Life After Arnold

[May 20th, 2009]

It’s hard to say when the first omen was spotted—maybe it was the trailer showing a metal foot crushing a human skull, maybe it was the leaked tape of Christian Bale politely inquiring if the cinematographer was professional—but it has for some time been apparent that Terminator Salvation was not going to be a barrel of laughs. As soon as the movie opens, this suspicion is confirmed: It begins with a prologue showing a death-row inmate (Sam Worthington) executed by lethal injection. The chemical paralytic is administered, the screen fills with white light, and before the condemned convict’s eyes appear the words that no man wants to see at the end of his life: “Directed by McG.” He wakes up 15 years later in an ashen, post-nuclear California, and on his face you can see the horror-struck question: Is this our punishment for electing Arnold Schwarzenegger governor? On the upside, with most of the population dead, the state’s unemployment rate has probably dropped below 11 percent.

This consolation aside, Terminator Salvation is not a fun movie. It is, in fact, the most grim, despairing popcorn movie I can remember. Parts of it resemble Schindler’s List if the Nazis were played by robots. And those are the happy parts. It is filmed in a digital dust bowl that looks like McG roasted marshmallows over Los Angeles, put out the blaze with dirty bathwater, then shot a movie the next morning in the campfire pit. (Whatever you might say about the cinematographer, Shane Hurlbut, he is no slouch at capturing burnt-out scenery.) McG, whose clowning around with two Charlie’s Angels movies had fans worried he wasn’t up to this material, has taken the Terminator myth and its promises of doomsday very seriously. This turns out to raise the question of whether it was ever intended to be taken straight at all. The first two James Cameron pictures are at their best as enjoyably muscle-bound camp, with enough hints of disaster to set the imagination running. But who would want to imagine this pallid hell of chrome?

Androids patrol the crispy-fried landscape. They have gotten bigger, I think. Bale takes over the role of possible redeemer John Connor, who was last seen at the close of Terminator 3: Judgment Day ducking into a missile silo as the bombs fell. It is not impossible to imagine that a decade in a fallout shelter with Claire Danes could be a fairly agreeable fate, but it does not seem to have done any favors for Connor’s temperament. (His girlfriend is now played by a pregnant Bryce Dallas Howard, who doesn’t look all that happy either.) He’s a fierce military commando now, crashing helicopters and plugging two rounds into the skull of anything metal. Meanwhile, lethal-injected Sam Worthington has not quite grasped why he has awakened in 2018 with a lot of upper-body strength (hint: He should not have signed that organ donation card), so he joins forces with plucky resistance fighter Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, who can also be seen in Star Trek as Chekov—the kid is apparently laboring under the impression that he’ll get a merit badge if he appears in every movie released this summer). For inspiration, they listen to fireside chats delivered via transistor radio by John Connor: “We are not machines,” he assures them, in case they were confused by the plot cogs whirring around them.

What is Bale like in Terminator Salvation, besides FDR? A lot like a machine, actually. He is barking and brutal. He talks in a blank monotone, except when he gets very emotional and has to switch to the Batman voice. This role, in other words, is an exhibit in the ongoing case that Christian Bale is not a very good actor. On the evidence seen in Terminator movies, the only difference between Bale and Arnold Schwarzenegger is that Arnie knew he was wooden and boring. Bale is unaware, so he can’t compensate with a joke now and again. Instead, he remains completely dedicated, thoroughly humorless and utterly robotic. He is, in the worst way, a fucking professional.