Terminator: Salvation

(Spoiler Alert! Yes, again. Don't read this if you're seriously looking forward to the latest Terminator film. But really - who is?).

I swear to you, this blog is not going to devolve solely into me bagging the shit out of popular culture. I aim to bag the shit out of high-brow stuff occasionally as well.

Over the long weekend I went along to see Terminator: Salvation at my local cinema. There were many members of the public in attendance which I do not like. It is not (just) that I am anti-social, they are simply not fit to be in the public arena. Case in point: the 'gentleman' seated next to me wore thongs presumably so that when the urge came over him, he could pick his toes during the film without the irritation of having to remove any shoes. Charming.
But I digress.

Firstly, this film is badly misnamed (why do they think that dropping the numbers helps? Oh, that's right, because we're now scraping the prequel barrel and it confuses people to have non-linear sequences. An argument, perhaps, for using the Dewy system for films. But that's a subject for discussion at another time). Anyway. "Salvation" is a misnomer. This film should rightly have been subtitled "Survival" or even something like "have you ever seen a more gritty dystopian future prequel than this?! Holy Shit we're really all going to DIE!!! RUN - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" but as a marketing person I wouldn't really recommend that - it's hard to make puns with for the actor profiles during promos.

I guess "Survival" was taken, but it is a shame, they should have saved Salvation for when they win the freakin war I would have thought. Not for a film where the resistance takes massive casualties, loses their entire command structure and basically get their arses kicked at every single point.

That leads me to my second point. I don't know a lot about war. Actually, I know very little about war on any level. I've made effort to avoid it personally. From what I have seen and heard it is a deeply unpleasant experience, and something not to be undertaken lightly. Which is why I would have suggested that someone in the Resistance who does know about war ought to read a little book by an old guy call Sun. In this book, which is kind of like a "War for Dummies¹" he suggests that you should know everything you can about your enemy. In this film, that could be as simple as remembering that the machines you're fighting are very very smart. Maybe not the ones directly in front of you, but the ones that built them are. I reckon that odds are good that machines that have made themselves self-aware are going to be pretty bright. Hence, one ought to think things through as if you're playing a game of Chess or Go in which your opponent has a higher rank than you. That is to say, they're likely to set traps for you. I would, if I was clever.

Not being clever brings me to my third, and final point. American action films have made a fruitful industry out of not worrying too much about clever if you can be very strong. This almost completely defines the action genre. It is about guys (usually) chasing each other, thumping each other and blowing shit up. This is where T:S comes home and delivers. It's got all the things you look for in an action flick: big guns (tick), attack helicopters (tick), funky secret commando hand signal stuff (tick), blowing shit up (tick, tick, tick), and best of all, big tough guys taking an absolute flogging (sadly I don't mean an actual flogging on a rack. I think the only SF film to deliver that particular delicacy must be Starship Troopers. If you know of any others please, please tell me). In this instance I mean fisty-cuffs to the snoz stuff.

This is what kept me going. I really liked seeing Sam Worthington² get killed, take a nude mud bath, be beaten, shot at, beaten again, killed again, resurrected, beaten again, and then suicide. Not only is that a thrashing and a half, but it is also one heck of a character arc! And, he just eats it up. I want the next film to be about Marcus Wright stirring things up in the afterlife. OOOHHH - Marcus Wright Vs The Mummy!! I would so totally go and see that. The human equivalent of the bear vs shark question. Brilliant.
But I digress. Again.

On the way home I thought of a great drinking game for this film. It goes like this - first of all you need to get all resistance (shame they skipped the Steampunk possibilities - but one can't have everything) and build (or borrow if you're not well suited to experimental conditions) an alcohol distillation set up ("a still")and make some moonshine (Please remember to cut the juice you get!) then you and your mates all take a swig and settle down to watch this film. Once it starts, every time Marcus Wright does something brutal or has something brutal done to him you have another shot. I leave it up to you to decide if kissing Helena should count. In this way, if you are by some miracle still conscious by the end of the film, you really don't really care that most of the film made no sense and that John Connor is a total arse.

Everybody Wins!³

1. There is both a "Vietnam War for Dummies" and a "War on Terrorism for Dummies" actually published. I thought I was being funny, but it turns out satire is too easily just being inaccurate.
2. Who, BTW, was awesome as Macbeth. Man, I love that version. Even better than Polanski's. Really.
3. Except the humans. And Sam Worthington.