Before I can talk about the book Terminator Salvation: Trial By Fire by Timothy Zahn, which follows upon the events of the 2009 movie Terminator Salvation, I need to provide a bit of background.
Arnold Schwarzenegger truly was a machine in 1984 when James Cameron’s movie Terminator burst onto the scene. He played a cyborg assassin from the future sent to the past to stop John Connor from being born. To do that, he needs to kill Connor’s mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) before he could be born. Of course, the Terminator wasn’t the only thing sent back in time. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was also sent back by the John Connor of the future to prevent this from happening. These three characters – John, Sarah, and Kyle – are intrinsically tied across time throughout the entire series.
Putting aside the dangers of time travel and altering the future by affecting the past, Terminator was a science fiction phenomenon that inspired two other movies further exploring the potential of world domination by machines – Terminator 2: Judgement Day (T2) in 1991, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (T3) in 2003. Though I would like to forget T3, the first two were amazing films with special effects and ideas that really pushed science fiction films to become more technologically adept.
I saw Terminator Salvation in May 2009 and seem to be firmly in the minority when it comes to thinking the movie didn’t suck. Personally, I liked the film and feel it held true to the spirit of the original three films. Unlike the first three Terminator films, which started in the “present” of 1984 and headed toward the inevitable “Judgement Day” when the machines take over, Terminator Salvation picked up in 2018 after the machines had already taken over.
Skynet, an artificially intelligent computer system, started a nuclear war to destroy or enslave humanity to better protect it. The Resistance is a loose federation of quasi-military groups around the world hoping to destroy the machines and free mankind. The machines are pretty good at plotting to destroy the Resistance too.
[Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen Terminator Salvation yet.]
At the beginning of the film, John Connor (Christian Bale, Batman Begins) isn’t quite the all mighty Resistance leader he is when he sends Kyle Reese back in time in the first movie. But he’s rising through the ranks. After a successful attack on a Skynet base, he stumbles upon evidence of new type of Terminator incorporating human tissue. Along the way, they also discover a group of human prisoners used for some sort of experimentation. After John and his team leave with the rescued prisoners, one more form rises from the rubble – Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington, Avatar)…
Wright stumbles through the remains of Los Angeles and runs into a young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, Star Trek) and his quiet companion Star (Jadgrace Berry). They save Wright from the attack of a T-600 Terminator only to get taken prisoner a bit later. Marcus finds a downed Resistance pilot – Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood, TV’s Burn Notice and Human Target) and the two set off for Connor’s base…
Through the course of the movie, we discover that Wright himself is unknowingly one of this new type of Terminator. Skynet is testing the new model as an infiltration unit that can get inside Resistance cells and with a command from the central computer destroy anything and everything around him. It would be devastating for Skynet to have that kind of capability. No one could be trusted and the Resistance would fall apart.
At the end of the film, the Resistance and Wright attack a Skynet base to try and free Reese and some of the other prisoners before a massive attack on the base can be initiated by the Resistance high command. Though they free the prisoners, Connor gets injured and the high command is destroyed, leaving Connor in charge. To save Connor’s life, Wright gives up his own supercharged heart to be transplanted into Connor’s body.
[End spoilers]
Ultimately it’s a great exploration of what makes us human. Are we simply parts of a big machine or more than that? Can a Terminator still have humanity?
So back to the book now… Connor is still recovering from surgery, but he and his lieutenants are directing Resistance members to kill as many “live” Terminators at the Skynet base as they can and collect as many working or repairable guns and ammunition as they can for the inevitable counter-attack from Skynet.
Connor’s second in command, Barnes (Common in Terminator Salvation) and Blair are on a secondary mission to find Barnes’ brother and give him a proper burial. Reese has been sent out to collect ammunition with a team and Star has stayed behind in camp to help with repairing weapons, which she has turned out to have a gift for.
