Tom McGee's Blog

Is this trip really necessary?

The “Terminator” franchise is a great example of a sci-fi mythology, and mining its veins of self-reference and historical paradoxes has been a rewarding enterprise for most (though not all) of the movies, as well as the “Chronicles” TV series.

But generally, you want to move the ball ahead a little more than this one does. While introducing some cool new special effects (like the “Transformers”-size killer robots), this one just isn’t as thought-provoking (in a sci-fi-mythology-geek sort of way) as I’d like it to be.

Nevertheless, it’s well made. Christian Bale and Sam Worthington do good-to-great work as John Connor and his hybrid frenemy Marcus Wright. The film is great to look at, with a washed-out overly contrasty film stock that supports the theme well. The special effects are convincing, though the action sequences not so much.

There’s a relatively pointless subplot about a command post in a submarine commanded by Russians. I had no idea what they were supposed to be doing or why they were in charge, so (spoiler alert) it was just as well they were destroyed.

The story seems to be aimed at how Kyle Reese ended up going back, fleshing out one of the character’s lines from the first movie about how Connor showed them how to smash the machines, but that didn’t happen yet. The story about prisoners being used for research points to the more human-looking Terminator we see kicking off the first film, but there’s a “cameo” by a cartoon-looking Schwartzenegger already so it’s not like there’s a whole lot more to develop here in a sequel. They set it up, but also pay it off in a quiet way.

So only 2.5 stars, for making a decent enough movie that just plays us along.