has been terrible in its own way, and this week culminated in the horrible double feature of Tranformers 2 and Terminator 4. At least you have to give to McG, the director of this latest spin-off, that he occassionally is interested in the direction, and the first major action sequence, involving a truck, a couple of cyborgish motorcycles, a bridge and a very tall robot with no head, has its moments of kinetic mayhem. (I was wondering: the gas station where the sequence starts, is that intended to be the one where the original Terminator movie ended?).
Apart from this, the film is arduously boring and tries to surprise with plot or character twists that are too obvious from minute one (literally) to be of any use. The women stand or fly around pointlessly, clearly that director does not know what to do with somebody long-haired other than have her hit somebody in the face. The desctruction of the resistance headquarter… just happens. The fact human test lab underground is never used to its gruelling effect, but just to shoot around in it a bit. I need to repeat my stance on Bale: he is not a good actor, or – quite possibly – an actor with very poor choice of roles (not economically speaking), who always plays as if he were as stiff as his neck is in the Batman movies. His address to the resistance: poorly written, and falling flat on the face when he delivers it (does anybody remember Harrison Ford’s famous remarks during the Star Wars shoot: “nobody can say that shit!” – remember the wisdom of the elders!).
As it happens, the whole script also is annoyingly intermediate as it clearly seeks to provide a transition to the forthcoming sequels. I don’t mind them, if they are a bit more post-apolcalyptic, a bit more “The Road” and “Mad Max” and a bit less “Transformers”. But it’s not really necessary, and with the team currently working on those films, I do see a danger of making a mess of the time-lines, over-stretching the credibility of the time-travel construct. There are already some indicators in the movie that seem to proof that the script doctors are losing it.
When, I am trying to remember, was the last truly original blockbuster?
thomas4cinema 