What Terminator Salvation is really missing…

This isn’t so much an assessment of the new installment, but rather a defense of my statement in the review linked below that the trilogy are all classics. In time, when it comes to “geek” movies, all critical nuance seems to get lost.

Take, say, ATTACK OF THE CLONES. People ragged on the Anakin pick-up lines, but generally kinda dug the lightsaber battle with Yoda and Christopher Lee. Over time, this has become “The prequels fuckin’ SUCKED!” But they didn’t. They disappointed in many ways — especially Episode I — but to say they are terrible film-making is so off the mark it’s ludicrous. I would have much preferred that Lucas had made another movie first, however, as Phantom Menace showed massive “ring rust,” and he only started to really get his game back midway through Clones. Nonetheless, if nothing else the haters must admit they made huge advances in digital effects.

SUPERMAN RETURNS — mixed reactions when it came out. I remember David Poland showing me some of the hate emails he got for giving it a negative review. But over time, the consensus has become “SUPERMAN RETURNS fuckin’ sucked!”

INDIANA JONES 4 and MATRIX RELOADED truly baffled me…I came out of each feeling I had gotten precisely what I wanted in a sequel. The consensus of “fuckin’ SUCKED!” emerged a lot quicker on these, but again…they DO NOT fuckin’ suck. Dislike them all you want, but if you dismiss the fact that a lot of craft and thought went into them, and truly believe there is nothing redeeming in either, I simply do not know how to relate to that. And careful what you wish for when it comes to GHOSTBUSTERS 3 or MAD MAX 4.

Which brings us to TERMINATOR 3, and the seeming general consensus that it, too, “fuckin’ SUCKED!” It was not a James Cameron movie, this is true. But I feel it is ultimately of a piece with the previous two in a way that part four is not.

What I love about all three is that each one came out in a different decade, and each reflected the prevailing worldview of the global/political think of its time, in the guise of just being a big, loud, expensive action movie.

Not everyone will remember this…but during the early ’80s, many of us had the mindset that a nuclear war was inevitable. Our best hope in life was that it wouldn’t happen until after we were dead. Into this thought process came THE TERMINATOR, which had unstoppable Arnold embodying that fear. For Sarah Connor, yes, a nuclear war was going to be inevitable, but she was damned if she’d let it claim her this freakin’ minute. She halts the immediate threat, but still has the knowledge that her death is probably inevitable, and the best hope is that her son will survive. The future is written, and it’s grim.

Then came the end of the Cold War which was not necessarily an expected development, nor necessarily a welcome one from hardened war-hawks who need an enemy to stay relevant. TERMINATOR 2, which Cameron started writing before the Berlin Wall fell, ultimately reflected the new sense of optimism we had in the ’90s and the Clinton era. We didn’t have to be locked into an imminent conflict! We could change that future we thought was written! And the new Terminator — a good guy now — embodied THAT mood. The new villain anticipated the new kinds of threats we faced — domestic and international terrorists who could blend in. Yet in the end, these didn’t seem to pose an existential threat. They finally would screw up and we could beat them.

Then 9-11 happened and oh shit…the world became a scary place again. The enemy we thought was just a bunch of small-time infiltrators was now appropriately revealed as a global network in the form of the Internet-ready T-X, a Bin Laden-type figurehead that could spread its jihad throughout the entire global network. Our good-guy Terminator this time had much bad news with the good — you thought you could get rid of existential threats? Sorry, nope, you can’t You can only delay them. Peace will never last. And by the way? One day I’m going to kill you. But I’ll be your ally for right now. The fear, both genuine and hyped, that came of the Bush administration, was thus as perfectly used as subtext as were the Clinton and Reagan decades prior.

TERMINATOR SALVATION should have waited two more years to be part of a new decade. Not that the current folks managing the brand are smart enough or bold enough to try political commentary of any kind…but I will say this: the new movie does, in its ham-handed kind of way, deal with the concepts of hope and change.