In Jean-Luc Godard's 1996 film Forever Mozart a group of youngsters are queuing for the premiere of Bolero Fatale. Slowly it dawns on them that it may well be a pretentious black and white 'art' film. "I hope it's not poetry" one of them says. Eventually, convinced that this is no crowd-pleaser, and despite the desperation of the makers of the apparently hifalutin and elitist Bolero Fatale - "Come back! We'll change the movie" - they go off to watch Terminator 4 instead.
Well, this is the film they saw...
"This is not the future my mother told me about"
Terminator Salvation is not the future we saw in the first two Terminators. It is not the same ashen post-apocalyptic wasteland haunted by steel ghosts. Terminator Salvation, for many, was a disappointment. For quite a few it was something even more unacceptable: it didn't feel like a Terminator film. Nay, it wasn't a Terminator film.
I wonder what the reaction to the Terminator films would have been like if Terminator Salvation had come first. Would the criticisms of it not capturing the mood and style of its predecessors, not fitting their prescribed template, be reversed?
Terminator Salvation is clearly trying to make its own way but is there an audience fully willing or able to accept it on its own terms?
The older Terminator films were once removed from apocalypse. The plight of humanity was shrunken down to the horror of an individual predator and his quarry. Visions of nuclear holocaust (giggling children on swings) and short glimpses of war bore the burden of making the distant possible future seem urgent and now. Regardless of the thrill of the chase, until the bombs fell at the end of Rise of the Machines, the end of everything was a maybe. The end had a question mark. For better or worse, Terminator Salvation is a new sentence after a sobering full stop.
What's interesting about Terminator Salvation is that there is no more room for extras, for people on the edges who are blissfully unaware, who cannot understand why the music is so forbidding and why everything is a little bluer than it was before. Now everybody is busy with the work of survival and of saving or being saved.
At the centre of it all is John Connor. Before, he had to be convinced that he would be the saviour of mankind. Now he is the one who has to do the convincing. Many people have said how Connor (and perhaps, therefore, Christian Bale) lacks the charisma theoretically required to marshal a makeshift army. For me it is clear that his leadership is not based on a scar or a warm messianic gaze. Rather it is based on his determination, his experience and his inside knowledge - he interprets the word of his mother and puts into action. He is a comforting figure.
We feel the desperation of the bedraggled people he commands, the ones he tries to reach on the radio. This is the same desperation that looks for a man who is certain or appears certain. Some may say that there is little character development (why would somebody's character 'develop' so quickly anyway - surely we want character revelation) in Connor but there has been - in between films, in those dark years where steel is forged from fire.
All we need to know of him is one shot. We track backwards under his chin as he arrives back at base for the first time, head bowed in grief. Despite the men that flank the corridor, it is a private moment that shows the weight of the world that he carries without regret and without resentment.
The strong, determined John Connor is part persona. The opposite of Marcus, his human face is beneath the robotics. Connor makes so much more sense as a man struggling to remain sure and calm, who gruffly and frustratedly shouts his demands. He cannot be a serene hero. He has seen so much suffering and has endured such terrible responsibilities from a young age.
Is the film too humourless? Is it too downbeat? Too humourless and too downbeat for what? I ask: must a film silence harsh reality with a gag?
The little girl Star has been the centre of some discontent too. I believe she is misunderstood. She is a symbol of this harsh reality.
She is not a cute sidekick or the surrogate daughter of a delightfully alternative family unit. She is the product of this new world. She is the only one (that we know of) who was born after 'Judgement Day' and she knows no other life. She is a constant reminder of death and loss by the very fact that she is with Kyle Reese and not her parents. She cannot speak, struck dumb by fear. This is a fear that she is particularly attuned to. She is able to sense the machines as if they crawl upon her nerves. She is a character of deep sadness and she is integral to this surprisingly sombre film.
If one doesn't think clearly and seriously about why Connor is as he is or why Star is in the film at all then one will fall upon superficial judgements distorted by prejudice and cynicism. One can dismiss and mock out of hand as Forever Mozart may mean to. If we assume something to be stupid we will first go in search of the hallmarks of stupidity.
