TS: Reviews de Medios

Sobre la saga acerca de la guerra contra los exterminadores del futuro

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 11:53

EDIT: El review llevaba de titulo originalmente TERMINATOR SALVATION -- Matt can't find the humanity in this war against the machines :risamalvada:
TERMINATOR SALVATION Movie Review
by Matt Goldberg

While “Terminator Salvation” may want to come down on the side of humanity, it’s as soulless as its robotic antagonists and puts all of energies into its thrilling set pieces and puts as little attention as possible towards its characters. While director McG has shown himself as skilled director when it comes to designing his action sequences, he still has a lot to learn about what makes a film compelling and his film remains ambivalent in trying to forge its own direction while still remaining faithful to James Cameron’s first two films in the series.

The film opens in 2003 where death row inmate Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) signs his body away to a dying scientist (Helena Bonham Carter) and her research for Cyberdyne Industries. Oddly, even without WB’s over-zealous marketing attempts (which gave away just about everything there was to give), the film spoils what would have been a remarkable reveal: that Marcus Wright comes back in 2018 as a Terminator, or, a hybrid but definitely not 100%-human. It would take time to set up Marcus’ motivations and keep his secret secret (not skipping him like a stone across a river during a set piece would help). There’s no time for that in “Terminator Salvation”.

Once in 2018 we meet up with John Connor (Christian Bale) who is not the leader of the resistance but definitely one of its higher-ups as he sends out radio messages to the masses from his secret bunker (which oddly can’t be picked up by the machines but they can zero in on rock music in about five seconds) but we’re told (via prologue titles) that some see him as humanity’s salvation while others view him as a false prophet. We never get to see that division. We also never get to see if Connor, a man who’s been at war before he was even born, has doubts, frustrations, passions, or anything outside of being a soldier. He hugs his wife Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard) from time to time. The film needed to make John Connor into a fully-realized character rather than further typecast Bale as “grim, unsmiling gentleman who occasionally screams at someone so you know he has a pulse.” But there’s no time for that in “Terminator Salvation”.

There’s no time for any character moments and it’s up to the actors to work with what they have to the best of their ability. Only Worthington and Anton Yelchin, who plays a young Kyle Reese (the role played by Michael Biehn in the first film), leave any kind of lasting impact. The supporting cast of Howard, Moon Bloodgood (whose character has some kind of romantic affection towards Marcus because he’s hot and she’s hot and that’s good enough), and Common aren’t poor actors. The film just doesn’t have any time for them.

What “Terminator Salvation” has more than enough time for is ACTION. Big explosions, intense chase scenes, shoot-outs, traps, drag-out fights, helicopter crashes, and it all works. As spectacle, “Terminator Salvation” is a success but without characters to cheer for, it’s a hollow success. McG wisely keeps cuts to a minimum and lets you feel the intensity of the action but there’s nothing substantial holding it all in place. There’s a vague outline of a story where Marcus and Reese are trying to find John Connor and Connor is trying to find Reese (Connor knowing that Reese is his father but not vice-versa). Of course, there’s the question in the back of your mind that if this timeline is playing out, then Reese must be safe by virtue of Connor and this timeline’s very existence. “Terminator Salvation” doesn’t get bogged down in headache-inducing time travel nonsense. They can save that for another film.

But it is a film caught in the past. McG and Stan Winston Studios have done a great job at reverse engineering the T-800 (the Schwarzenegger model exoskeleton) and applying the look to a whole range of Terminators that came before. The only one that doesn’t really work is the weird Eel-terminator that has an insect-look more from “The Matrix” movies than from “Terminator”. The film also includes Linda Hamilton reprising her role as Sarah Connor via voice recordings to John. [Skip the to the final paragraph if you don't know about a major spoiler involving the T-800 or my complaints about the ending]

And then comes Arnie and it’s a cameo that’s not bad but wholly unnecessary. Near the end of the film, the T-800 makes itself known and wouldn’t you know it, it’s got young Arnold Schwarzenegger skin. The effect didn’t look as bad as I expected but the camera makes sure to try to keep the actor’s digital face in darkness and away from close-ups. But there’s one point where Arnold is bearing down on John Connor and this should be a moment where conflict spreads across Connor’s face. This is a machine he developed a close relationship with in “T2″ as it serves as a surrogate father. Even “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” was smart enough to use that idea. But here, Bale and McG give us nothing. It’s just the boss battle. One more action scene in the pile.

Finally, there’s the ending and it’s not the original ending. The original ending is in two parts. The first part is fantastic: John Connor dies. They then take Connor’s skin or something and put it on Marcus. Now, with the exception of a few people, humanity thinks that John Connor lives but the savior of humanity is actually a Terminator which is the strongest callback to “T2″ I can imagine. It also would add dramatic heft to a sequel as Marcus wrestles with fulfilling a legacy that was never meant for him. The second part of the abandoned ending is completely stupid. After Terminator-Marcus-with-Connor-Skin wakes up, he grabs a gun and kills everyone in the room because he’s a Terminator, I guess. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because one of the people he kills is Kyle Reese and that would negate the entire timeline. It’s shocking and dark for the sake of being shocking and dark.

But fans, half-correctly and half-incorrectly, rebelled against this ending. I think fans should have championed Terminator-John-Connor and rebelled against him killing everyone for no reason. Instead, the ending is just Marcus giving John a heart transplant and then John goes to fight Skynet somewhere else. Whoopie. It’s a bland act of redemption for Marcus and one should leave audiences feeling indifferent about a sequel.

