So last night I watched Terminator: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation (you know it’s deep because they purposely left out the colon … from the title, I mean. I don’t know if they bothered putting colons in the robots. It didn’t come up).
I predict that if you sat through the first two Terminators and enjoyed them, you’ll enjoy these enough. T4 and T3 were pretty much equal in terms of quality. If however you thought the first two were some sort of achievement in cinema and feel vaguely about them the way some people feel about Star Wars, then you’ll likely be gravely disappointed. As with the original Star Wars, I believe there’s a bit of nostalgia-tinged critical inflation for the first two. They were good, yes, but they’re much better in our memories than they were in reality.
And I didn’t find T3 or T4 anywhere near as awful as Lucas’ attempt to revive Star Wars.
Spoiler alert a couple grafs below.
What the critics have said about T4 is mostly true: humorless, dark, noisy and silly. Of course, all of these movies were silly. Giant robots from the future! Further, Christian Bale and McG need to quit taking themselves so damn seriously. They both did a passable job, but Bale should lose some of his auteur points after all these press interviews in which he admits he forced them to rewrite the movie to make the role of John Connor bigger. And McG? Well, McG should perhaps shouldn’t set his sights in higher than Fastest and Furiosest or some such.
All of that said, I enjoyed both movies fine. I like seeing how these things unfold–even if they are silly. And I appreciated all of the little reverse Terminator touches in T4. For example: We sent a robot from the past! That robot may be more human than the humans! John Connor ain’t anything like the leader of the resistance.
Anyway. I didn’t hate it. And that’s all I gotta say about that.
KEN WHEATON 