While Barnes & Blair are away, they discover a data cable leading into the mountains above the ruined base. Thinking it might be a secondary base, they follow the cable until they lose it in the trees, but find a group of people staying in the town of Baker’s Hollow. Led by Mayor Daniel Preston and his daughter Hope, the townspeople have struggled to keep a low profile and simply keep their population of 80+ safe, fed, and out of harm’s way.
Meanwhile, Kyle and his team have stumbled upon a hole covered by a partially intact Terminator. When one of the team gets stuck and they find a number of alert and intact machines below, it leads them in a perilous game of cat and mouse as they try to figure out what the machines are up to and how they can get out safely to get more backup.
Though I’ve not read anything by Timothy Zahn before, his name has appeared on my radar many times in the last 30 years. He’s written fiction in the Star Wars universe, as well as numerous novels of his own – the Cobra Series, the Conquerors Trilogy, the Blackcollar Series, and many others.
I found the book to be an extremely quick read once I got back into the Terminator mindset. It was fascinating to look at Baker’s Hollow as a pocket untouched by the machines so far. The people there were simply trying to hold on to some sense of normalcy in a world torn apart by war and doing a pretty good job of holding things together. Its residents fell back to a simpler way of life – hunting, gathering, and trying to keep sheltered from the elements.
But once outsiders arrive in town, things start to fall apart…
If you want to learn more about the world of Terminator Salvation, I’d encourage you to pick up Terminator Salvation: Trial by Fire. It’s a fast, enjoyable read that fills in a few of the blanks and shows more about how Kyle Reese becomes the man we know from the original Terminator movie. Look for the book in bookstores now!
This article first appeared at BlogCritics.org here.
–Fitz
p.s. Look for these great books at Barnes & Noble.
Saw this today on TechCrunch and thought it was worth noting. A new site called ClerkDogs.com is taking a Pandora-like approach to making movie recommendations.
ClerkDogs.com "Batman Begins" Recommendation
This cool tool is just coming out of beta tomorrow but you can already sign up. Like Pandora, the ClerkDogs guys have a way of classifying movies that allows you to see how one movie is related to others.
In the example I’ve included here, I put in “Batman Begins” to see what came up. Some of them I was expecting (pretty much all the superheroes), but I was surprised to see Casino Royale and Dark City (both excellent flicks) in the list.
The service is just getting going, so don’t be surprised if there aren’t a ton of recommendations for everything you’re looking for. But I have a feeling that as it continues to operate, we’re going to see this grow and grow with better and better recommendations.
So if you’re looking for some interesting movies and like the Pandora approach to recommendations, be sure to check out ClerkDogs! (Keep in mind as it leaves beta tomorrow, it’ll be a madhouse to sign up for.)
–Fitz
p.s. Pick up Casino Royale, Dark City, The Dark Knight, or Batman Begins at Amazon if you’re interested:
So today I heard that Shannon Doherty has just been confirmed as part of the new Beverly Hills 90210 remake. Tori Spelling was already involved I believe. And I think Jennie Garth and the guy who ran the “Peach Pit” are also in this new spin-off. (See more here at ComingSoon.net.)
And 99% of the other shows seem to be variations on a theme. (The exception in my mind was Big Bang Theory.)
Hollywood too has had a long stretch of remaking older movies. And yes, we seem to go through this phase now and then. But who really needs to see an updated version of Short Circuit? Come on!
Where are the original scripts? Chris Nolan did Memento a few years ago, and that cemented his entry into the world of unique film makers. He’s continued making bold and amazing films with Batman Begins, The Prestige, and now The Dark Knight. M. Night Shymalan did that quite a while ago with the Sixth Sense and has fallen further and further into mediocre outings.
Who’s writing unique and challenging screenplays and television scripts? Anybody?
Even Guillermo del Toro is starting to fall into that trap… The Hobbit just follows on the heels of the Lord of the Rings… Let’s just hope that he keeps making unique films like Pan’s Labyrinth.
Is anyone else disturbed by this trend that seems to be getting much much worse?
Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? (Btw… if they remake Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I know the world is coming to an end.)
All I can say is “wow” to this movie. And I’ll supplement that with a quote from Spinal Tap… “This One Goes to Eleven…” 150 minutes of build, catch your breath, build again cycles — every time you catch your breath and think they’ve reached a climax, they hit the next gear.
Rating:
Ledger deserves at least an Oscar nod, preferably the dang award. Nolan should get a best director nod. And Nolan & Goyer should win for best screenplay.
Yes, it’s that good.
Without giving anything away that hasn’t been shared in the trailers… the movie picks up a year after the first movie ended. Crime is down. Gotham has a new White Knight of a District Attorney. And Batman has been making an impact.
But criminal forces are shifting. A new player is in town – calling himself the Joker – and he’s causing trouble for cops and the mob equally. What’s scarier is he has a vision for the future of Gotham City…
All the gang is back from Batman Begins. Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Batman. Michael Caine as Alfred. Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. Gary Oldman as Lt. Jim Gordon. And they’ve changed a face from the old crew — Rachel Dawes, played by Katie Holmes, is now played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She does a great job of stepping into those shoes as an Assistant D.A.
There’s some new faces also, including Anthony Michael Hall as reporter Mike Engel and Nestor Carbonell as the Mayor of Gotham. And it goes without saying that Heath Ledger is there as the Joker, in one of his final performances before his untimely death.
But beyond the amazing cast that was assembled and Heath Ledger’s amazing performance was the story… Exploring themes of growth vs. decay, the corruptibility of man, and what it takes to be the hero who’s needed, but not necessarily wanted. Heady topics.
Nolan has painted a masterpiece with this movie. It’s going to be tough to top with another one.
A scale of zero to 4 just doesn’t cut it. This one goes to 11.
Go see this at the theater — IMAX or your standard theater will do — and hold on to your seats. It’s one hell of a ride.
–Fitz
p.s. Oh and one more thing… Here are some reviews some friends of mine and from around the web…
Yes, I had a chance to see this film today. Without a doubt it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in the superhero genre ever. I loved Iron Man and this blew it totally out of the water.
I need to take some time to digest the 150 minute running time, but I will be writing up a couple of reviews over the next couple of days… One without spoilers and one with.
Go see this film. Heath Ledger is amazing. And Nolan put together one hell of a ride.
I recently had a chance to see the movie Jumper on DVD. I have to admit I was expecting a train wreck after all the negative press this movie got. However, I actually enjoyed the movie (to a point). Does that make me a bad person? Or just indicate I have bad taste? There were of course things I thought could’ve been done better, but overall I didn’t hate the film.
(I’m not rushing out to buy it right away, but if I find it on sale sometime down the line I might pick it up.)
David Goyer wrote the script, which is based on a series of young adult novels by Steven Gould. I’ve liked Goyer’s work in the past – he’s done scripts for lots of movies I’ve enjoyed such as Ghost Rider, Blade: Trinity, Blade 2, Batman Begins, and so on. I haven’t read the books, but from what I could tell from the extras on the DVD, they diverged a bit from the books to get a more Hollywood-type script anyway.
Rating:
That said… Let’s talk about the cast. Hayden Christensen was the main Jumper in the film, David “Rice Bowl” Rice. Most famous for playing Annakin Skywalker, I can’t say that he’s ever really done much for me as an actor. I did like him in Life as a House with Kevin Kline. If you get a chance to see that, I recommend it. But he didn’t do much for me in this film.
Then you have Jamie Bell as Griffin, another Jumper. I honestly liked his character more than Hayden’s.
Diane Lane sleep walks through the film as David Rice’s mother.
Sam Jackson goes overboard (in an ok way) as Roland, a Paladin determined to wipe out all Jumpers. His white hair was a bit over the top, but I’m guessing there’s a story there we never found out.
And then there’s Rachel Bilso, who played Millie Harris, David Rice’s crush in high school and damsel in distress through most of the movie. Bilson is cute. And I think she did what she could with the character.