I want to believe (and it’s been hinted) that all the character stuff which will make “Terminator Salvation” an altogether richer experience is sitting on the cutting room floor. That everything that would make us care about this movie is waiting in the “Deleted Scenes” section of the DVD. But those scenes aren’t in the movie I saw and the movie I saw would make Skynet and its army of Terminators proud. It is cold, efficient, visually-memorable, and completely heartless.

Rating —– C
http://www.collider.com/2009/05/20/term ... ie-review/
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 11:56

Now it's Quint's turn to give his thoughts on TERMINATOR SALVATION!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Going into TERMINATOR: SALVATION Monday night I was optimistic. I didn’t like a lot of the things I was hearing as they were filming… The idea of a giant Transformers-like terminator made me laugh. In fact, we got a report in from someone working on the film describing this “building tall” walking robot that snatches people up and I thought it was fan-made bullshit.

But I liked the casting, I liked the look of the film as we started seeing pictures and then, eventually, clips at Comic-Con and BNAT. By itself, the Harvester sequence with the aforementioned “building tall” robot is actually quite good and add on to that the iconography of the Hunter/Killer ships I was starting to get jazzed.

And listen. I hate Terminator 3. Hate it. It seemed to take the things James Cameron (smartly) cut out of Terminator 2 and expand upon them. I’m talking about the goofy shit, teaching Arnie to smile, etc. Talk to the hand, the ridiculous-ass glasses… sight gags. They went too far, had a lame villain, but decent action and an ending that promised the movie everybody has been waiting to see since 1984.

McG, I knew, could handle action. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the action scenes in the CHARLIE’S ANGELS movies are easy to follow and well executed. He doesn’t tend to over-cut his action or get in so close you can’t tell what’s going on.

So, my exact words to Harry pre-screening was that I’m sure I’d like this movie more than I did TERMINATOR 3. And I did. Kind of.

The flick didn’t offend me, but it’s the kind of movie that lets the air out of the room in the first 2 minutes. Remember that feeling of the energy just dropping at the midnight screening of THE PHANTOM MENACE? The room is packed, the movie starts, trailers run, the 20th Century Fox logo and fanfare, opening scroll… and then the movie starts and something happens. It just feels off.

The opening credits of TERMINATOR: SALVATION felt that way to me. It was like a high school band trying to cover Led Zeppelin. You could see what they were trying to do, but the tempo was wrong and it felt like an imitation of the good shit you remember.

A lot of the blame for that rests on Danny Elfman’s shoulders. I don’t know what has happened to him in the last few years, but this is possibly his worst score. If he didn’t want to use Brad Fiedel’s Terminator themes and cues, that’s fine. But if you only source those familiar beats twice in a movie (one is the opening credits and the second time is at the end when the big cameo happens) you have to fill the rest of the movie with more than just noise, which is all Elfman does here.

But it’s not just Elfman setting the wrong tone at the beginning. They try to do a similar title scene to the first movie, following super-close up edges to the words that ultimately form the title. It just feels off.

But that’s the opening titles. Who cares about that? What matters is the film. Our first footage is in a death row cell in 2003 as Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright is being propositioned by Cancera Bonham Carter (you know she has Cancer because she’s wearing a floppy cancer hat that doesn’t quite conceal her bald head). She wants his body. For science.

He’s a bad man and he lets her (and us) know that, signs the piece of paper with the Cyberdyne letterhead and then dies by lethal injection.

Now we’re in the future as there’s a raid on a SkyNet target, a series of above ground satellite dishes in the desert.

That first scene with Worthington and Carter has zero spark or charisma, but what’s even worse is the raid on the enemy target is just as lifeless. There’s a lack of drama to almost everything in this movie. It’s a film of moments that just happen without any lead-up or real conclusion. Shit just seems to happen, there are no peaks and valleys, no beats to the action or plot that feel thought out.

Connor’s introduction is that way. We see a bunch of choppers land in the desert and then one shot follows his chopper in as it carefully settles on a half-broken terminator. A pair of boots hit the ground and two bullets go into the terminator’s head, pan up and it’s Christian Bale as John Connor. You’ve seen the shot in the trailer and it works in the trailer because we’re not sitting there in the middle of the other action and just lazily watching a helicopter float to its mark.

In short, it’s intended as a moment, but it feels forced and a couple takes away from being what I’m sure they were wanting it to be.

When talking with friends after the screening I kept saying that Terminator: Salvation almost isn’t a movie. It feels like someone completed a real, well-shot movie and then they put the whole thing into a schizophrenic editing computer that haphazardly lifted moments or full scenes, leaving us with a movie that gets the point across, but is constantly jarring.

I can’t say anybody in the movie was horrible. Worthington is the main character (wrong choice) and he’s got enough natural charisma to breeze through the movie. He’s also the only character that apparently has any real arc. Both Kyle Reese and John Connor are in the exact same place at the end of the movie that they are at the beginning, as personalities.

So, mistake number one from the screenwriters. Why is Marcus the main character? They clearly couldn’t decide if they were going to follow Connor or Marcus and as a result Marcus gets a few cursory character building scenes and Connor stands around squinting like he’s trying to see the 3-D image pop out of the Magic Eye poster on the wall and just can’t get it to work.

The talk about Connor being this messiah, leader of the human uprising is all well and good, but if they wanted to go that angle then we honestly shouldn’t have seen him. He should have been the voice on the radio that inspires others. If they did it that way, then Kyle Reese could have been the main character.

