There's no fate but what we make for ourselves

As a child most of my viewing pleasure was prescribed to me by my father. Through him I learned to love such classics as: Legend, Blade Runner, Total Recall and anything by Monty Python. One of the shining stars in my father’s repertoire of films was Terminator. Since the first Terminator came out before I was born I only watched it a select amount of times, it was Terminator 2: Judgement Day that captivated me. I watched it over and over hoping that in my adulthood I would grow to be as bad ass as Sarah Conner with a friend like Arnie/ The T-800. Arnold was actually my first experience with rejection. I wrote him a love letter addressed to a fan mail address I got out of the back of an old Teen Beat magazine. It was returned to sender. My heart throbbed with the agony of my rejection but I picked up the pieces of my wounded ego and popped in the tape for another round of T2.

So I was completely elated when I saw the preview for Terminator Salvation last summer. Every time I heard that classic soundtrack I would thump my fists with excitement. When I finally sat in the theatre awaiting the film I was brimming with anticipation and nervousness. I was worried it would fall into the realm of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines which totally failed to get my blood pumping. But I was not disappointed! This movie possessed all of the cool of Terminator 2 with none of the cheese!

At the beginning I was feeling like “Yeah whatever Christian Bale, I get it, you’re talented” as I was introduced to the adult John Connor, I felt like I needed some fresh meat. This movie was a sausage fest! First we meet sexy Aussie newcomer Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright, the first hybrid of man and machine. He is a taciturn man, quietly smouldering up the screen. Sexiness aside he is a major badass and a splendid protagonist, awesome action scenes ensue. Anton Yelchin is Kyle Reese from the original Terminator film. I loved seeing him play this gritty character after his role as Chekov in Star Trek, it was such a surprise. I wish he had more screen time because he is one of my favourite young actors and I’m pretty sure he’s on the fast track to fabulous. YES, Arnie does make an appearance in this film and NO it isn’t really him but who cares?! He was always just a chunk of man meat anyways.

Once again this film makes sawed off shotguns look both awesome and bad ass. Marcus does end up in some Terminatoresque duds and the whole end of the movie evokes the ending of T2. Danny Elfman honoured the original soundtrack particularly the scary music that accompanies oncoming Terminator related danger. There were several nods to the classic lines of the original films but they lacked the overdramatic flair and therefore did not make me cringe There are lots of amazing action scenes involving explosions and car/plan/massive machine chases. They did not abuse the cg in this film which was a relief because there were no scenes where I was like “This looks like total bullshit”. At one point Marcus hacks into the Skynet information center and when he shuts down from information overload I could swear I heard a Mac start up sound. I did have some issues with the dates in the film but they could easily be argued around because they were deceptively vague about the past (all I’m saying is Judgement Day was in 1997 and everything looks fine in 2003 in this film).

The whole movie I was pondering if I liked it better than T2 but I realized I don’t have to decide because that was then and this is now, literally time wise in the films, so I’m going to think of them as two marvellous separate entities. This movie is definitely sitting at number 2 for best summer movie at this point, spooning Star Trek. I’m sure there are a lot of people who will take issue with this movie, those who will pick apart the scientific and technological probabilities of the events in the movie but I would ask them to remember Arnold’s naked egg time travel ship just to keep things in perspective.

At one point in the film Marcus saves his sexy lady friend Blair from getting raped by a bunch of post-apocalyptic rednecks and I began to think to myself, Hey! Maybe these guys aren’t so bad! Maybe we should build a whole army of them and they could just escort girls to high school dances, barn dances or trips to any of the assorted “night clubs” in Chilliwack. Seriously Skynet, where do I sign up?