Terminator Salvation is an entertaining film, as long as you don’t think about it. The special effects are splashy the action is fast-paced and fun. Even the characters are, with the exception of Bale’s somewhat blank John Connor, interesting and well acted. Anton Yelchin in particular, who you may have noticed a couple of weeks ago as Chekov in Star Trek, really shines here as Kyle Reese. In fact, forget John Connor. They should have given us an entire movie focused on him. No the movie’s problems have nothing to do with anything that happened on set during the film’s making, they’re much deeper and more ingrained than that. It’s the script. It’s the entire premise on which the film is built that’s at fault and there’s really nothing the movie’s one-named director McG, even if he’d been allowed to deliver the R-rated movie this franchise deserved, could have done to fix that.
Since it’s the premise that’s the problem, there’s really no way to discuss this without minor spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t want it ruined for you, jump ship now. If you’re still here, then let’s get right to the heart of this problem.
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At first glance, WALL-E is a complicated science fiction tale, set against a grand post-apocalyptic backdrop. But it's an illusion. More than any other recent film by the geniuses at Pixar it’s a kids’ movie, maybe their most simplistic and accessible yet. If WALL-E were a book, it’d be in the children’s department emblazoned with a title like “My First Science Fiction Story” and there would probably be a page for coloring somewhere before the back cover. They’ve taken a fairly ambitious sci fi concept and made it the perfect window for kids into a broader world of imagination and perhaps even activism. Does it have some appeal for adults? Sure. It’s still smart sci fi, just told in the most straightforward, easy to understand way possible. They’re happy to have you in the theater, but mostly they want your 8-year-old son or daughter. So maybe for adults there aren’t a lot of surprises, but that doesn’t mean you won’t revel in the Pixar-perfect execution of another story well told.