I'm going to come out with the biggest problem this movie has, before even going any further:
It can't decide if it's a Terminator for the fans, or a Terminator for a new generation, and ends up being a mess of a hybrid between both.
It doesn't quite scale the appalling heights of the miserable Terminator Genisys in terms of messiness, but it's not far off, and Salvation continues, of a very very bad bunch, to be the most solid post-T2 movie in the franchise - probably because it's just a decent tale on its own, rather than being intrinsically tied to the rest of the series.
It's hard to do a review for this movie without spoilers, because the key plot points are what confuses the audience between established fans and a new generation. But I'll go for it.
I don't mind the new generation idea, I really don't - I just didn't want it in this series. What I mean is this might have worked as a modified spin off, a story in the Terminator universe to bring new fans in without completely p*ssing off existing fans - kind of like how Fear the Walking Dead complimented TWD so well without undermining it or its fans.
Unfortunately, as a 'canon' story, and a supposed 'proper' sequel to T2 it's a hundred miles off being good enough, and it's evident that creative arguments between Cameron and Miller undermined any chance of this thing working.
Why Cameron came on board this I don't know - but the end result is so bad that both he and Miller have officially washed their hands of being responsible - frankly they blame each other. Cameron says it's really Miller's film, Miller says he basically had no control.
And that mess is evident on the screen.
There are so many ruinations of established Terminator tropes, and because Cameron is on board with this, we take those violations more seriously than the nonsense of 3-5. Cameron basically dismissed those films as 'fan fiction' and then managed to be significantly responsible for something just about as bad.
As an action film alone, isolated, without any standard to compare to, this is an ok movie - there is no denying it's fairly entertaining, and Mackenzie Davies' Grace is a fine leading character. Arnold's T-800 works alright even if his plotline is just a completely disgrace, and Arnie shows he still has it even in his old age. And Reyes' Dani is *alright* in terms of it being an isolated movie.
But it isn't, and when you take the fact it's supposed to be cannon, her brand new character is garbage - kind of like, (again another TWD reference) the rotten third series of TWD video game which abandons characters we love and replaces them with a completely new family we don't care about - we just don't care about Dani, why would we?
Unfortunately, I hated this Sarah Connor - I understood why she's so broken, and Linda Hamilton played the role as well as she could, but the anti-hero Sarah Connor of the second one has been replaced by, frankly, a bitter old hag (for honestly unacceptable reasons but no spoilers). She didn't even look the part - it just didn't feel like the character we love.
And the Rev9 Terminator looked way too much like Jon Cryer to be able to take him seriously. About as threatening as My Little Pony.
The action sequences were ok, not great, but ok, but the CGI was horrendous. I'm seeing so much praise for them but honestly I felt like I was watching such forced rendering - it rarely looked convincing, especially when the Rev9 was in the air. Too fake.
All-in-all this is a franchise which hasn't known what it's doing since T2, and not even the return of its daddy could fix it - Cameron and Miller conspired to make a hash of it, and their new story is equal or even worse than the 'fan fiction' which preceded them.
As I say, as a movie in its own right, not attached to anything, it wasn't bad - it was ok, and I've seen worse. As a Terminator movie, it just shouldn't exist.
It can't decide if it's a Terminator for the fans, or a Terminator for a new generation, and ends up being a mess of a hybrid between both.
It doesn't quite scale the appalling heights of the miserable Terminator Genisys in terms of messiness, but it's not far off, and Salvation continues, of a very very bad bunch, to be the most solid post-T2 movie in the franchise - probably because it's just a decent tale on its own, rather than being intrinsically tied to the rest of the series.
It's hard to do a review for this movie without spoilers, because the key plot points are what confuses the audience between established fans and a new generation. But I'll go for it.
I don't mind the new generation idea, I really don't - I just didn't want it in this series. What I mean is this might have worked as a modified spin off, a story in the Terminator universe to bring new fans in without completely p*ssing off existing fans - kind of like how Fear the Walking Dead complimented TWD so well without undermining it or its fans.
Unfortunately, as a 'canon' story, and a supposed 'proper' sequel to T2 it's a hundred miles off being good enough, and it's evident that creative arguments between Cameron and Miller undermined any chance of this thing working.
Why Cameron came on board this I don't know - but the end result is so bad that both he and Miller have officially washed their hands of being responsible - frankly they blame each other. Cameron says it's really Miller's film, Miller says he basically had no control.
And that mess is evident on the screen.
There are so many ruinations of established Terminator tropes, and because Cameron is on board with this, we take those violations more seriously than the nonsense of 3-5. Cameron basically dismissed those films as 'fan fiction' and then managed to be significantly responsible for something just about as bad.
As an action film alone, isolated, without any standard to compare to, this is an ok movie - there is no denying it's fairly entertaining, and Mackenzie Davies' Grace is a fine leading character. Arnold's T-800 works alright even if his plotline is just a completely disgrace, and Arnie shows he still has it even in his old age. And Reyes' Dani is *alright* in terms of it being an isolated movie.
But it isn't, and when you take the fact it's supposed to be cannon, her brand new character is garbage - kind of like, (again another TWD reference) the rotten third series of TWD video game which abandons characters we love and replaces them with a completely new family we don't care about - we just don't care about Dani, why would we?
Unfortunately, I hated this Sarah Connor - I understood why she's so broken, and Linda Hamilton played the role as well as she could, but the anti-hero Sarah Connor of the second one has been replaced by, frankly, a bitter old hag (for honestly unacceptable reasons but no spoilers). She didn't even look the part - it just didn't feel like the character we love.
And the Rev9 Terminator looked way too much like Jon Cryer to be able to take him seriously. About as threatening as My Little Pony.
The action sequences were ok, not great, but ok, but the CGI was horrendous. I'm seeing so much praise for them but honestly I felt like I was watching such forced rendering - it rarely looked convincing, especially when the Rev9 was in the air. Too fake.
All-in-all this is a franchise which hasn't known what it's doing since T2, and not even the return of its daddy could fix it - Cameron and Miller conspired to make a hash of it, and their new story is equal or even worse than the 'fan fiction' which preceded them.
As I say, as a movie in its own right, not attached to anything, it wasn't bad - it was ok, and I've seen worse. As a Terminator movie, it just shouldn't exist.