* * *
Though it does not amount to a rule, it tends to be that the longer a franchise continues the more it looks inward and not outward. The less it draws on a panoply of influences across genres and arts and the more it references itself. A film may become a patchwork quilt of its forebears. This is particularly perilous when the narrative itself is like the serpent swallowing its own tail - son saving his father so that he can still be born. Of course, Terminator Salvation is a film in the process of rewriting itself.
Even if it is not the intention the impression given is that the nostalgia of the original films must be kept alive at all costs, new babies born to provide organs for their older siblings.
I do not believe that the appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator helps the film. It is an intrusion, stuck on to heal the imagined weakness of Terminator Salvation being too divorced from its roots. This sequence is filmed as if transported from those films. That is to say it does not grow organically from this one.
On two occasions I felt that the film lacked confidence in its own vision.
The other was the way the bond was established between Marcus and Blair, the woman pilot. As night falls, a gang of men approach her and start to get physical. It is obvious that they mean to assault her or rape her. Marcus steps in to dispatch them. Thus they grow closer through a lazy cliched shorthand not powerful or fresh enough to even qualify as a sly homage to 1980s action film norms. Yes, it shows us Marcus' surprising strength and reflexes but there are many ways in which a Screenwriter or Director could have shown this.
To the Mother/Whore dichotomy many believe is still being perpetuated in areas of the cinematic world I propose an addendum: the Rapist/Hero dichotomy. This presupposes that male characters get the girl by aggressive and horrifyingly abusive means or by channelling said aggression on the woman's behalf. The kiss they share, through its timing, diminishes them both. It seems to say no less than: "You're not a rapist, you have earned my trust. Let's kiss". As 'strong' or emancipated a woman as Blair may be, the damsel is never far away...
Nevertheless, there is a lot to enjoy and admire in Terminator Salvation. The keystone chase scene is exhausting and exhilarating, precipitously, precariously dangerous. It's always coherent and streamlined. Every crunch of hardcore hardware, every precision laser fire, has a purpose. It is an awesome five minute spectacle.
The action sequences are very good. Connor's first meeting with a mutilated, dysfunctional Terminator is thrilling because the relentlessness shown by the legless machine is an unnerving parallel (as unnerving as the Terminator who mimics Kyle's voice - voices are important in TS: tapes, radio, mimicry) to humanity's own desperate battle to maintain its existence. We absolutely will not stop...
Terminator Salvation doesn't pose the question of the dehumanising nature of this war overtly. It doesn't make a point of man's potential descent towards unfeeling. The disinterring of such frankly crass themes would destabilise the film. Such thoughts may enrich our experience as an underground seam that an audience may tap into voluntarily - not a gushing mile-high geyser of sophomoric philosophical conundra (as in Ghost in the Shell, for example).
Is Marcus a microcosm of the struggle between man and machine? Yes and no. It is up to us. It is not a thought imposed by the film. This subtlety is evident once Marcus enters Skynet. When the voice of Skynet asks him "What could you be if not machine" he responds "A man". The inflection of his voice reveals that the response is more probing than an answer but not quite a question. He doesn't know. We don't know, and to an extent it doesn't matter because the thought-provoking subtleties and complexities are not in the opposition of black and white but in the unresolved greys.
Sam Worthington is a good enough actor to embody these nuances, straddling again two natures as he does in Avatar.
Another strong element of the film is Kyle Reese, played by Anton Yelchin, who has cheek and winning charisma. The idea of meeting one's own father or mother (see Back to the Future) when they were younger is always exciting. Reese is a father more than cool enough to like and more than strong enough to admire.
The same goes for Terminator Salvation, which is powerful and fun from start to finish. It is a good film and that is more than good enough.
I wonder what the reaction to the Terminator films would have been like if Terminator Salvation had come first. Would the criticisms of it not capturing the mood and style of its predecessors, not fitting their prescribed template, be reversed?
