TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009, Blu-ray released December 1, 2009 – MSRP $35.99)
This ain’t your parents’ Terminator! I’m not even sure it’s your Terminator. This fourth film in the franchise, Terminator Salvation comes to us from a new production team, new director and new actors playing all new characters. It’s a game changer, that’s for sure. But is this new direction a change for the better?
That’s right, the Terminator Salvation Blu-ray disc finally turned up at my door yesterday. I thought I should get a hustle on the review, seeing as how Warner Home Video has been running an ad campaign pimping this disc on the site for the last couple of weeks. So, as soon as I got home from the office last night, I popped it in and gave it a watch. And I can’t say I was disappointed. Terminator Salvation lived up to most of my expectations of it. Which, I might add, were quite low. It’s a pretty straight forward action romp, with a bunch of time paradox stuff mixed in to keep tight with franchise canon and completely confound new viewers.
The story follows an all new character, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) from 2003 into the future. There he finds a world ravaged by nuclear devastation, inhabited by killer machines and small pockets of human resistance, fighting to stay alive. John Connor (Christian Bale), as we learn in every Terminator film, is destined to become the leader of the resistance and every move the machines make is crafted to bring about his downfall. What ultimately feels slightly off about the film then, is that the story feels like it belongs to Worthington’s character, not Bale’s. I gather, from the copious amount of information provided within the special features, that this was an issue the film makers were well aware of. Apparently there were a lot of re-writes to put some of that focus back onto John Connor. A wise move, considering he’s a central character in every single film of the franchise. Part of the thrill we fans had been anticipating, is finally getting to see Connor as an adult, in action against against the machines post-Judgement Day. And we do get to see him kicking robot-ass here. Sadly, most of his story and character feel underdeveloped (What’s his relationship to Bryce Dallas Howard‘s character? Or to his commanding officers? Why does the average soldier in the resistance feel compelled to follow him into battle?) and we come to learn later that he and Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the man who will become his father, are merely window dressing to illustrate the Marcus Wright narrative.
Terminator Salvation ultimately feels like a missed opportunity. There’s some great action here and a lot of great new ideas. But they feel cobbled together. A mish-mash of narrative elements that don’t always cohere and ultimately fail to deliver on an emotional level.
Whatever reservations I may have regarding the story, the Blu-ray disc is beyond reproach. Warner Home Video has delivered another fantastic transfer with Terminator Salvation, with solid skin tones and deep blacks. A thin layer grain is present, giving even the most CGI scenes a more analogue fim-like appearance. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless audio track is crazy good! One of the best I’ve heard recently. It’s incredibly dynamic (keep your finger on the volume button if your naighbours are sensitive to the sound of house-rattling explosions!), enveloping the viewer in a perfectly accurate soundstage. You’ll believe you’re in an apocalyptic wasteland when this soundtrack is done with you!
Terminator Salvation appears to offer a great deal of special feature content on the 3-disc set but I actually found it a bit lighter than I’d hoped. That’s not to say there’s nothing to see here. On the contrary, there’s some great stuff, including Warner’s wonderful Maximum Movie Mode, which allows us the pleasure of experiencing the film with pop-up text information, PIP making-of video and the occasional, extremely candid and informative breakout moments of director McG walking us through a scene (watch a preview of the Maximum Movie Mode here.) You can choose to watch a handful of “Focus Point” featurettes during the MMM or watch them afterward. There’s a 20-minute “making-of” doc as well as a brief look at the Ducati motorcycles used in the film (which we spotlighted a couple of weeks ago in our Motorcycle sweepstakes post!) A second Blu-ray disc provides the Director’s Cut of the film alongside BD-Live connectivity. This longer cut adds 3-minutes of deleted boobs and blood that bump the rating from a PG-13 to an R. Disc 3 is a Digital Copy of the theatrical cut. Hm, I guess that’s rather a lot of extra stuff, isn’t it? I don’t know what else I’d want, to be honest.
Agreed. Terminator Salvation is devoid of any atmosphere and feels like a poor attempt to draw out what could have been summarised in just one film, into a trilogy.
You go into the film expecting the main focus to be between Bale and his father. Instead Sam’s unwarranted character dominates proceedings. Totally unnecessary.
Nice looking disc but the future does look far too clean, even when nuclear war has arrived.