Salvation for a Machine by Prospero Pulma Jr.

Salvation for a Machine
By Prospero Pulma Jr.

Terminator Salvation, the latest chapter in the saga about autonomous, intelligent, and well, killer machines and post-Armageddon humans furiously resisting annihilation, begins with a John Connor showing that he is not the same person who barely fought off the machines sent to kill him in the three earlier installments of the Terminator franchise. He jumps from a chopper and promptly dispatches a disabled machine with several shots to the head. Yes, the boy is fully grownup, armed to the teeth meaning he can shot back at Skynet’s high-tech foot soldiers, and, for the first time, can send other people to do the killing, er, destroying machines, for himself. But he is not yet the heavily hyped future leader of humans who survived Skynet’s opening salvos in its war to exterminate humanity. He is somewhere in the middle of the organizational chart and his command covers an area conveniently located south of Skynet Central.

A few minutes into the film, the attention is on Christian Bale, who plays the adult John Connor. His order to his A-10 Thunderbolts to protect civilians from Hunter-Killer Terminators hunting a teenage Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) brings him close to a mysterious figure who changes his view of his expected future, not to mention add excitement to the plot. Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) only remembers being in a lethal injection chamber and donating his body to Cyberdyne for research. Marcus tags along with Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood), one of the Thunderbolt pilots, back to John’s base. The first clue about his real nature comes when a magnetic landmine, designed against anything metallic like Terminators, maims him. John becomes baffled about their unexpected discovery that Marcus has functioning organs, including a wildly beating heart, infused in his Terminator’s body, something that he did not pick from listening to his mother’s tapes.

John, naturally, is extremely hateful and suspicious of Terminators so he decides to cut up Marcus to study him. Unlike in death row where he had no trump card, Marcus’ knowledge of Kyle Reese’s whereabouts saves his hide, and he offers to assist John in rescuing Kyle before a major offensive by the Resistance levels the Skynet complex that houses the young Kyle and other captives. In Skynet, Marcus discovers that, despite his sincere intention to help John, he is merely obeying his programming to lure John and Kyle into a trap. His human nature overrides Skynet’s commands. He defects to the Resistance and rescues John and Kyle but at a high cost as John sustained a mortal wound inflicted by the original Terminator, the T-800. Marcus offers to donate his heart to John, redeeming himself for the crime that sent him to death row.

Terminator Salvation fits neatly with the three earlier Terminator chapters. As a prequel, it depicts the future after the nuclear holocaust initiated by Skynet, before Kyle Reese was sent back to protect a young Sarah Connor and a still-to-be-conceived John Connor. Proof of it is its retention of a pregnant Kate Connor (Bryce Dallas Howard), a character played by Claire Danes in Terminator: Rise of the Machines. However, it veered away from the three earlier installments over its choice of a thinking and feeling Terminator. Marcus Wright, a death row inmate turned by Cyberdyne into an advanced model of a deep-penetration Terminator, displays a wide range of emotions, from great shock from awakening to a world in shambles, confusion about the gap in his memory, and enormous disbelief over the discovery of his true nature. Sam Worthington handles his acting task well up to the point that the audience believes that the story is about a convict seeking redemption and not about humans fighting a war for self-preservation. Had the script given him a more complex role, Christian Bale would have brought his renowned thespic skills to the screen. However, his talent still shone through like in his solo radio broadcast and his John Connor character would have become completely forgettable if it was given to an average actor.

In Terminator Salvation, John Connor did not expect to encounter Terminators as advanced as Marcus Wright, with a metal endoskeleton and a very human heart that sought redemption, a killer who grabbed his only chance of self-cleansing by sacrificing himself.