The T-600 terminator is heavily armed and an ungainly creature, capable of releasing enormous firepower, but as a single-minded attack machine, it is a little bit dim. It just keeps going until it gets completely blown apart. Terminator Salvation, in which the T-600 Terminator features, is a little bit like that. On the big screen and through the powerful sound system of the Ambassador Cinema in Ximending, it certainly packed a powerful punch during the industry and press screening on Monday, as the T-600s and their more sophisticated brethren made life hell for humans. It’s also hell for the audience, who get beaten back into their seats by the relentless onslaught of devastation. For an action thriller, Terminator Salvation is a remarkably depressing affair.
Another similarity that Terminator Salvation shares with the T-600 is that both were made on an assembly line. It’s just a case of putting the components together. This accounts for the sense of deja vu that crops up every so often throughout the film. There are robots, fashion accessories and lines of dialogue that seem to have escaped from the Matrix trilogy. Throw in some ideas from Total Recall and plot points from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Bring in characters from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. And then, of course, there is the back catalogue of the previous three Terminator films to comprehensively cannibalize. Assemble according to the easy-to-understand diagram shown in the “How to Make a Big Budget Blockbuster” brochure that is included in the pack.
In the end, what you get is a perfectly serviceable blockbuster. Unfortunately, despite the frenetic action and high-flown language about what it is to be human, the film lacks any kind of cohesive logic or emotional foundation. It’s all about fitting the bits together, and given that there is time travel involved, this process can get pretty fraught. The ghost of Rene Barjavel’s “grandfather paradox” hangs over the film, but it wasn’t long before I gave up trying to work out the logic of it. The director didn’t seem to care very much, and there was more than enough action to keep the eye and the mind distracted.
The action is spectacular and pretty much unrelenting, focusing largely around the character of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a convicted murderer whose heart and brain are incorporated into a mechanized endo-skeleton of some virtually indestructible material (Wolverine without the claws), who teams up with Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the character who comes back in time in the first Terminator movie. They go looking for John Connor (Christian Bale), the leader of a human resistance movement, the protagonist of the second and third Terminator movies. The meeting will either save the world for humanity or destroy it: just hang on to your seats.
Director McG’s world of post-apocalyptic chic blurs dangerously with the world of Zion in The Matrix, though McG favors a grimmer, grimier look. Fashion suffers, and not much is gained. Bale, who is no stranger to the role of misunderstood world savior, looks convincingly harrowed by the complex choices he faces to maintain both his own humanity and save the world, but well, the world of Terminator: Salvation really doesn’t seem worth saving.
Much better to focus on the budding romance between Marcus Wright and hot fighter pilot Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood). Fortunately, the production team was too busy with blowing things up to get her to take her kit off (this is reserved for a digitized version of Arnold Schwarzenegger who makes a cameo appearance in one of the film’s most embarrassingly inept scenes). The budding relationship has some sparks of life, but this is quickly overwhelmed by innumerable conflagrations.
Even the one laugh out loud moment in the whole 130-minute running time was borrowed from the first Terminator film. John Connor makes use of the Schwarzenegger tag line: “I’ll be back.” It kind of works, even without the Austrian accent. Sad to say, there are suggestions that a Terminator V film may be in development.
It starts out as a heartwarming clip. A young girl, clearly delighted to be in Tokyo, beams as she makes a peace sign to the camera. Seconds later, she is shoved to the ground from behind by a woman wearing a surgical mask. The assailant doesn’t skip a beat, striding out of shot of the clip filmed by the girl’s mother. This was no accidental clash of shoulders in a crowded place, but one of the most visible examples of a spate of butsukari otoko — “bumping man” — shoving incidents in Japan that experts attribute to a combination of gender
The race for New Taipei City mayor is being keenly watched, and now with the nomination of former deputy mayor of Taipei Hammer Lee (李四川) as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, the battle lines are drawn. All polling data on the tight race mentioned in this column is from the March 12 Formosa poll. On Christmas Day 2010, Taipei County merged into one mega-metropolis of four million people, making it the nation’s largest city. The same day, the winner of the mayoral race, Eric Chu (朱立倫) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), took office and insisted on the current
March 16 to March 22 Hidden for decades behind junk-filled metal shacks, trees and overgrowth, a small domed structure bearing a Buddhist swastika resurfaced last June in a Taichung alley. It was soon identified as a remnant of the 122-year-old Gokokuzan Taichuu-ji (Taichung Temple, 護國山台中寺), which was thought to have been demolished in the 1980s. In addition, a stone stele dedicated to monk Hoshu Ono, who served as abbot from 1914 to 1930, was discovered in the detritus. The temple was established in 1903 as the local center for the Soto school
When my friend invited me to take a tour of a wooden house hand-built by a Pingtung County resident, my curiosity was instantly piqued and I readily agreed to join him. If it was built by a single person, it would surely be quite small. If it was made of wood, it would surely be cramped, dingy and mildewy. If it was designed by an amateur, it would surely be irregular in shape, perhaps cobbled together from whatever material was easily available. I was wrong on all counts. As we drove up to the house in Fangliao Township (枋寮鄉), I was surprised
RSS