Terminator Salvation

The last time I saw Christian Bale, it was in Batman Begins. He could barely squeeze into the costume, with rolls of chubb protruting from the mask right at his Pillsbury cheeks. In Terminator Salvation, he looks like he was just let out of Aushwitz. Christian Bale is truly the Oprah of the male acting pool. He's either really chubby or really skinny. Someone, please test Christian Bale for a thyroid disorder.

That said, this film was ultimately a re-play of Aliens vs. Predator or Rocky Balboa. A desperate hollywood writer was obviously struggling (and failing) to come up with any new ideas, so instead, decided to attempt to resuccitate a franchise that was once the summer blockbuster to end all blockbusters. Instead of creating another "Terminator"-esque original, well-written, creative science fiction film, hollywood again takes the easy way out and makes another sequal to something that should have been allowed to die with dignity.

We follow the story of John Connor (Bale) as he tries to defeat Skynet in its operations to wipe out the human race. John has also knocked up his wife, Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard) of M. Night Shymalon fame, and thus has another cliche "reason to live". They meet a man who appears to have robotic parts, and rather than risk the possibility that he might be a terminator, decide to kill him.

We find that in the future, life sucks even worse than it does now. There are even eel-terminators that swim around in the rivers and attack everything that moves. (This, I believe, was stolen from The Princess Bride. I kept waiting for Andre the giant to come and rescue John Connor.) One redeeming beacon for this was a lack of the governer of Colli-forna. Unfortunately, he does make an appearence near the end.

While the action scenes were somewhat entertaining, the characters in the film were all severely undedeveloped. I wished for a bit more. But most people going to see this film are going to fall into the same category as the guy behind me in the theater. He pulled up in a rusty pickup truck with wheels far larger and well below the intended manufacturer's position with a confederate flag bumper sticker and a peeing Calvin. Anytime there was a big explosion on screen (and there were plenty) he would hoot like a drunk Texan and yell "Whoa!" clapping his hands together. After all, Hollywood couldn't do it if it weren't for folks like that. And by "it" I mean sell tickets to see this crap.