Which would have been great because out of everybody in the movie Anton Yelchin knocks it out of the park. I never in a million years would have thought that his performance would be my favorite in this film, but the kid takes enough of Michael Biehn’s mannerisms (a lot of talking through his teeth) to make Kyle feel like the one we know without mimicking Biehn’s performance.

But instead Kyle is a plot device instead of a character and we have our lead split between two people, just enough so neither actually gets to be a character.

The rest of the cast, outside of Moon Bloodgood’s Blair, are just there to give us enough dialogue to get us to the next plot point. The biggest waste is Michael Ironside as the militaristic leader of the resistance and boy does he hate that John Connor! He grumbles about him a couple of times in the submarine that houses the resistance’s top minds so you know he seriously doesn't like that dude.

The effects are fine. You can tell money was spent and some fine artists stepped up and delivered. It’s easy to turn the mind off and enjoy the Harvester sequence, but that feels like an island in the movie, one of the only times when it feels like they cared about pacing and how things might cut together.

The much talked about Arnold cameo is pretty neat, but feels tacked on. There was a kid at our screening that shouted out, “Oh, it’s the guy from the other movies…” when CG Arnold steps into frame. Completely innocently, mind you. He wasn’t making a joke. And when he did that I felt like he vocalized exactly what McG and the studio execs had going through their minds when they came up with this. They heard that reaction going on in every audience member’s inner monologue and started salivating.

As a moment, yeah, it makes complete sense that Arnold’s there and I have no problem at all with the cameo. I just wish they had more time to develop it and actually made it part of the finale instead of “Oh, my God! It’s Schwarzenegger! Look, another shot of him, that looks… oh, his face is blown off now…” I realize they didn’t have the time to do that (and probably not the money that would cost to pull off), but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels tacked on as it stands.

Ultimately this film feels like it was two or three drafts away from being ready to shoot. Everything is so surface and on the nose and the narrative doesn’t seem to have a real driving force. It’s like they set up a ton of options, but couldn’t decide what to do. They could follow Kyle Reese through the wastelands with this lost man, Marcus, who is trying to find redemption, building on that dynamic (which admittedly has one or two decent scenes, like the much ballyhooed shotgun strap scene) or follow John Connor as he struggles against those in charge of the rebellion, growing from foot soldier to leader through his knowledge of the war and ability to inspire those around him. If they had decided to go one way or the other this would have been a much stronger movie. But they don't, they wanted to go for both options. It doesn't work. Trying to cram all that into one movie only makes the whole thing a mess.

Terminator Salvation is not trainwreck bad, but it’s lifeless and mediocre, which is almost worse.

-Quint
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41153
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 11:58

Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins

Spoilers follow

After the fun-yet-disappointing Terminator 3, I had extremely high hopes for Warner Bros. Pictures’ new trilogy that kicks off this May with Terminator Salvation. Being a rabid fan that grew up on the franchise created by James Cameron, the idea of McG getting behind the camera for this sequel was slightly nauseating, and yet, by some miracle, the fourth film in the franchise is (barely) passable.

The film takes place after Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in the apparently unavoidable nuclear holocaust, as a group of survivors, led by John Connor (Christian Bale), struggle to keep the machines from finishing the job (by killing a young Kyle Reese).

The most impressive aspect of Salvation is that it wasn’t anything I thought it would be. From the trailers and footage I was led to believe McG was going to deliver some Michael Bay non-stop action version of Terminator, only the uncredited (on IMDB) rewrites by Jonathan Nolan have brought a much-needed heavy dose of character development to the table (even though it still wasn't enough). While there is solid story structure and (some) quality character development, there are odd holes stringing through the entire feature. For some reason, Salvation takes zero time to delve into the past of Kyle Reese or really illustrate Connor’s hinted-at romantic relationship. It also fails to reference time travel at all (I guess it wasn’t developed yet?) and skims over what exactly Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is and more importantly when the machines decided to make him what he is. The screenplay gives the machines more logic and humanity than I was willing to believe; it was my observation that they were cold, calculating and omnipotent – almost God-like. Furthermore, my brain almost exploded as I tried to understand why the machines were after Kyle Reese. John Connor was an important figure in the war; hence their need to destroy him, but Reese is just a nomad running through the ashes of Los Angeles with his little friend. If time travel wasn’t invented yet, how would the machines even know what Reese was destined to do? They couldn’t. I can only hope that the next two films in the new trilogy address these glaring plot holes and missteps and bring it all together in the end.

Still, the fact that so much time and energy was put into the story as opposed to the action was refreshing. But don’t get me wrong - there is plenty of action that takes to the sky, the highway and even to the water as we are introduced to an array of new robots from bikes and planes to underwater robo-snakes.

And yet, even with all of these “new” robots, one inherent issue is that while this is a sequel, technically the robots themselves are younger than any that have ever graced the big screen before. So while the definition of a sequel should read “bigger and better”, Salvation doesn’t have a choice but to go backwards and be “lesser than.” Only at the end of the film to we get to see the T-800 in action, and while it’s overwhelming to John Connor, we’ve been there, done that.

Speaking of the T-800, super fans get ready to geek out as the big battle at the end features John Connor doing hand-to-hand combat with the first of the Arnie-T-800-bots. For the idiots who bitch about the CG face smacked onto the body of another actor, think about this logically as this would be the Terminator featured in the 1984 movie (making Arnold Schwarzenegger 25 years younger).

