Sigh

Have you ever waited with ridiculous amounts of hyper anticipation for a movie, only to leave feeling slightly cheated? Have you ever done that twice? 'Cause I'm totally there, man. Yesterday my bro-ster and I celebrated Memorial Day by watching Terminator: Salvation, and I’m sad to report after the Star Trek fiasco, Terminator was on the same level of let-down.
I've been way into the Terminator series lately, ever since I was temporarily a writer for that website whose name I can't recall and I covered the show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a television critic. Well, let me clarify; I haven't been “way into” the series in the way that some of these lunatics - I mean fans - are, where they obsessively follow each storyline and argue endlessly over time travel, whether The Matrix is a rip-off, terminator robot models, and which John Connor is the hottest (surprisingly, not Christian Bale). I reserve that kind of crazy for more worthwhile things, like Star Trek and Robert Jordan books.


Instead, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of machines developing independent intelligence and trying to kill humans, especially since I’m pretty sure that my car wants to kill me. I also like getting in on cult classics. Finally, I’m extremely intrigued by Christian Bale. Put all these together, add a brain that’s very easily impressed by commercials with lots of explosions, and VOILA! a movie that Susan wants to watch!


Sadly, this movie did not live up to my high high expectations. Firstly, after Christian Bale’s little tantrum, all the promotions about him being the big star, and the fact that he sorta rewrote the script and then spent hours “helping” to edit the film; I expected him to be on the screen the entire time giving the performance of his life. Imagine my disappointment that he was only like the 3rd most important character. BOO! Also, for some reason he was given a very strange and distracting mole on his nose. DOUBLE BOO!

Secondly, the storyline was way weird. It didn’t make a lot of sense and was vague and mysterious in many ways. It seemed to me like they just wanted focus on lots of action, rather than wasting time on a plot. I would go more into this, but the details of the plot are so unimportant that even in a day's time I'm not really sure what they were anymore. Maybe I dreamed the whole thing?

Thirdly, it had maybe the creepiest line I’ve ever heard, as the main character kisses a bald and dying Helena Bonham-Carter and says, “Now I know what death tastes like.” EW! Ew in all ways imaginable! Bald Helena? Death taste? WHAT?
So my final score: B- maybe. I mean it did have some really sweet action scenes, a CG version of Ahnold, and it looked great. Plus I’m a softie and I don’t like to give scores below B. If you watch it, you should do a matinee so you aren’t really really angry at the amount of money you spend; and go in prepared to turn your brain off, enjoy the explosions, and not worry too much about plot. Oh, and (since this is one of my key criteria of any movie) enjoy the attractive men!