Is there any Salvation for McG? (When the world ends, pt 2)

John Connor & Marcus Wright

I am personally a bit nostalgic over some of the action flicks made in the 80s and early 90s. There was a particular air of excitement for me to go and see Terminator: Salvation in the theatres. I must admit the trailer was pretty awesome.

If you haven’t seen the movie stop reading here.

While the action elements were good it felt like too little time was spent slowing down the pace for the audience take a breather and get a chance to actually care for the characters.

“It’s about the emotion, silly” – like Allan Ball said jokinly on a Comic-con panel mentioning the rule of thumb to write good scripts.

Losing Salvation
A big issue in Salvation was that it never made showed how the weight on the world on John Connor’s shoulder affected him. Also it never showed how the internal conflict in Marcus Wright had affected him. This was never really explored that well in the movie.

The dynamic between Marcus and Blair Williams seemed to have been lost in the script and only supported some few plot elements. They could’ve dropped it completely because Marcus Wrights background was never really explored. The character Blair Williams could’ve been used as a great counterpoint for Marcus to reveal some of his back-story.

The audiences never really got to feel what Marcus’ “Salvation” really was about because we never really got to understand the inner conflict in Marcus. SALVATION was the title of the movie and they messed up using it as theme by not exploring that back-story of Marcus. What was Marcus’ redemption really about?

If Kyle Reese dreamt of the future in T1, why couldn’t Marcus Wright dream of the past and make the audience understand who he was? Again, it is about the emotions silly, the action really is secondary – even in a Terminator movie.

Also never ever have a kid in a SF/Horror if you don’t plan on killing them off right away. It’s like dogs in disaster movies – directors never have the stomach to kill them off without losing the audience which sadly makes the movie more predictable and less exciting to watch.

The pacing was all messed up and the horror that the first terminator movie really stirred up got lost in the more classical action elements. John Connor did stand up after a serious blow from the model Arnold has potrayed in three movies. The same model that once killed his father with one deadly blow. As a storytelling tool, perhaps the machine should have killed off a supporting character just to show how scary terminators can be.

Post-apocalypse Now! – Understanding that the world has ended
Salvation could’ve used flashbacks as a tool to aid character development to try and help the audience understand the emotions the characters goes through in the movie.

Like flashbacks in T1 with Kyle Reese that created the emotions, the sense that the world was going to end. That feeling, that the world did end, never really resonated strongly in Salvation because the audience never got time to see that reflect in the character’s emotions. Which in a way is a big failure.

Also beyond the action and explosion (and the lost horror elements) the movie could’ve utilized different emotional themes in the same manner as the first and second movie succeeded in doing.

In the first two it was the fear of not being able to stop judgement day. In Salvation it could’ve been the fear of being forced to accept the futility of the entire situation.

The fear that the loss of lives, and all the sacrifices would in the end be for nothing. This is a classic post apocalyptic theme where the hero most of the time need to sacrifice himself in the struggle for a better world.

Yet, Salvation went with a mix of classic action hero themes – and it never paid off well.

Kyle Reese – John Connors dad

The importance of the human drama and building a trilogy story arc
Salvation never replicated similar situations like the great moments in T1 and T2 where time was taken to delve deeper into the emotional state of the characters. T2 had some great moments where the story really took a breather. Where John played with the Terminator which helped build on the theme of a lost father figure or when Sarah Connor had a nightmare, seeing Los Angeles burn which showed her fear of futility and her view of “no fate” – an excellent little gem from that movie.

Salvation missed some of those great critical moments. Like John’s relation with Kate and his unborn baby or him questioning himself as a leader or just addressing classic problems like post-traumatic trauma that John without any doubt would’ve got plenty of. While these moment in previous movies would’ve seem trivial, they helped us care for the characters more. It was hard to sympathize with John Connor in this movie.

I hope they try and keep the setting in the future but it sure is a major challenge to make an overall story arc of a future war against an army of machines to work. They can’t just destroy another Skynet base – that would be repeating itself. Also like The Matrix proved, a deus ex machina ending like a truce with the machines would be an epic fail and lazy storytelling. The ending of an epic storyarc like this needs to be smarter, different and the ending needs to be as interesting as the journey to it.

Also, like most sequel it’s not only important to develop the mythology and here’s the tough part. I terminator movie is great because of the human drama. Salvation addressed that where support and main characters encountered wastelanders and fought against the leaders in the resistance. The sequels need to develop this human drama further. Not every surviving human in the world is part of the resistance right – other factions should exist. Perhaps not all of them is loyal to the resistance.

Pregnant Kate Connor & John Connor

The lost family drama
Funny how the now cancelled serier Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chroniclses succeeded in using the theme of fear of futility and the fear of the inevitable judgement day and set it around a family drama. In the Salvation script writers should have addressed John’s fear of losing Kate and her unborn child in combination with his fear of saving his future father, Kyle Reese. The family elements could’ve been much stronger dealt with to make the drama in Salvation even better.

An interesting plot point could’ve been to make Connor not only trying to save his future father, Kyle Reese, but also being forced to save Kate and his unborn child. That dynamic balance would’ve been more interesting to see explored.

Perhaps an extended edition of Salvation could repair some of the issues I have with Salvation. It feels like the writers strike and too many cooks in general messed up this movie that should’ve been handled with much better care.

The sequel
McG now plans on going back to basic with a new terminator hunting John Connor. Even worse the futuristic setting might be moved to a more contemporay setting. Instead of addressing issues and write better characters and a better overall war story arc it seems like McG might go with a more lazy approach instead of developing a working war drama with the Connor family set in the future.

Perhaps there may be some Salvation in McG’s plans for a sequel. Perhaps not.

Easy to play – hard to master

I’m running really fast. I’m playing an arena game in Team Fortress 2. I could’ve taken the easy road, picked that bulky Heavy class and obliterating enemies with a minigun without the need to move too much. Instead I’m running like hell double jumping to dodge rockets, flanking snipers and hitting them in the head with my bat, yet dying horribly over and over again due to my lack of skills in not getting shot by every enemy I encounter.

Like a Steam contact said to me: “The Scout is easy to play – hard to master.” Perhaps that’s why I like this particular character class. I mean come on, you have this scrawny cocky dude carrying a sawed off shotgun, small pistol and a bat while going against grenade launchers, miniguns or rocket launchers. While it is very annoying to die constantly, it’s when your quick nimble underdog succeeds in making an elegant kill, that makes this class more rewarding and fun playing than classes equipped with much more heavier weapons. Also it reminds my of those old school quick reaction skills players neeeded during the Quake days – only this time you have to do it without the rocket launcher.

It will take some time to get better at dodging bullets, rockets and grenades – but I’m not giving up.