While some of the situations were underdeveloped (like the fact that Connor knows Reese is his dad, but Reese has no clue; this could - and should - have been an increasingly uncomfortable situation), the new Terminator film is just passable, maybe even a little lackluster. I think the best way to look at Salvation is as a plot builder for the first two films. Maybe when it’s all said and done it can be watched in the same order as the Star Wars films (starting at 4 and ending at 3 - maybe even including the TV series?). The only majorly disappointing aspect of McG’s effort is that it really, really, reallllly feels like a one time see and I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it until at least the next one hits theaters.
Score: 5 / 10
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review/1699
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 12:00

Nota: el titulo hace referencia al otro review de Bloody Disgusting.com
B-D Reviews: Two Opposing Looks at 'Terminator Salvation'
By: David Harley

I’ve heard words like “joyless” and “depressing” being tossed around since Terminator Salvation began screening not too long ago. I wish I could say it was joyless – it’s about an apocalyptic wasteland overrun by robots hell-bent on destroying humans – but describing the film as such would be a compliment. It would indicate that McG actually accomplished his goal of creating a world that James Cameron’s highly-praised sci-fi opuses only gave us a glimpse of. As it stands, depressing is an accurate statement, if only because it’s off-putting that someone would hire the writers of Terminator 3 (and Catwoman) to reboot the same franchise they killed and fail even more miserably by putting McG at the helm, but lifeless and contemptibly stupid is more fitting.

This isn’t a film with dog pee jokes and dancing robots that has embarrassing, dumb moments; this is worse. The people behind Terminator Salvation think that after seeing a POV shot from a Terminator unit, indicating where it needs to strike a character in order to eliminate him, and a cold, comatose corpse lying on the floor, the audience couldn’t possibly know said character is dead so they need another POV shot with the word “Terminated” blinking on-screen to get the idea. It’s not that we haven’t seen that or a variation of it before, but rather that it’s presented here not to inspire awe with its use of technology but to reinforce a nuance that a toddler could’ve picked up on.

Since Salvation could be considered a prequel or sequel, it has the daunting task of getting the attention of newcomers and giving veterans of the series something to sink their teeth into bestowed upon it. The problem is that it does neither. It’s too “been there, done that, already know what’s going to happen” for those who have seen the previous films and too slow moving and unengaging for, well, anyone to appreciate. With something like Salvation, or even Benjamin Button, where the story itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy, the goal is to make everything in between a worthwhile viewing experience. I don’t want to completely spoil the film for everybody, but let’s face it: you know who’s going to live, who’s potentially disposable and what will eventually happen whether it does so in this film or the inevitable sequel(s). Why not spice it up a little with some tension or danger that makes you question characters’ fates?

The story, originally written to revolve around Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a man-turned-machine who has no clue he isn’t entirely human anymore, feels restrained due to the casting of Christian Bale which caused John Connor’s role to be beefed up. The idea of Marcus’ inner-conflict between his machine and humanistic qualities is far more interesting than anything actually in the film. While the audience is clued in on his modified state of being, the character doesn’t find out until halfway through the film and at no point is it believable that he would betray the resistance. His allegiance is put to the test once, maybe twice, but by that point, one could practically recite the remaining half-hour of the film line-by-line. It doesn’t help that there could have been more room for self-discovery if a failed subplot involving Moon Bloodgood as a cyborg sympathizer hadn’t come into play. The future world that Salvation paints for its audience apparently involves beautiful women, who are a little too liberal with their affections, falling right out of the sky (and into power lines where they have to be cut down). Marcus saves her hide on two separate occasions, but neither really justifies throwing her life away for something that could cause harm to the resistance.

With the first of the half of the film being Marcus heavy, Salvation focuses on Bale, for the most part, during the second half. Some people criticize Bale for only being good when he’s placed in extreme roles, which is wrong considering he was great in The Prestige, but his take on Connor will baffle those who have that opinion of him. Like me, he looked really bored during the whole film and while he has little moments here and there, it’s only once he makes a leap of faith that we see the great military leader in him come out, which is more than halfway through the two hour runtime. He’s supposed to be the savior of the resistance and we’re reminded of that over and over again – with Salvation being in the title, an emphasis of “Christ” in Christian Bale’s name during the opening credits, characters getting shot through the hand and enough religious rhetoric to qualify this as a sequel to Passion of the Christ – but rarely in a way that wouldn’t make someone roll their eyes.

The action is surprisingly bland considering the amount of firepower featured throughout. The film is completely devoid of any style, unless you count the cinematic endeavors that influenced it. Long gone is the blue tint of Cameron’s future; instead, we’re given a Mad Max-esque desert landscape (which I think is great), decrepit buildings from Children of Men, a Skynet that resembles Blade Runner’s city landscape – complete with fire-spewing pipes – and a compound interior that has the metallic white sheen of I, Robot. A colleague pointed me in the direction of some McG interviews earlier this week and he seems like he’s really into the franchise and it’s not just a paycheck for him. Going back to Charlie’s Angels, which at least has some personality to it (even if it’s really campy), the action sequences are the worst part of the film (bad choreography, strange choices of shots, etc.) so I really have no idea why he was even considered for this. But for whatever the reason, Salvation joins the long list of films that prove just because a director enjoys the material, it doesn’t mean he’s the right person for the job.

On top of all this, there’s still the question of why the robots here are more advanced. Underwater robo-snakes? Giant robots that deploy motorcycle Terminators? With the exception of the T-1000, they seem more extreme than anything we’ve seen in this universe before. And for a film whose money-shots should consist almost entirely of great robot sequences, the appearance of the machines pales in comparison to Stan Winston’s work on Cameron’s films. The CGI is just plain shoddy.

