Terminator Salvation

So why did this movie suck so much?

That's what I'm thinking to myself Thursday afternoon as I'm driving home from Leominster. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon---and quite hot. The memories of the cold unheated auditoriums there, and the parking lots full of mountains of snow, were a distant memory.

The question was sort of a mystery, because in fact, I hadn't thought that Terminator Salvation actually did suck. In fact, I sort of enjoyed it for the most part. But everyone else seemed to think it sucked, including Roger Ebert who stated, at least in the title of a blog post that I didn't read, that he wished he could be transported in time from the start of the movie two hours until after it had finished. That's harsh.

First things first: the time travel logic in it doesn't make sense, but that really applies to the entire Terminator series. I think this Cracked article pretty much sums it all up. (also check out this hilarious comparison of T2 and T3)

To me, time travel is always a crutch, because it is not really part of the human condition. Lately it seems time travel in movies, and on television, is getting out of hand. It makes me wonder if it is a sign of weakness in story telling. Basically in time travel stories, one is allowed gaping plot holes that would otherwise doom a normal non-time-travel movie.

Did the story here give us characters we cared about? Yes. Did this characters have urgent motivations which were clearly spelled out? For the most part, yes. Well, maybe.

Come to think about it, I suppose the point is that the time travel logic in this case was not only full of holes, but almost illogical. Here's where I understand the criticism, one that can be expressed by a general principle: it's ok to have plot holes in a time travel story but not if those plot holes actually supply the principal motivations for the characters. In other words, it's acceptable somewhat to paper over the inevitable holes in a time-travel story with magic dust, but it is not acceptable to build the foundation of the story around such holes, and that's exactly what this movie was trying to do. But like I said, I suppose one could say as much about the entire series.

Whew, at least I've got a new rule out of this.

That being said, I was very sympathetic to this movie and was able to enjoy it because it expressed something very emotive about the struggle against tyranny in the world today, something that is being ignored in the current narrative of our culture. That is, the movie is really about now, not about the future.

But it's not the machines we're fighting against. The force would that wipe out humanity, or at least reduce the world population to a fraction of its size, is other humans. They only seem like soul-less machines. One could thus argue that the movie tell the truth and a lie at the same time.

The truth is that humanity is under attack. The lie is that the attack is not happening now, but in some alterate reality future. Personally I think the truth-telling part of art always is stronger than the part that tries to tell us lies, no matter what the intention of the film makers.

See this is what happens when I look at the damn reviews before I see a movie. I wind up apologizing for liking it. Damn it, I'm not gonna. The theme of the story involving the decisions made the characters based on their hearts (literally, as it turns out) seemed well conceived, despite the flimsy time travel part. It could have been a lot better movie, to be sure, but I wasn't expecting much.

So yeah, I guess the movie did sort of suck, but it was enjoyable enough that I had to think the question over, and it was worth it all to feel for two hours like I wasn't the only member of the Resistance.