Movie Reviews: Star Trek, Wolverine and Terminator: Salvation

Okay so this is a big year for me in terms of movies. So many to see! And it pains me to say I really can't afford to see them all. Especially since some of them I definitely want to see more than once. 

Star Trek was awesome. See it even if you're not a fan of the show(s). If you like high-concept adventure paired with down and dirty fight scenes, plus fantastic cast chemistry -- and all of it in Outer Space! -- you'll like this. I mean really, it's just plain good times.  

I like space opera in general. I'm not at all biased to any particular "universe" (except possibly my own, ha ha): Trek, Wars, Galactica, Firefly -- I enjoy all of them, each for their own reasons but overall because it's space opera. 

Trek, however, is a bit unique of the pack in that it's very much an optimistic view of the future. True, bad things happen. Redshirts die in nearly every episode. True, the fleet could be considered a paramilitary outfit, and for some that's blah. But hell with that -- it's all about exploration external and internal; the more you learn of others, the more you find out about yourself.  And it's got a liberal dash of humor, even goofiness. The overall vision of Trek is a brighter future, and I'm not talking about the tunics.  I love that kind of thing. 

The acting in this movie was mostly superb for the genre. The casting was note-perfect. The character interactions were spot-on and enjoyable. 

See the frakking movie already, if you haven't. 

Moving on: Wolverine, sorry to say, just didn't compare to Trek. I kinda wish I'd seen it first, because Trek is turning out to be the flick I compare everything else to, ha ha.  

Wolverine was adequate, and not through any fault of Jackman's (or many, many others involved) did it fall short of greatness. It's a simple matter of: I don't find joy in revenge stories, and that is essentially what they did with this. They didn't have to go that route (although, granted, it is logical and true to the character), but that they did made the movie a little less interesting to me. 

The other issue I had was that the storytelling felt unbalanced. Again, it's no one's fault -- I totally see why they did it that way and I can't argue the decision. But the first act felt too overloaded; the second too light, and the third frankly didn't make up for either. A few storytelling choices I can and do argue with definitely fall into the spoilers category, so I won't get into them here. Suffice it to say, given the size of the sandbox the writers had to play in, I really don't get why they felt it necessary to use the characters they did in the end. They could have picked any number of OTHER characters who could have pulled off pretty much exactly the same effect and it would have been hunky fuckin' dory.  

All of that said, I did like it and I will definitely see it again. I kind of doubt I'd buy it though, unless I happen to find it in the bargain bin at Blockbuster a year hence. 

So now we come to Salvation, and I think I've got more to say about this one because it's still fresh in my mind. 

Terminator: Salvation is the one of the bunch I'm going to see twice in theatres (although I really hope I can wrangle a Star Trek encore). That's primarily because of scheduling issues and my demanding bladder. The latter needs no further explanation, but the former: I agreed with two different people to see the movie with them, and then it turned out they couldn't both see it the same day. So tonight I saw it with one; next week I'll see it with the other.  Which is good because hopefully I'll get to see the bit I missed while taking the piss. 

My analysis of this fourth installment in the franchise: It is, at best, a second cousin to the original film.  Don't get me wrong, it was a good summer movie. It retained the messages of hope, redemption and survival that Terminator and T2 had, but I'm going to have to agree with many other reviewers that the heart and soul of the concept was lost; blown away, perhaps, by the bombs of Judgement Day. 

Salvation is nevertheless a better movie than T3 by many orders of magnitude. 

Part of the problem as I see it is the fact that the franchise has let itself slide into an entirely different genre from the original film. Terminator was essentially an excellent science fiction story.  It wasn't about the explosions and fights.  It was a commentary on human dependence on technology and the hope of averting catastrophe that inevitably awaits us if we do not deal with that dependance in a responsible fashion.  And also of course a tale of the indomitable strength of the human spirit to survive.  It wasn't the Terminator, after all, that was truly unstoppable. 

T2 was much the same, only with more action and cooler special effects (also, Linda Hamilton kept her shirt on this time around).  The same themes were there, but with the volume up a little. And that the heroes decided to stop running and actually attempt to do something about the doom they knew was coming -- well, there's a message in that, too, wasn't there. 

Unfortunately someone decided to exhume the endoskeleton one more time and throw the T&A back in, and that was T3.  T3 sucked. The explosions were impressive...and that's really pretty much it.  John Connor was a twat.  I liked the tough kid in T2 a shit-ton more. 

T3 was a popcorn flick with a downer of an ending. Perhaps following the trend (at the time, thanks to Messrs. Lucas and Christansen perhaps) of dooming-and-glooming once bright franchises, T3 took the hopeful message of the first two movies (no fate but what you make) and wiped its ass with it.  

Hollywood politics being what they are, it was inevitable. But the franchise was no longer smart storytelling, no longer thought-provoking sci-fi.  I can't pick the best simile for what the franchise had become: it's either a roller-coaster ride, an arcade game, or porn. Fun now and then, visually stimulating, but ultimately unfulfilling. 

So that brings us to Terminator: Salvation.  Now that the franchise has made the evolution from sci-fi to popcorn action-adventure -- I pretty much didn't expect much of it beyond eye candy, and I was more or less okay with that.  I wasn't disappointed in that regard.  

They did, however, manage to add several very nice touches throughout the story, and I certainly can't fault anyone's acting per se.  The issue is, of course, that this was an action movie. There was very little time amongst the apocalyptic backdrop and frequent mechanical disruption for anyone to emote anything but grim determination tinged with despair and the faintest silver lining of hope -- primarily in the form of, naturally, John Connor.  

But don't go thinking this was John Connor's story.  Because I don't know if anyone else has realized it, but not one of these movies is John Connor's story.  Closest one came to it was T2, and that was really more the Terminator's story.  

As a storyteller, I'll give you a little tip: Your key to who's your main character is, just ask yourself "who's evolving in this story?"  And much as Christian Bale and the studio executives would like people to believe, Bale's role is actually just a supporting character.

I'm not going to get spoilerific on you for this either, but when you see it, you'll know what I mean, and I doubt there will be any question who the story IS about.  

I will say this however: Despite the difficulty in connecting emotionally to, really, any of the characters, Salvation did bring back some of the hope, some of the "spitting in the face of fate" that made the first two movies great.  But even this is not without issue: The worst has happened. The fate has come to pass. So now we have to consider: What fate are they going to make for themselves now? (I suppose they did give me a tiny morsel of food for thought, after all.)

Which is why we'll probably see at least two more movies. Maybe one of them will finally give us the story of the legendary John Conner.