Terminator Salvation doesn't so much invite you into its grim vision of a robot-ruled future as bash you over the head with it.
Set in 2018, the thunderous flick explores a gritty nightmarescape in which Terminators roam the earth, killing and collecting human specimens amid a nearly nonstop succession of booms, thumps, clanks and seat-rattling rumbles.
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Terminator Salvation Uses Badass Robots to Explore Humanity
Exclusive Images Reveal McG's Terminator Salvation Vision
The movie's stark visuals and mankind-versus-machines story line take a back seat to the ominous audio: The noise ceases only when Danny Elfman's aggressive score moves in for the kill.
But despite the nearly overwhelming sonic assault, Salvation, which opens Thursday, restores credibility to a sci-fi franchise widely perceived as being terminated by Arnold Schwarzenegger's cartoony 2003 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Thanks to a spectacularly stark setting, solid acting, new models of homicidal robots and a story larded with references to the mythology established in James Cameron's original 1984 and 1991 Terminator films, Salvation director McG shoots and scores in this PG-13-rated sequel.
Salvation begins after the machine-masterminded nuke attack known as Judgment Day, with artificial intelligence network Skynet laying waste to what's left of humankind. Painting a portrait of sheer desolation, McG and cinematographer Shane Hurlbut make the most of their money shots, including a stunning reveal of a ruined Los Angeles and distressing, car-littered desert highways that bring to mind a sepia-toned outtake from Mad Max.
Drained of color, this charred wasteland serves as dreary sanctuary for pockets of human stragglers. Chief among them: John Connor (played by Christian Bale), a low-ranking officer in the resistance. Devoted to subverting Skynet authority, Connor assumes command of rebel human forces after tangling with a succession of killer bots.
Meanwhile, teenager Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), hiding out in devastated Los Angeles, takes up with tough guy Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who mysteriously emerges out of nowhere after surviving a death-row execution. Together with mute urchin Star (Jadagrace Berry), they hit the road to do battle with hordes of desert-dwelling Terminators.
Bale is believable as the intense foot soldier. Worthington, an Australian actor, comes across as a world-class brawler while managing to create empathy for his Man With No Memory. Yelchin, who plays Chekov in the new Star Trek film, sells his smart and spunky take on Kyle while Moon Bloodgood, playing a downed fighter pilot who befriends Marcus, adds a welcome jolt of ass-whooping sexual tension.
Pedestrian dialogue doesn't give the cast much to work with beyond rudiments of motivation and story points. Humor, gallows or otherwise, has apparently been annihilated along with the bulk of humanity.
Still, Salvation's noisy action sequences rattle along at a breakneck clip to the movie's satisfying, if inevitable, payoff: Ordinary humans outsmart, outmaneuver and out-smash the attack machines. Conjured by Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Charles Gibson (the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) and animatronics supervisor John Rosengrant (Stan Winston Studio), the androids make up in variety what they lack in personality.
Gleaming eye candy includes Hydrobots (razor-headed water snakes); Moto-Terminators (two-wheeled predators); the 80-foot-tall, spider-shaped Harvester; and foot soldier Hunter-Killers, equipped with the glowing red eye-orbs seen in earlier Terminator films.
A couple of reasonably well-justified surprise twists sustain Terminator Salvation's tale, as does a brief glimpse of things to come during the final throwdown, while a gruesomely captivating steampunk torture device keeps this post-apocalyptic adventure from getting too predictable.
But when it comes to blowing stuff up, McG has set a high-decibel benchmark likely to last at least until June 24, when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits theaters.
Wired: Nightmarish landscape; high-intensity acting; scary robots.
Tired: Loud. Really loud.
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