Terminator: Salvation (2009, USA/Germany/UK)

It’s been almost a week since I’ve seen Terminator: Salvation, because I just haven’t been able to summon the will to write about it. What is there to say? Why does this movie exist? Apart from the generally-accepted awesomeness of giant killer robots, there is pretty much nothing about T:S to recommend it. Even the dependable Christian Bale phones it in, probably coasting off of his Batman cred to the point that he didn’t realize there wasn’t a script for this movie. When the tone shifts abruptly mid-film from action to plot, there are absolutely no characters to align with – even the now-mythic figure of John Connor is only barely sketched out. We’ve never seen him as an adult before, post-Skynet, so why not make it interesting? Never mind – Salvation doesn’t want to push the envelope, relying instead on middling special effects (with the notable exception of the Schwarzenegger bit), cute nods to the former films (wow, we’ve come a long way since Use Your Illusion II), pretty faces blustering through bad dialog (why does Bryce Dallas Howard get the only shower in the apocalypse?), and stock figures standing in for actual characters (cute black kid and kindly old grandma, I’m looking at you). And don’t even get me started on Helena Bonham Carter. The worst part of T:S is that it leaves the door wide open for yet another Terminator film. After the rapidly diminishing returns of the third and fourth movies, here’s hoping they leave the franchise for the history books. Or the bargain DVD bin.