Terminator Salvation is clearly trying to make its own way but is there an audience fully willing or able to accept it on its own terms?
The older Terminator films were once removed from apocalypse. The plight of humanity was shrunken down to the horror of an individual predator and his quarry. Visions of nuclear holocaust (giggling children on swings) and short glimpses of war bore the burden of making the distant possible future seem urgent and now. Regardless of the thrill of the chase, until the bombs fell at the end of Rise of the Machines, the end of everything was a maybe. The end had a question mark. For better or worse, Terminator Salvation is a new sentence after a sobering full stop.
What's interesting about Terminator Salvation is that there is no more room for extras, for people on the edges who are blissfully unaware, who cannot understand why the music is so forbidding and why everything is a little bluer than it was before. Now everybody is busy with the work of survival and of saving or being saved.
At the centre of it all is John Connor. Before, he had to be convinced that he would be the saviour of mankind. Now he is the one who has to do the convincing. Many people have said how Connor (and perhaps, therefore, Christian Bale) lacks the charisma theoretically required to marshal a makeshift army. For me it is clear that his leadership is not based on a scar or a warm messianic gaze. Rather it is based on his determination, his experience and his inside knowledge - he interprets the word of his mother and puts into action. He is a comforting figure.
We feel the desperation of the bedraggled people he commands, the ones he tries to reach on the radio. This is the same desperation that looks for a man who is certain or appears certain. Some may say that there is little character development (why would somebody's character 'develop' so quickly anyway - surely we want character revelation) in Connor but there has been - in between films, in those dark years where steel is forged from fire.
All we need to know of him is one shot. We track backwards under his chin as he arrives back at base for the first time, head bowed in grief. Despite the men that flank the corridor, it is a private moment that shows the weight of the world that he carries without regret and without resentment.
The strong, determined John Connor is part persona. The opposite of Marcus, his human face is beneath the robotics. Connor makes so much more sense as a man struggling to remain sure and calm, who gruffly and frustratedly shouts his demands. He cannot be a serene hero. He has seen so much suffering and has endured such terrible responsibilities from a young age.
Is the film too humourless? Is it too downbeat? Too humourless and too downbeat for what? I ask: must a film silence harsh reality with a gag?
The little girl Star has been the centre of some discontent too. I believe she is misunderstood. She is a symbol of this harsh reality.
She is not a cute sidekick or the surrogate daughter of a delightfully alternative family unit. She is the product of this new world. She is the only one (that we know of) who was born after 'Judgement Day' and she knows no other life. She is a constant reminder of death and loss by the very fact that she is with Kyle Reese and not her parents. She cannot speak, struck dumb by fear. This is a fear that she is particularly attuned to. She is able to sense the machines as if they crawl upon her nerves. She is a character of deep sadness and she is integral to this surprisingly sombre film.
If one doesn't think clearly and seriously about why Connor is as he is or why Star is in the film at all then one will fall upon superficial judgements distorted by prejudice and cynicism. One can dismiss and mock out of hand as Forever Mozart may mean to. If we assume something to be stupid we will first go in search of the hallmarks of stupidity.
* * *
Though it does not amount to a rule, it tends to be that the longer a franchise continues the more it looks inward and not outward. The less it draws on a panoply of influences across genres and arts and the more it references itself. A film may become a patchwork quilt of its forebears. This is particularly perilous when the narrative itself is like the serpent swallowing its own tail - son saving his father so that he can still be born. Of course, Terminator Salvation is a film in the process of rewriting itself.
Even if it is not the intention the impression given is that the nostalgia of the original films must be kept alive at all costs, new babies born to provide organs for their older siblings.
I do not believe that the appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator helps the film. It is an intrusion, stuck on to heal the imagined weakness of Terminator Salvation being too divorced from its roots. This sequence is filmed as if transported from those films. That is to say it does not grow organically from this one.
On two occasions I felt that the film lacked confidence in its own vision.
