Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation

Movie review: Terminator Salvation (2009)

Sacrifice lunch hour to book tickets.
Build up hype to watch it FDFS.
Spend evening trying to sleep.
Make the mistake of turning on the television!
Catch "Pirates of Caribbean" and "Take the lead" on TV.
Lose sleep.
Catch the movie at 12:01 am. FDFS!
Come back disappointed.

The 1st half of the movie is spent in building up the premise of the story. The 2nd half is where all the action is.

The scenes in the movie will remind you of -
1. Black Hawk Down
2. Matrix
3. Matrix:Reloaded
4. Mad Max - Road warrior
5. Crank 2
6. Death Race
7. T2
8. I am Legend
9. Doomsday
10. T3
11. Dark Knight

T4 is a mish-mash of all these movies with some original "spice" thrown into it. The mix does not work for these reasons.
1. I have seen all these movies - just this year. I did not want a refresher course!
2. In this month alone, there were 3 other movies released - "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", "Star Trek", "Angels & Demons" - All were better than T4, even Wolverine, and I did not like wolverine that much!
3. I have not even watched "Angels & Demons" yet
4. I thought T3 was a bad movie
5. The music in some places felt like it was from a Hindi movie (Zanjeer is the one that came to mind)
6. Unlike Star Trek, no one clapped in joy when the movie ended (Star trek still got claps 3 weeks after its release!)

The movie evoked the similar feelings as watching Matrix Reloaded. The action was good, but the story was weak. It felt like this movie should have been an "in-between" movie. Like Matrix Reloaded, its too weak to stand on its own. And since Matrix reloaded was released years ago, this one was highly unoriginal even in its action. Come on man! Its a T4 movie. Try to show something original.

Seems like to me, the movie was made to cater to video game fans! Did someone in marketing forget, the movie has to be a hit for the other franchise to be successful? The plot is full of gaping loopholes! The action is barely passable. This one fits in the category of movies where all the cool scenes are already shown in the trailer.

The 1st half stands on a rating of 5/10. The second half stands at 6/10. This brings the avg rating to 5.5/10.
Disappointing for any movie.
For a T4 movie, that's very disappointing! Especially when you stay up in the middle of the work week to watch it. I know, you will still want to watch it and judge for yourself. Be my guest. I'll wait for you at the "frustrated fan party" right here! remember, there are no refunds! You are warned. No salvation in this movie!

Some of the trailers look good - Eagerly awaited movies are - Surrogates (Bruce Willis), Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law (i think)) {One has to find solace in something, right? We all live on hope after all!}

33 comments:

Vyzz said...

yea hope is all we have...

solace in something :)


cheers

wont see t4 for sure..hehe


vyo

Bhargavi said...

Haven t seen any of the movies except the matrix series .. i watched tomb raider recently and have come to a conclusion that video game -inspired movies suck ! ..Angels and demons does seem like interesting watch !!

Bouncing-Bubble said...

nice way to start the revu. ofcourse am not watching any movie near future

Valerine said...

Hey even I haven't watched Angels & Demons prequel of DA Vinchi.....
I wanna watch the movie...probaby this weekend.....
But I dint lyk terminator nyway....

Smita said...

I remember watching the 'T' series as a kid. My bro used to watch action flicks and I had to sit through them. Never liked this series for no reason per se....

So no chances of me being caught watching this :D

So much for a movie haan!!!!!

Americanising Desi said...

hey thanks for following me :)

hope to see you read and tell :D

sujata sengupta said...

came across your blog, don't have much to say about this post as cannot understand anything about action movies unless its a heroic war movie. But loved the previous post. You have a great sense of humour. Keep writing!!

Mumble! said...

:(:( (for the movie, not the review!)

so bad u didn't even hint at the story??

*mumble*

couchpapaya said...

as bad as reloaded?? i downloaded the hd trailer last night to prepare for watching the movie ..... and was all excited :( will come back after ...

Anonymous said...

Salvation without salivation!!
Terminator without Schwartzzenegger (yup! I screwed the spelling again)!
Did anyone say 'I'll be baaaaack'?
cheers

eye-in-sty-in said...

Hi AD,
Welcome to my blog, You make me sound like a creepy stalker :P lol @ read n tell

Hi Sujata,
Not am action fan I'm guessing :-) Welcome to my blog. Thanks for the appreciation. I do lose it completely every once a while :-)

Hi Mumble,
There is a story, but its S L O W and incoherent and well, since this is a FDFS review, didnt want to even broach the subject. I could make the movie sound bad without it. Go watch it once though.

Hi CP,
lol... you saw the HD trailer? you just finished watching all the good parts in the movie :-) I even saw a review that asked viewers to avoid watching trailers, not read anything on the net or even go to buy the toys before they watch the movie. Sounds like a complicated project to me :D Do tell how you felt abt it - I dont want to be alone in my misery :D :D

Hi doc-laugh,
lol @ ur comment... there was a leather clad babe in the movie - me like - me salivated .. lolz
There was a cameo by a digitized Arnie in the movie. He plays T-1000 for 5 minutes.

eye-in-sty-in said...

Hi Vyo,
A smile.. wow.. cheery :P

Hi Razzale-Dazzle,
You have not watched Terminator? Whats wrong with you :P Tomb-raider was the one with Angie baby? It was a good movie :-)

Hi BB,
Totally understand that.

Hi Val,
You don't like Terminator but want to watch it this weekend? You must be going with your boyfriend :-)

Hi Smita,
you didn't like T2? That sucks! It is in my top 25 movie list! Totally awesome!

