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Terminator: Salvation Review

I've been a fan of the Terminator franchise for pretty much as long as there has been a Terminator franchise. And, like many fans of the series, I was somewhat underwhelmed by T3. But I had high hopes for the newest installment, as the trailers made it look like the creators of this installment "got" the series. Fortunately, there were only a couple of hiccups in this otherwise excellent installment. Yes, the original timeline is pretty much ruined at this point, and there was one bit that I found rather hokey (details in the spoiler section after the jump), but overall I thought this was a great return to what makes the Terminator universe so good.

Many of my favorite moments came from homages to the first two movies: some were pretty direct, like Sarah's photograph and cassettes, while others were more subtle like the way John was reloading his weapon while under attack like his mother did in the steel mill scene in T2. I also have to give full credit to the SFX crew who put Schwarzenegger's head on Roland Kickinger's body - the combination was totally seamless, and made it look like the original T-800 model 101 from his first appearance in 1984.

So the effects were great, but that's to be expected nowadays. What really made the film excellent was the work done by Bale, Sam Worthington (as Marcus), and Anton Yelchin (as Kyle Reese). They were able to add the much-needed human element to counteract the machine world.

So what were the few hiccups I mentioned earlier? First, the timeline of this universe has to pretty much be ditched entirely. Reese is about 8-10 years younger than he should be, as if pushing off Judgment Day also pushed off his parents getting together. I also thought Marcus giving up his heart was a bit silly. The gesture was nice, but by that point it had been beaten, shocked, and exposed to the elements. Even if John's body didn't reject the transplant, and even if the M.A.S.H. unit was really good enough to conduct a heart transplant, that poor thing was so used up it likely wouldn't have given John more than a few more minutes.

Aside from those two points, though, there's really nothing to complain about without getting nitpicky. As I said above, I thought it was an excellent movie and a very worthy addition to the series.

Collector/Modeler Interest:
Jada and Maisto both make current gen Jeep Wranglers, but only as 2-door versions. These could be modified without too much difficulty thanks to the square sides and relatively simple lines of the Jeep. Playmates' smaller figure line is a bit too big, but some discount stores have had a limited number of humans and endos that are around 1/24 scale. Also, certain large robots in Playmates' line like the Harvester or H/K may make passable 1/24 replicas.


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