With a great cast and a big budget, one would think they could get a better creative team behind Terminator Salvation but, once again, Warner Bros. completely drops the ball on what was once a great franchise. But, in all fairness, you know what you’re getting yourself into when you sit through an opening sequence where someone kisses a woman with cancer and then says “So that’s what death tastes like.”

1.5/5 Skulls
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/16260
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 12:04

Terminator Salvation Review

Rating: 3 out of 5

Short version: Terminator Salvation is great for the don’t-expect-much-except-action-out-of-a-summer-movie crowd, not so great if you’re looking for a worthy successor to the first two films.

For the record, I am not a McG hater, nor am I holding Christian Bale’s set meltdown against him. I realize that McG will be forever haunted by the fact he directed Charlies Angels - but I had really high hopes for Terminator Salvation… I wanted it to be great.

Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Why did I think that this long awaited addition to the Terminator movie franchise had even a snowball’s chance of being awesome? Because I had the sense that McG wanted to prove he could do it. While many people think that his film We Are Marshall isn’t all that great, I really enjoyed it and it demonstrated to me that he could actually do a film with characters you could care about.

But sadly, that’s exactly what’s missing from Terminator Salvation.

The film opens in 2003 with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) in a prison cell on death row, hours before his execution. He’s visited by a scientist who has cancer (Helena Bonham Carter) and wants him to donate his body to science. She seems desperate to get him to sign, and he’s not very cordial to her despite her situation and his.

The first problems in the film surface right at the start - why is she so desperate for him in particular to donate his body? Don’t scores of people have organ donation cards in their wallets? And then there’s his mysterious background - he’s responsible for the death of his brother and two police officers… neither of these is ever explained in the film (nor in the prequel novel for that matter, which I did read).

From there the film jumps to some serious actiony goodness in 2018. I won’t give anything away other than to say we get to see Christian Bale as John Connor almost immediately and he’s involved on a mission that does not end up going very well. At all. Very satisfying first look at the future including some fantastic action and cool visuals/camera angles.

The upshot is that the resistance (not led at this point by Connor) has found a way to defeat Skynet. Connor volunteers to test it on a small scale before the big move against Skynet central. However that plot line becomes secondary to the story of Marcus Wright and his involvement with a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin). For the non-fans out there, Reese is the man who was sent back in time to save Sarah Connor and is the father of John Connor. At the point this film takes place that hasn’t happened yet (does your head hurt yet?).

Marcus doesn’t seem to have aged at all although 15 years have passed, and there is a mystery surrounding him. He runs into Kyle and the young girl he’s taken under his protection and very grudgingly goes along with them since he doesn’t really know what’s going on - and Reese did keep him from being killed by a T-600 (that’s the bigger and bulkier predecessor to the T-800, aka the Schwarzenegger Terminator).

The film eventually brings together Wright and Connor via resistance pilot Blair (Moon Bloodgood). There’s an issue of trust and conflict between the two that becomes the major issue in the film.
So what was good?

The action scenes are impressive - I especially liked the fact that (as far as I could tell) a fair amount of physical models and props were used in the film. Of course there was certainly a good amount of CGI, but overall I found it well done - not like the apparently under-rendered effects in Wolverine. I also loved the look of the film… washed out tones and a true sense of a world in which the joy has been removed.

And what about the variety of Terminators? Personally I liked them. It made sense to me to have a variety of different robots for different tasks… and actually in view of that, the Terminator model that made the LEAST sense in the film was the T-600. It was too big to be mistaken for a person, had rubber skin, and most of the ones we saw didn’t even have much of that. I suppose you could say that Skynet was “practicing” until it got it right with the T-800… In any case they WERE intimidating and it was great to see them functioning in their own element, out in the open.

I thought Sam Worthington was one of the best things in the film, but even with him there were problems (which I’ll get to shortly). There was one other thing that was great but I don’t want to give away anything else.

What wasn’t so good?

This movie just didn’t have any soul. Beyond Worthington’s character, I didn’t connect with, or really give a damn about anyone in this movie - especially John Connor. I have no doubt that Christian Bale is a good actor, but he seems to be stuck in permanent Batman-mode. Even when he’s supposed to be showing emotion he seems cold and distant, and that Batman rasp in his voice seems to be lingering. I might even venture as far as to say that he was miscast in the role.

Think back to Terminator 2 where they did the brief flash-forward showing Connor on the battlefield in the future (that was Michael Edwards, if you’re wondering) - sure he looked tough and battle-scarred, but for the brief moment we saw him he seemed… thoughtful. Like kind of a brainy guy who had been thrust into the position and had lived with it for a while. Bale just comes across as a badass and he just didn’t work for me.

Then there’s Marcus Wright. He’s the character you’ll most likely actually end up caring about, but he’s also the character that feels shoehorned into the mythos and that doesn’t belong in the film at all. We never get a clear explanation of his background or the details surrounding how his mystery came to be in respect to the existing Cyberdyne/Skynet technology.

What about Anton Yelchin as Reese? He did a decent enough job and I was surprised at how I was able to buy him as a teenage Kyle. However here I think the problem lay in the script - there just wasn’t enough there for us to get to know him or connect with him. As a matter of fact through the entire film it seems like all we get are brief sentences of dialog from most everyone. There was also Bryce Dallas Howard as Kate Connor, John’s wife… she served as no more than window dressing, and seemed to be in the film for no other reason than to demonstrate the continuity established in Terminator 3.

Oh, and she’s pregnant. It’s obvious visually but it’s not even really addressed or acknowledged in the film. Try a “how do we raise a child in a world like this” or something. If you’re not going to say something significant about it, why bother to have her pregnant at all?

