Twenty five years since the first film of the Terminator franchise scintillated science fiction fans all over the world, the future is upon us now with Terminator: Salvation. Starring Christian Bale as John Connor and Sam Worthington as the enigmatic cyborg Marcus Wright, Terminator: Salvation offers fans a glimpse of the future foretold in the first three movies.
Well, for starters, the motif of Terminator films is the battle between humanity and machines which became self-aware under the name Skynet and wiped out the human race with a nuclear blast. At the heart of this battle is John Connor who is said to be humanity’s hope which prompted Skynet to try to end his life by sending a robot – a Terminator – back in time to kill John’s mother before John is even conceived. This first film introduced to the entire world a certain unknown actor named Arnold Schwarzenneger.
When the Terminator films were launched in 1984 and its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day in 1991, it was a benchmark for outstanding computer-generated special effects from the best 3D animation studios of Hollywood. The rendition of cybernetic organisms – flesh and bones under a metal endoskeleton – caught the fancy of imaginative people. However, during the first three films, the gloomy future of the world and the emergence of John Connor were just ideas. It was all about a powerful Terminator trying to kill people in the past while in the context of the present day.
Enter 2009’s Terminator: Salvation. Now, everything is in the future, the year 2018, when the Planet Earth is now a nuclear wasteland and where big and bad robots. The film has all the makings of a 3D animation special effects spectacle – and in this department, it really delivered. The initial action sequence wherein John Connor (Christian Bale) had to fend off a crippled Terminator was snappy and had allusions to the climax of the first film wherein Schwarzenegger was also crippled.
As with any franchise, the movie stayed faithful to the rendition of the Terminator endoskeletons: skull faces with red eyes. And yet Terminator: Salvation offered its own additions to the Terminator universe by putting in the silver screen some of the scarier robots of Skynet. There are the giant Harvester which may be slow but can precisely collect surviving people and haul them off to their laboratories in order to create robots with flesh and blood. There are also the nimble Hunter-Killers which were more prominent in this film than ever before. To complete the domination of Skynet of the land, the air, and the sea, the movie also showed Hydrobots which are eel-like creatures made to squirm with the same smoothness. It was very awe-inspiring to see how Marcus Wright and all the other human characters face off with these heavily-armed robots.
The special effects department of Terminator: Salvation also had an important part of the franchise’s history because it was the last film created by Stan Winston, the special effects supervisor of the first three Terminator films. Winston, who was tasked by the director McG, to create expansive sets for the action sequences. Winston died on June 15, 2008 because of multiple myeloma and in his place were John Rosengrant and Charlie Gibson. Some of the interesting additions of the new team were the motion capture technology used on the face of Marcus Wright when the endoskeleton part of his skull was revealed and the use of a 20-foot model building as a springboard to the explosion scene of a 30-storey building.
Beyond the special effects, Terminator: Salvation is a (Western) summer blockbuster especially for loyal Terminator fans who yearn to see John Connor finally in action as the leader of the resistance. Christian Bale’s performance as Bale never lived up to his showing in The Dark Knight because the limelight of the emotional performances mostly went to Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright, a cybernetic organism which really thinks he is human. Terminator: Salvation is planned to be the first in a trilogy rebooting the franchise started by James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar). It is exciting to see what the narratives are for the next two films. John’s wife is shown to be pregnant. Will this have an impact on the Terminator Universe? We may not know the answer yet but we are assured that we can always expect top-of-the-line 3D animation special effects.