The other was the way the bond was established between Marcus and Blair, the woman pilot. As night falls, a gang of men approach her and start to get physical. It is obvious that they mean to assault her or rape her. Marcus steps in to dispatch them. Thus they grow closer through a lazy cliched shorthand not powerful or fresh enough to even qualify as a sly homage to 1980s action film norms. Yes, it shows us Marcus' surprising strength and reflexes but there are many ways in which a Screenwriter or Director could have shown this.
To the Mother/Whore dichotomy many believe is still being perpetuated in areas of the cinematic world I propose an addendum: the Rapist/Hero dichotomy. This presupposes that male characters get the girl by aggressive and horrifyingly abusive means or by channelling said aggression on the woman's behalf. The kiss they share, through its timing, diminishes them both. It seems to say no less than: "You're not a rapist, you have earned my trust. Let's kiss". As 'strong' or emancipated a woman as Blair may be, the damsel is never far away...
Nevertheless, there is a lot to enjoy and admire in Terminator Salvation. The keystone chase scene is exhausting and exhilarating, precipitously, precariously dangerous. It's always coherent and streamlined. Every crunch of hardcore hardware, every precision laser fire, has a purpose. It is an awesome five minute spectacle.
The action sequences are very good. Connor's first meeting with a mutilated, dysfunctional Terminator is thrilling because the relentlessness shown by the legless machine is an unnerving parallel (as unnerving as the Terminator who mimics Kyle's voice - voices are important in TS: tapes, radio, mimicry) to humanity's own desperate battle to maintain its existence. We absolutely will not stop...
Terminator Salvation doesn't pose the question of the dehumanising nature of this war overtly. It doesn't make a point of man's potential descent towards unfeeling. The disinterring of such frankly crass themes would destabilise the film. Such thoughts may enrich our experience as an underground seam that an audience may tap into voluntarily - not a gushing mile-high geyser of sophomoric philosophical conundra (as in Ghost in the Shell, for example).
Is Marcus a microcosm of the struggle between man and machine? Yes and no. It is up to us. It is not a thought imposed by the film. This subtlety is evident once Marcus enters Skynet. When the voice of Skynet asks him "What could you be if not machine" he responds "A man". The inflection of his voice reveals that the response is more probing than an answer but not quite a question. He doesn't know. We don't know, and to an extent it doesn't matter because the thought-provoking subtleties and complexities are not in the opposition of black and white but in the unresolved greys.
Sam Worthington is a good enough actor to embody these nuances, straddling again two natures as he does in Avatar.
Another strong element of the film is Kyle Reese, played by Anton Yelchin, who has cheek and winning charisma. The idea of meeting one's own father or mother (see Back to the Future) when they were younger is always exciting. Reese is a father more than cool enough to like and more than strong enough to admire.
The same goes for Terminator Salvation, which is powerful and fun from start to finish. It is a good film and that is more than good enough.
Hey Stephen!
ReplyDeleteSome very good points there and kudos for trying to take on the film in a serious-minded manner!
That said, I find myself agreeing with your overarching points but not necessarily with the specific ones that you choose to drive your argument! However, such is life, though!
To begin with, I have always quite liked the Terminator series. They have been energetic, imaginative, and, above all, TENSE action films! Therefore, for me, watching the protagonists here do battle with a whole host of these machines kills off that critical tension enormously. The main characters simply have to survive all of these random encounters with "unstoppable" machines. No second, third, and fourth bites at the cherry for the individual machines so...
We are equally pretty damn sure that you can hurl John Connor hard into concrete walls and he will be okay. He will be okay... And if he is going to be okay, then why worry about him when he breaks into Skynet alone, etc. Or, to take a step back, why care any more about the Terminator series?
More to the point, the characters are now nothing but cardboard stereotypes. So, even if you do kill off John Connor, all that will happen is that another one-hundred-mile-stare human steps in to take his place. To kill the machines, men must lose their humanity and the remarkable essence that is our individuality gets sacrificed in the name of raw empty survival.
In other words, when you say that people are wrong to say that this film is too dark, I would go further and say that it is nowhere near dark enough yet! Humanity must be put truly at risk and we must have good reason to care that it has been!