If you know how I feel about Transformers, you’ll know that I’m not a fan of mashing together juvenile humor and serious action, but in the previous films they managed to fit in a bit of appropriate humor here and there. It’s missing from this film completely - just serious and depressing all the way through.

Rapper “Common” was barely in the film long enough to register any sort of note regarding his performance, but at least we got a little something out of Moon Bloodgood.

Finally, the film doesn’t really resolve anything by the end. Sure, I understand keeping things open for sequels (which frankly, I hope at the very least will have different writers), but at the end of the movie I was left thinking “so what was the point?”

So if you go in just looking for your typical summer blockbuster action flick you’ll probably enjoy it - but if you’re looking for a film that lives up to the first two, I think you’re going to be disappointed by Terminator Salvation.
http://screenrant.com/terminator-salvat ... -vic-9446/
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 12:05

Review: Terminator Salvation
by Erik Davis

Terminator Salvation roars to life on screen with enough gutsy firepower to literally shake you in your seat. She's a mean, loud metallic beast that hasn't eaten in years, and the only commands she understands come in the form of growls, snarls, bullets and explosions. You can't really ask for more from an action picture (well you can, but we'll get to that); with Terminator Salvation, director McG proves that he's more than a punchline for online jokes -- his action scenes are fierce and eye-popping; he gives us the post-apocalyptic Skynet world we've always wanted to see and then asks if we want seconds or thirds. This is the Terminator film for a generation that expects over-the-top; an audience who likes it rough, but still PG-13, so we don't get carded at the door.

And that's all well and good if you also don't need to care -- because while Terminator Salvation is a gnarly little actioner, this movie about robots lacks, well, life. There's a fantastic scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day when Sarah Connor runs right into her son John and the T-800 exiting an elevator in the mental institution, and her eyes pop as she drops to the floor; frightened to her core. She doesn't yet know that this T-800 is a good guy -- instead, all she sees is failure, death and desperation. And we feel that; we're so sold in that moment and our hearts do a freak-dance as the T-1000 closes in behind her. That scene is one of the single greatest of this franchise, and that panic, that momentum, that edge-of-your-seat, full-body experience is what's absent from Terminator Salvation.

She doesn't bleed when we kinda need her to.

Set in 2018, this Terminator sequel is about what happens after Skynet supercomputers became self-aware and launched a nuclear attack on the human race (otherwise known as Judgment Day). With most of the world destroyed, small pockets of survivors have formed the resistance; a make-shift army with one sole purpose: destroy Skynet and save the world. John Connor (Christian Bale), featured prominently in the previous two Terminator films as his younger self (played by Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl, respectively) is who's supposed to lead the eventual war against the robots, but right now he's a foot soldier who's not yet in command and like one or two guys away from really taking charge of this sucker.

When we drop in on Connor, he's shooting at robots, looking after his pregnant wife-doctor Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard; Claire Danes in part three), flying around on helicopters and trying to help develop a weapon that will block the robots' signal, thus making them inoperable. At the same time, he's also beginning to search for Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), his father. Kyle's just a teenager now, but will eventually grow up and be sent back in time by John to save and boing John's mom. The outcome of that is the first Terminator film. While all this is going on, a dude named Marcus (Sam Worthington) wakes up feeling fine and dandy after being executed by lethal injection for murder in the opening scenes. With his last memories being of the 1993-ish variety, Marcus roams around dodging robots on a mission to find the cancer-stricken women (Helena Bonham Carter) who asked him to sign his body over to science before the lethal needles were injected.

As we jump back and forth between Marcus' story, John's story and Kyle's story, the machines are becoming tougher, smarter and more dangerous. There's lots of them, too, like the giant Harvester whose job it is to snatch up human beings and do very R-rated things to them. There's also the nasty, snake-like Hydrobots who patrol the waters, and the real snazzy Motobots who shoot out from the Harvester and race after anyone (or thing) that sneaks away. The film's greatest moments involve these three robots, with one scene -- featuring Connor in water with Hydrobots closing in -- rising slightly above the rest. One thing Terminator Salvation gets right are its robots, designed by Stan Winston (before he passed) and his team. The T600 models look fierce, but clunky (as they should), and the brand new (for its time) T800 is a ridiculous giant -- frightening and overpowering. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cameo is seamless, timely and a little bizarre -- it definitely works, but by that point we really don't care much about this version of John Connor.

We don't care because he never gives us a reason to. His wife Kate's giant pregnant belly is barely mentioned (if at all), and the two spend maybe four minutes together the entire film. He listens to his mother's voice (Linda Hamilton, in a small cameo) on a tape recorder with little reaction, as if they're instructional do-it-yourself recordings bought on sale at Sears. This version of John Connor is rough, loud and angry; a perpetual road-rager. Honestly, he's a little bit of a dick. And that would be fine if he was likable, but he's not -- with the exception being: "Hey, look, it's the guy who plays Batman!"

As much as we love Christian Bale right now, his performance in this film is dry, boring and lifeless. Yelchin, on the other hand, is a treat to watch as a young little-engine-that-could. His Kyle Reese is engaging, and it's sad we don't see more of him. Worthington stoner-plays his role; lost within a spin-cycle of random glances and frozen stares -- while Moon Bloodgood looks and acts like the kind of a chick with the name Moon Bloodgood; hot, sexy, edgy and dangerous. Lots of characters, similar personalities. We get it: life is rough ; the robots suck. But when your film's themes are tied to discovering the 'human' in 'humanity', then we need to feel that, not just hear it.

