The Movie
The first Terminator movie without the name "Schwarzenegger" in the credits, Terminator Salvation is also set entirely (save for the prologue) in the post-"Judgment Day" future, specifically 2018. Here the unscarred, still-learning hero of the human resistance John Connor (Christian Bale, snarling his lines Dark Knight-style) is fighting the good fight against various robot minions of the self-aware Skynet defense grid, essentially a supercomputer determined to eradicate mankind from the face of the Earth. Skynet is off to a hell of a start, leaving the remnants of humanity starving and drastically outgunned.
The good news is that a recent scientific discovery might hold the key to defeating the evil machines once and for all, and after a couple of promising tests, the humans plan to launch a decisive simultaneous offensive on Skynet's strongholds. This massive coordinated attack might have to wait however, as John finds out that his own father is in harm's way. The situation is extra-tricky since his dad is currently a teenager, they've never met, and he hasn't yet traveled back in time to impregnate his mother in the year 1984. (Much of the audience's grasp of complicated Terminator history is obviously presumed by Salvation director McG, and we've seen the two James Cameron movies as well as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.)
But much of the problem with Terminator Salvation as a movie in its own right is a lack of involvement. The characters are a little too mysterious, or outright vague, with protagonist Connor given surprisingly little screen time. In lieu of the bigger-than-life Arnold-bot, we're given--POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT, although it was widely discussed this past summer--a new hybrid-Terminator of sorts in the largely-human and extremely conflicted Marcus Wright, brilliantly portrayed without a hint of whininess by newcomer Sam Worthington. Marcus' convincing imitation of a fully flesh-and-blood person paves the way for the successful Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 infiltration unit, immortalized by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator, but too many of the finer points of this sequel/prequel story evoke reactions like "boy, that was lucky!" or even "well, that just doesn't make sense." It's big, booming entertainment while it's on, but promptly forgotten.
In an unusual move, Warner has included a Director's Cut--with more of the new guy, including a bit more violence and a scene of nudity that helps bump it up to an R rating--in addition to the Theatrical Version, but on separate discs. Seamless branching between the two cuts was probably impossible due to the complexities of the Maximum Movie Mode, more on that in the Extras section.
Also check out Joe Lozito's review of Terminator Salvation.
The Picture
This is a big-budget, pedigreed sci-fi actioner with a strong visual stylist at the helm, and overall the video quality is outstanding. The 2.4:1 transfer is mostly flaw-free, revealing only slight noise in the shadows and modest compression aritifacts in clouds of dust and smoke. Colors are painstakingly desaturated to convey the bleakness of our possible future. Disappointingly, the elaborate digital effects often look like effects, including a bluish matte line around a character's head, mismatched to the lighting of his background. (This was a shot from the theatrical version, not any sort of rushed addition to the Director's Cut: I checked.) But as high-def masters go, this one is faithful to the original film.
The Sound
If you'll pardon the obvious pun, this is definitely a "heavy metal" movie, crammed with oodles of action backed by plenty of bass. For reasons not pertaining to the movie at hand, I actually needed to turn down my subwoofer before watching, and still the low-end kept coming! The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track also boasts wonderfully active discrete surrounds, with good general effects like rainfall too, although not quite as pumped-up as some discs I've heard lately. Still, you might want to secure any fragile bric-a-brac before you press Play.
The Extras
Disc One, the Director's Cut, is BD-Live enabled. That's the only special feature there.
Disc Two, the theatrical version, is the "money" disc, for its "Maximum Movie Mode." Launched with Warner's Watchmen Blu-ray, this sophisticated implementation of Bonus View technology furthers the concept of director-as-star, enabling McG himself to step onto our TV screen and give us a personal tour of his creation with a greater connection to the audience than an audio commentary alone could provide. The movie shrinks to a special window but plays continuously as he waxes, excepting the McG-dictated pauses for the sake of deeper analysis, which add only a few minutes to the total running time. Relatively simple picture-in-picture pop-ups sometimes give us the extra option to branch off to well-produced video segments, two-to-three minutes each, eleven in all, and we can break away to self-guided still frame studies, too. A Terminator Salvation-specific timeline intermittently appears as well.
Additionally, a pair of longer featurettes tags along: "Reforging the Future" (19 minutes) mostly discusses the look of the film, be it the special effects, costumes, makeup, etc. "The Moto-Terminator" (eight-and-a-half minutes) focuses on the Ducati-inspired autonomous motorcycles which figure prominently in two sequences in the film. Everything here is in high-definition.
Disc Three is a DVD-ROM containing a Digital Copy of the theatrical version of the film for Windows Media and iTunes.
Final Thoughts
The name Terminator used to be synonymous with Arnold, but he's moved on and perhaps so should Hollywood. Salvation is anything but for the once-venerable franchise, large-scale and high-octane but left searching for a soul, like some misguided cyborg, or maybe just in dire need of a point.
Product Details
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