In addition, you see the retrospective elements as a weakness. In fairness to the film, I thought that they were mostly included in a tongue-in-cheek way here, as the filmmakers use this work as a bridging one between the distinctive and undeniably similar first three and where they now want to go. Okay, I am being a touch optimistic about the quality of what may come next, but that will have to be a discussion for another film review!
Furthermore, I actually had no problem with the "Arnie" Terminator putting in an appearance here. He had to, simply because they had to address the creation of that version of the Terminator at some stage, so better to do it upfront and move on from it whenever T5, etc. gets made. In other words, chalk it down to tidy housekeeping.
Finally, key elements of this film were much too akin to the dire Matrix III for my liking! *Shudder* :-)
Longman,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments.
"Therefore, for me, watching the protagonists here do battle with a whole host of these machines kills off that critical tension enormously."
I understand how it might lose focus for you. I enjoyed the first Terminator films too. I was not making a point that this film is better but that it finally deals with the survival of humanity head-on and not from an angle of possible doom.
I was saying where Terminator Salvation's differences may bring something fresh and potentially resonant.
Terminator Salvation had enough tension for me, though I agree it isn't the same as in the older films - it's not attempting to be, mind.
"We are equally pretty damn sure that you can hurl John Connor hard into concrete walls and he will be okay. He will be okay"
Yes, fair enough. But can't we say that about any action hero/protagonist? Doesn't he effectively die in the end though? The fact that they choose to sacrifice themselves to keep him alive shows that he is more than a "hundred-mile stare human"
"To kill the machines, men must lose their humanity and the remarkable essence that is our individuality gets sacrificed in the name of raw empty survival."
I have never understood this argument, Longman. Why is survival "raw" and "empty" here? Why is protecting oneself and the people you care about with determination a loss of humanity. It is PART of humanity, perhaps the greatest part, to show this fierce, zealous and almost jealous desire to hang on to life and love.
"...I would go further and say that it is nowhere near dark enough yet!"
Maybe it will get darker. I see what you mean but if it gets darker still it becomes hard for the film to retain its action film excitement. If we're too depressed it may be difficult to 'get up' for the chases and the battles.
continued...
"I actually had no problem with the "Arnie" Terminator putting in an appearance here. He had to, simply because they had to address the creation of that version of the Terminator at some stage, so better to do it upfront and move on from it whenever T5, etc. gets made."
ReplyDeleteI agree that they couldn't ignore it (especially given the public clamour for us to see it) but it was made into such an overly dramatic moment. I think a bit of subtlety wouldn't have gone amiss. The composite Arnie didn't fully convince either.
I can't say it wasn't an exciting moment but I don't think it helped the mood and flow of the film as a whole.
One final point. I'm not saying this film is great or better than the others (I'd put it alongside them or a little behind) but rather that it has strengths and some of those strengths lie in its departure from those three that came before.
"Finally, key elements of this film were much too akin to the dire Matrix III for my liking! *Shudder* :-)"
Ah. Matrix Revolutions is one of my favourite action/sci-fi films. As you say, Longman, "such is life"!
As usual, I make a slight mess of my point. What I was trying to say was that if we are going to sacrifice tension (and I agree with your explanation as to why), then I think that it must be darker to compensate. There has to be something to give it an edge.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I always liked this line of Cypher's in the first Matrix film - "A little piece of advice. You see an Agent, you do what we do. Run. You run your ass off." It had that earthy sense of reality to it that too few action films are ever prepared to acknowledge.
Survival for me is a primal instinct. Love and willingness to sacrifice oneself, though, are human traits - I agree. However, overwrought Hollywood endings apart, did you really give a monkey's for this incarnation of John Connor?
In other words, the instinctive and powerful will to live is a well recognised and cinematically explored trait. More to the point, we can even take it at face value - it does not warrant deeper exploration. However, as sentient beings, why do we want to keep on living when hope has been all but extinguished - loved ones gone, subsistent existence, being hunted to extinction by a ruthless foe that has no comprehension of mercy or morality? Why does something not kick in to say that death may be a more preferable act at this stage?