So overall, the cast didn’t really thrill me much.
The special effects however were pretty cool. The locations were awesome.
Was this a great movie? Heck no. But I’ll give it 2/4. It had its moments. Maybe a whole movie based around the Griffin character would be more interesting? Who knows.
Have to share with you a recent discovery; one that I’d read a couple of reviews of in entertainment/movie magazines, but hadn’t really considered until I added it to my Netflix queue and it showed up the other day… It is Sunshine, from director Danny Boyle, starring Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, and others…
Rating:
What if the sun was dying out and we had to restart it? Sunshine deals with the second desperate Icarus mission to restart the sun and save mankind. Think the brilliance 2001: A Space Odyssey meets the smart storytelling of 28 Days Later and you have the barest image of this movie. Not since 2001 have I seen such a smart, well written, and well performed movie with special effects.
Cillian Murphy was in Danny Boyle’s first directorial effort – 28 Days Later — and has been in a variety of other movies since then, including Batman Begins (as the Scarecrow, which he will be reprising in The Dark Knight), Red Eye, the Wind that Shakes the Barley, and others. He plays the haunted physicist Robert Capa, who created the device that will theoretically restart the sun.
Michelle Yeoh, has been in more movies than I can count, including the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, Memoirs of a Geisha, and the upcoming Mummy movie Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. She plays Corazon, who maintains the Icarus’ oxygen garden and food source.
And Chris Evans, who has played the Human Torch in the last two Fantastic Four movies, has never really seemed to be much of an actor. But his portrayal of Mace, one of the pilots of the Icarus, changed my mind. This character is VERY different from Johnny Storm and quite a revelation. As Yoda would say, “Pleasantly surprised, I was.”
The rest of the cast does a great job, but it’s the ensemble as a whole who pulls off the movie.
The special effects were excellent and only played a minimal part in the movie. One of the issues I have with many modern science fiction movies is that the SFX take over, making the rest of the parts of the movie — characters, story, plot — immaterial. (Which, let’s face it, sometimes is the point. Though I loved Transformers, it was because it didn’t make you think — it was just fun to watch.) Sunshine made the special effects simply the setting for the movie and never made them try and take center stage.
So I’ve been gushing over this movie and I only have one nitpick. Nowhere in the movie do they describe why there is artificial gravity on the ship. It’s just taken for granted. The ship as a whole is not rotating (like in 2001) to cause centrifugal force and thus a limited gravitational field of a simulated earth. Maybe they have another device on board using superconductors as was reported a couple of years ago in Slashdot (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/24/1412230&from=rss)?
At any rate… This is the best intelligent science fiction movie I’ve seen in a very long time. I recommend it to anybody who likes good stories and anyone who likes great science fiction. I happily give it a strong 4 out of 4.
Just saw this lovely story reported on ComingSoon.net from the AP and CNN about how filming a scene for the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight) had to be cancelled due to the pollution in Hong Kong harbor. What an amazing concept. They found fun things like salmonella and TB in the water and didn’t want to subject cast or crew to such conditions.
Just bizarre. Proves though what I’ve heard from many people who have traveled to Asia (China especially). Pollution is horrible there. Air quality is bad. Water is bad. And the Olympics on 2008 will be there… Can hardly wait to see the political fall out of that decision…
Anyway… Have to say this is the first time I can remember hearing about a movie not being able to film scenes on location due to pollution!!
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Arnold Schwarzenegger truly was a machine in 1984 when James Cameron’s movie Terminator burst onto the scene. He played a cyborg assassin from the future sent to the past to stop John Connor from being born. To do that, he needs to kill Connor’s mother, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) before he could be born. Of course, the Terminator wasn’t the only thing sent back in time. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was also sent back by the John Connor of the future to prevent this from happening. These three characters – John, Sarah, and Kyle – are intrinsically tied across time throughout the entire series.
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