With Terminator Salvation, McG set out to make a film that was as good (if not better) than the previous models; a new direction for the franchise and what he hoped would be a definite improvement. Problems arose, however, when the film began to take on a life of its own; with internet leaks and pressure from the studio, lead actor and fanboy elite. The outcome is a product that lacks a cohesive structure and suffers from too-many-hands-in-the-cookie-jar syndrome. She made it to Oz with courage, but forgot to ask the wizard for brains and a new heart (um ... never mind). Here's hoping that with the next film (and I'd certainly watch a sequel), McG manages to go back in time and fix the problems with this one.
http://www.cinematical.com/2009/05/20/r ... salvation/
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 12:07

Terminator: Salvation (2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Kasch

Starring Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Helena Bonham Carter, Anton Yelchin

Directed by McG

Terminator: Damnation might have been a more suitable title for the latest in this franchise, which has somehow gone from action movie benchmark to soulless corporate bitch in the last few years. While Terminator, T2 and even the now-defunct "Sarah Connor Chronicles" were propelled by ideas and characters, Salvation feels like a generic summer movie cooked up for FX reels and marketing departments. A film about the future war was enough to excite every Terminator fan, but why did it have to come from McG, a director whose own name epitomizes the corporate mediocrity of this once-great series?

Christian Bale plays John Connor – prophetic leader of the human Resistance - who gets his own action sequence in the beginning before quickly being regulated to a minor player for most of the film. We’ve spent several movies and a television show hearing how important this character is and he’s literally relegated to a background character while the rest of the movie follows around new guy Marcus (Sam Worthington), a death row convict who donated his body to science only to wake up in the future ruled by machines. Marcus hooks up with Kyle Reese (Connor’s future time-traveling pop) and a mute kid, and most of the film is spent following them through endless action sequences as they try to make it to the Resistance.

Terminator: SalvationBale is one of this generation’s best actors, but his performance as Connor is the most one-note of his career. He has absolutely nothing to do other than scream bad one-liners at the top of his lungs (no wonder he blew up on set) while Worthington and the rest of the cast try hard to look macho for the camera. You can’t blame the cast, though, since they’re coming from a workmanlike director and an absolutely terrible screenplay (that was written and re-written on the fly by over a dozen names). Despite a few nods and inventive cameos, you’ll have to keep reminding yourself that you’re actually watching a Terminator film.

Not only does this future look nothing like the previous films, there are several new Terminators that look and act as if they stumbled out of a Saturday morning Robo-Tech cartoon. We get giant harvester machines that are nothing more than Transformers clones as well as some ridiculous motorcycle machines (dubbed Moto-Terminators) that ride around and don’t do much of anything. There was a time when we really feared these iconic antagonists ... now they just feel designed to sell Happy Meal toys.

And since when did Terminators stop terminating? True to its PG-13 rating, Salvation feels neutered and marketed for teens, ditching the dark survivalist feel of Cameron’s future for a more family-friendly apocalypse. This time the machines rarely kill anyone and seem more concerned with capturing humans, putting them in cages, and shuffling them through long lines in endless warehouses. When their master plan involves kidnapping Kyle Reese to lure out John Connor, instead of simply killing him to prevent all that time travel stuff from happening, you can’t help but wonder why the machines were smart enough to become self-aware.

The only things McG gets right are the action sequences, which is probably what landed him the gig. If you watched this franchise to get a kick out of stunts and vehicular mayhem and never cared once about things like plot and characters, then you’ll probably find plenty to love about Salvation. Virtually the entire movie is a string of action set-pieces with plenty of impressive razzle dazzle, but since none of it carries any weight and there are no stakes to anything, it’s hard to care about what is unfolding.

Overall, watching Terminator Salvation is like watching Brett Ratner take over the X-Men franchise. No matter how much it tries to respect the source material, we’re left with a flashy plotless imitation with familiar characters reduced to ... well, robots.

2 1/2 out of 5
http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/ter ... ation-2009
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 12:08

Capone misses the humanity but liked the robots in TERMINATOR SALVATION!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

This fourth installment in the end-of-the-world franchise is not really science fiction at all. Nope, this is director McG's big, loud, gritty, steely-gray war epic. Gone is the philosophy and metaphors about time travel, the dangers of letting machines and computers take over our lives, the loss of innocence, motherhood. With this new film, the other thing that has officially vanished from the Terminator universe is heart--ironic since the human heart is a major plot point in TERMINATOR SALVATION. What we're left with is a collection of hardened bad-asses battling some of the meanest fucking robots I've ever seen. In any other movie, this might bother me less bother. But one of the things I always loved about Cameron's first two films, and even the subpar third movie and the "Sarah Connor Chronicles" TV show (which I contend got progressively better as it went on), is that not everybody in each story was supposed to be a grizzled soldier. Sarah Connor was an unremarkable woman when we met her all those years ago; she became remarkable to protect her son, who in turn grew into a little shit who had to learn to fight from a friendly Terminator sent back to protect him.

Since TERMINATOR SALVATION opens several years after Judgment Day (when the machines preemptively strike against humans with nuclear attacks around the world), there are no "ordinary" people left in the world, so perhaps my search for normal folk is foolish. And that's a valid counter my feelings about what's missing from this new film. Then just don't call it this movie TERMINATOR; call it POST-APOCALYPTIC WAR, PART 79. This "everyman" quality always separated the TERMINATOR films from all of the other end-of-the-world movies. Instead, we get a war picture complete with big elaborate battle sequences, concentration camps, submarines, helicopters, bullets zipping by, flares lighting up the night sky, you name it. There's even a GREAT ESCAPE-style great escape.