Mama - Mia said...

another movie i can save my money from! :p

great review like always!

cheers!

abha

Ava said...

Twitter was abuzz with Great Comments! Paid kya?

Despite Christian Bale ? :(

Dunno what junior thinks about this one. My viewing will depend on that.

eye-in-sty-in said...

Hi Abha,
:=)
Glad 2 help.

Hi Ava,
IMDB had 1000+ votes with a rating of 10 - I saw it FDFS and wrote the revu soon after! Your guess is as good as mine :P

Ire said...

How much money did you put in for the tickets? I don't think I have watched a terminator film after 12th grade.

:)

eye-in-sty-in said...

Hi Nikki,
Lets see - 2 tickets, a tub of over prices theater popcorn and drinks. X-change rate @ 50 = 1500 Rupees.
Fail to understand the relationship between the price of ticket and quality of the movie, unless you're a producer about to send me a refund :-)
If T2 is the only movie you watched in the series, you are the rare one with good memories of the series.

Dr Roshan Radhakrishnan said...

guess will have to settle for Star Trek and Transformers 2.. and ya, it was Jude Law playing Watson in the new Holmes movie. Man, quite a departure from the original characters, huh ?

Vee said...

I am really not into the kind of movies you mentioned but surprisingly have seen 5 of the 11, and Dark Knight being the class apart.

eye-in-sty-in said...

Hello Roshan,
Welcome to my blog and thanks for following it. Star Trek is a good movie.... but Transformers 2? Dunno about that.. not yet released... The original characters are now too old.... William Shatner used to play an interesting lawyer in a series called Boston Legal. Nice show.

eye-in-sty-in said...

Hi Vee,
Welcome back bro! Congrats on the promotion and new responsibilities :-) The movies I mentioned were not from any particular genere as such. Just mentioned them as I remembered it. If someone is a bigger movie fan than myself (like you), they would have noticed more such movies in T4. Dark Knight was something else. Played with the head that one.

couchpapaya said...

OMG u called it!!!! the movie was such shite!! let me add to that derived movie list u mentioned earlier - resident evil extinction, war of the worlds .... towards the end we were groaning in agony hoping it wld end soon, but it went on and oooonnn!! but unlike u i cldnt even get any solace from the trailers, the sherlock holmes was so effing cheesy i almost threw up :S

eye-in-sty-in said...

Night @ the museum - 53 Million
T4 - 43 Million
That says it all :-)

Finally i can discuss it with someone...!
Which parts were from Resident Evil and war of the world?
I thought RE was uber cool and WOTW was shit! Tom Cruise... not a fan!
Poor Sherlock is already being booed and hissed!
The entire T4 movie felt like a watching a video game! Useless waste of money .... And they cast Christian Bale too! Did you watch Star Trek yet? (forgive me if I forgot)

couchpapaya said...

EISI - wow imdb rating says 7.5!! and i thought u were generous !!!

@avdi - bale is almost the side-kick here, the important role was for sam worthington playing marcus wright and imagine what a shocker that is - john connor being cut out of the tX movies. plus, bale is channeling batman here, same voice, hate to say it but he was pretty boring.

couchpapaya said...

lol @ night at the museum box rakings ...

werent the prisoner cages a bit like the war of the worlds thing. and the whole landing at a fuel station with little pockets of resistance all of the country - RE extinction!! now that i think about it, even LOTR was there. remember the last few scenes, with the skynet tower and bursts of fire from the buildings surrounding it. totally mordor lol!!!!

i did watch star trek, wasnt v. happy with it, but in retrospect seems like it was better, atleast it was in the right spirit and not an excuse to gouge money like this one!!!

couchpapaya said...

who is booing holmes? i heart them! guy ritchie what hast thou wrought ??

eye-in-sty-in said...

I was indeed a little generous - I rated it a bit higher coz I thought losing sleep and watching it @ mid-night might have biased my dislike of the movie. But When I went to rate it on IMDB, it already had a 1000+ votes with a rating of 10. So to balance it out, I gave it 3. And It was 7.5 on Friday! Am surprised it still is 7.5!! The studios must have dired a lot of ppl to make fake ids and rate! Even all the paid reviews were quite mellow in its bashing!

Now that you mention it, yes, they were like WOTW. I thought the fuel tower was akin to Mad Max (Road Warrior)... And yes the Skynet tower was LAME! It looked like the Budweiser beer factory in my backyard!

You are so right about Star trek viz a viz T4! Although i could not digest Kirk, it still was a treat to watch.

I thougth you said sherlock holmes trailer was cheesy!

couchpapaya said...

loll @ budweiser beer factory. i have not seen mad max sooo... it was cheesy, which was why i 'heart'ed the booers, NOT 'hate'd them. spped reading will get ya sometime or the other :P

eye-in-sty-in said...

lol @ speedreading - Besides the fact that I dont do it, why will I speedread on my own blog :P
I just did not associate Cheesy with heart... I'm soo tempted to write a spoiler post on why this movie blows! Especially after seeing 7.4 on IMDB !! Some people actually gave this pathetic movie a 10!! Unbelievable...!

couchpapaya said...

oh yes, spoiler post please!!!

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lafemmereva said...

hope is the expectation of good things to come!

eye-in-sty-in said...

yep... i hopes and i expected - but the thing fell short of my expectations and crushed any hope! But i still hope .... I hope they stop making anymore of the T-series!