This is also why I would like to have seen a preview of John Hillcoat's "The Road" that concentrated more on how the relationship between the Man and the Woman evolved as things gradually got worse! What made him choose one path when she chose the other?
Or, to get back to the film, what makes rational beings choose to live and tough it out against near impossible odds? Or is it really just primal instinct kicking in? That is what I felt was missing in this film. At least, in The Matrix, they had Zion - a shining beacon of hope for all those who fought the machines. What is the equivalent here?
Anyway, sorry if this has descended into rambling!
I must say, when I saw this movie in the theaters I didn't think too much of it. Intellectually, I admit that I liked how different it was willing to be-- the future of TS is a very different one than that which we saw in brief glimpses through Cameron's two films. Gone was the cold, neo-noir blue light of endless midnight, the streaking flashes of laser weapons, the ruinous landscapes reduced to little more than cavernous shells of buildings with mountains of human skulls nearby for SkyNet tanks to trample on.
ReplyDeleteInstead, it was a brighter, grittier, and to a certain extent far less welcoming vision of Judgement Day's aftermath. There was a strange kind of post-apocalyptic romanticism in the way Cameron photographed the man/machine war, with refugee humanity huddling around television sets which instead of the boob-tube only cast candlelight for entertainment (if only he'd put a fireplace log there in its stead, the modern-media/Christian allusion would be complete). There was a clean, binary kind of aesthetic unity in Cameron's future-- humans live in muddy squalor and see all the world in blue-tinted darkness; machines stand tall, their exoskeletons shining bright, and see everything in red.
McG's film eschews pretty much all of this-- his future is one of daytime as well as night. It's grittier and dirtier in a far more uniform fashion-- even the terminator-robots lack their factory-polish. The weapons are far more down-to-earth in terms of ammunition, and even the more elaborate machines and enemy vehicles appear to share more in common with those of our own era. If it lacks the futuro-cool factor of imagination, it takes away some of that pale sense of security the previous films blanketed themselves in. There's far less absolutism in TS's vision-- instead of the future being a foreign territory the present is under attack from, or a distant threat that might just be averted, it's something our heroes are forced to confront directly. Now that the fabled time of prophecy has come to pass, there's so much less certainty in the figure of John Connor.
Granted, I still didn't think too much of the movie, but there's still enough of interest there to make it worth looking at.
Stephen: I am no fan of this film, but more importantly I am out of my league here as you have penned an exceptionally insightful and thought-provoking examination of the film, the myth, the characters, etc, and your commenters here (especially Longman) have provided you with splendid enrichment. I guess I should look at this film again soon.
ReplyDeleteBut really. Kudos to you, this is really great stuff here.
Longman,
ReplyDelete"However, overwrought Hollywood endings apart, did you really give a monkey's for this incarnation of John Connor?"
I grant you that I gave more of a 'monkey's' for Marcus and Kyle but, given that their fates are all intertwined, I did care about Connor enough I think.
"However, as sentient beings, why do we want to keep on living when hope has been all but extinguished"
Well, if you excuse the soppiness, because hope is only extinguished when we are. The world can be rebuilt and new families created (Connor's wife is pregnant, no?).
It is an instinct that we cannot negotiate with but neither does it seem to me and irrational path.
"Anyway, sorry if this has descended into rambling!"
Don't worry, it hasn't. Anyway, nothing wrong with rambling.
Bob,
ReplyDelete"There's far less absolutism in TS's vision-- instead of the future being a foreign territory the present is under attack from, or a distant threat that might just be averted, it's something our heroes are forced to confront directly."
Yes, that's exactly my point. It may not make TS a better film in the round but it makes it a significantly different one. It doesn't ride piggyback on its predecessors.
Thanks Bob for the comments.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your kind words though I'm not sure this piece deserves them.
"I guess I should look at this film again soon."
Well, if I've been able to make you see something a little differently I'm glad. I often feel like I should give films second chances, especially ones I may have crudely dismissed first time round.