When we meet Christian Bale's John Connor, he's already in CAPS LOCK!!! mode. Every line is belted out like an order or an injured animal (by the way, I thought the cinematography looked really nice here). Gone is the sassy, good-natured teen and young man; make way for super-soldier John. We also meet Marcus Wright (Australian newcomer Sam Worthington), a one-time death row prisoner who was executed until someone wakes him up a couple decades later having no idea the turn for the worse the world has made. He's determined to make his way to San Francisco, where he wants to find someone who he lost touch with. He stumbles upon Kyle Reese (the man who will be sent back in time by John Connor to have sex with his mother to father him; got it?), played as a young man by Anton Yelchin (the new STAR TREK’s Chekov). Kyle decides to follow this mysterious stranger because the alternative is to not follow him. That's about the level of logic that permeates this movie, sorry folks.

The biggest problem for me is that the film's big "mystery" is hardly a mystery--it's revealed in the trailer that the human rebellion has an infiltrator in their midst, and it doesn't take a PhD to figure out who it is even if you haven't seen the trailer. I'm not even 100 percent it qualifies as a secret at this point, but for that infinitesimal number of you who don't know, I won't spoil it here.

I grew increasingly frustrated with the truly abysmal state of the screenplay for TERMINATOR SALVATION. It's disjointed, aimless, front-loaded with clichéd dialogue and scenarios, and sadly lacking in any emotion outside of rage. Again, I get that, in a way: the collective human population is suffering from global post-traumatic stress disorder and anything other than hardened, solider-like personalities might be asking too much. But that doesn't make for compelling screen acting. Speaking of which, as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on Sam Worthington as a force on film. I'll reserve my judgment until I see what he pulls off in James Cameron's AVATAR, but his performance here seems to consist of a combination of wide-eyed bafflement or narrow-eyed anger. Grrrrrr. And I tend to hate people that focus on whether or not an actor can hold onto an accent, but I can't wait to play the drinking game where you take a sip every time Worthington's Australian accent slips out. I'm going to be one drunk motherfucker when this movie comes out on DVD.

I don't think any of the supporting cast of TERMINATOR SALVATION stands out in my mind. From Helena Bonham Carter playing the worst kind of Dr. Exposition near the end of the film to the blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances by Jane Alexander, Common, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Michael Ironside, who probably fares better than most in making the most of his limited screen time, although the motivation for his character's impatient behavior makes no damn sense. I've only ever seen the striking Moon Bloodgood in a couple of films, most of them terrible (STREET FIGHTER; PATHFINDER), but her Blair character comes the closest to displaying the characteristics of a warm-blooded human being in these proceedings. She's compassionate and seems to understand Worthington's unique set of complications better than anyone.

Maybe I am spending too much time on the negatives, and the fact is, there are some pretty cool elements to TERMINATOR SALVATION, but most of them are limited to the action scenes and special effects. I mentioned earlier that the movie is director McG's war film, and I stick by that. But it's a hell of a war film. There's a sequence near the beginning where John Connor and a small squadron are going after a robot stronghold. The mission turns into a rescue effort when they find a small number of humans at the location being held captive. Part of the sequence involves Connor exiting the hole in the ground where the stronghold is, getting into a helicopter to chase an enemy ship, getting shot down, crash landing, and getting out of the wreckage to continue fighting…all in one take (or so it seems). I've got no idea how they pulled the sequence off, but it's damned impressive. Most of the action sequences are top notch, from an attack at a gas station where we see the full range of Terminator variations (I really like the ones that look like motorcycles) to the climactic battle set at a Terminator production facility. Since so much of the film revolves around some powerful, well-staged action set pieces, if that's all you care about, you should have a pretty great time watching this movie. I was certainly a lot happier when the bullets were flying and people were getting snatched up by giant Terminator robots that looked and acted way too much like Transformers for my taste. I got a particular kick out of the older-model Terminator that looked sort of like pirate zombies.

The fact that this installment of TERMINATOR was PG-13 didn't even phase me. The violence allowed in PG-13 films these days is almost equal to what Cameron was getting away with in the first two R-rated works. If you're going to hate this movie before you even see it, don't do so because of the rating. TERMINATOR SALVATION will undoubtedly be the most divisive film in the franchise. Hell, it's the most divisive film of all the summer releases so far in my brain, and will probably continue to be so for quite some time. I suspect that when I revisit this film, I'll either see it for the action-oriented masterpiece that is might be, or I'll be so frustrated with the lack of character development and solid storytelling that I'll abandon it forever. This is half a recommendation, as you can probably tell, and whether you enjoy the film will have everything to do with your expectations of what TERMINATOR films are to you. Mine were clearly different that McG's, but that doesn't mean he's made an unwatchable film by any stretch. If you're okay with a focus on the hardware, that's cool. I remember when these movies were about people and machines finding a middle ground amidst a whole lot of bloodshed. There's some of that in TERMINATOR SALVATION, but it gets sadly lost early on, as did I.

-- Capone
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41147
GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Avatar de Usuario
Kanon
Blast Processing
Mensajes: 11137
Registrado: 21 Dic 2007, 10:51
Ubicación: Algo
Contactar:

Re: TS: Reviews de Medios

Mensaje por Kanon » 21 May 2009, 12:11

GamerTag XboxLive: KanonZombie
PSN Id: KanonZombie

Responder

¿Quién está conectado?

Usuarios navegando por este Foro: No hay usuarios registrados visitando el Foro y 7 invitados