Keep your pants up, I'm not talking about a porno.
I'm obviously talking about Terminator Salvation. It's been pretty much panned by critics, but it was such a high profile movie that there was no way I was getting put off.
Being a big fan of Christian Bale, I expected him to carry out his role as John Connor with the same gusto as Bruce Wayne and Batman. And I would certainly say I wasn't disappointed. He's the same in every movie, but I think it's a winning formula so a lack of variation doesn't trouble me. Something that did disappoint me however, was that I missed the first ten minutes of the movie due to spending too much time in the boozer drinking whisky.
So it took me a few minutes to get my bearings in the movie, since it was well underway when we arrived. It looked like it had been all-action, right from the beginning - and that would make sense because it was all-action right to the end. That would put some people off, since the action does come at the expense of the plot to quite an extent, but overall, Terminator is not a complicated story.
I had intended to watch the other Terminator movies before I went to see Salvation, but I didn't need to. It was nicely reintroduced, and it wasn't difficult to remember the key plot points from the older movies or to figure out who was who and what was happening.
It also didn't matter that I hadn't seen the other films again because I fully intend to watch them all, then see Salvation once more. It was terrific. I loved every single minute of it and left the cinema completely happy having spent a few quid on the ticket.
I have to admit that it would have been pretty weak if Bale hadn't been the star, but everything was built around him so it would have been a very different film. The cast is quite low-key in terms of previous fame, but they held their own for the most part. Anton Yelchin was crap, but maybe it was his character that was crap, and he was just good at playing a crap person? Not sure. Sam Worthington who played Marcus Wright, was (deliberately or not) portrayed in a similar way to Marcus Fenix from Gears of War - cold in a kind of intriguing way, but you that know he wouldn't hesitate to shoot you in the face if you stole his pint or killed his dog.
There was only one major fault in the movie, which I absolutely and completely hated. The appearance of Arnie as the T-800. The CGI was absolutely horrific, and his appearance was so short that it was as if the producers knew the CGI was crap, but knew that they had to show Arnie to please the fanboys. They clearly wanted to get him off the screen as quickly as possible, much to my relief.
Governor of California aside, I thoroughly enjoyed it but I wouldn't expect everyone to feel the same. It's a 'wash over you' kind of film, probably more suited to the boys.
I'm glad there are going to be another two in the series, and will certainly be going to see them.
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