I. The Narcissistic Savior
The biggest difference between this Terminator and the earlier installments actually isn’t that those took place in the “present” while this one takes place in the “future.” It’s that John undergoes a change in how he identifies himself. In the earlier movies, people kept nagging John Connor: “You’re important,” “You’re important,” “You’re important,” while John himself was deeply puzzled by it. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, teenage John complained that his mother was always telling him how important he was, while he himself had no idea what to do with that. The TV series’ John had a similar hang-up. And in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, young-adult John had grown into a total loser, using his own body to prove that he really wasn’t important at all.
By the time we reach this fourth installment, his crazy mom has been dead for years, Schwarzenegger hasn’t even gone into mass production, and everyone who used to repeat “You’re important” is dead and gone. Yet John is suddenly no longer confused. He decides, without the slightest doubt, that he is humanity’s savior. Before, his crazy mom was terrified that if anything happened to her son, humanity would be finished. This time, John himself treats his own life as more important than anything. So John’s first priority isn’t saving humanity; it’s making sure he stays alive.
As a side effect, the life of John’s dad becomes unimaginably important too: “Without my dad, there is no me; without me, humanity has no future!!” (The main plot of this movie is basically ‘John Saves Dad.’)
There is, of course, nothing logically wrong with that. The problem is that John works out this logic himself and then announces it himself. Which is a little awkward.
“You’re important!” “You’re important!” “You’re important!”—that’s fine.
“I’m important!” “I’m important!” “I’m important!”—that’s a little embarrassing. Everyone knows you really are important, but could you maybe stop making it quite so obvious?
Because John has to act according to the logic of “I’m important,” some of his behavior becomes extremely punchable. Take the grandiose “we’re all dead” speech everyone saw in the trailer. In the trailer it builds the atmosphere nicely, but in the actual movie it doesn’t look quite so noble and aboveboard.
The purpose of this speech is to rally the Resistance to boycott the order from above to attack Skynet, thereby giving John a chance to rescue the humans imprisoned at Skynet headquarters. John raises the purpose of the rescue to the lofty level of “humanity vs. machinery,” but in reality his most important goal is still to get his dad out of there.
Of course, this rather selfish decision does accidentally save the main force of the Resistance in the end, but that’s just a blind cat running into a dead rat. Apparently John’s most leader-like quality is that he has spectacularly good dumb luck.
Here’s another example: at the end, Marcus decides to save John by giving him his heart. In principle, this should be the scene the director leans on hardest for emotional impact. Instead, the director lets it slip by in the most understated way. John doesn’t just fail to put up much of a protest; he doesn’t even say thank you, and his grateful look isn’t especially noticeable either.
At first I figured it was probably because this movie’s director and screenwriter were equally terrible and couldn’t even shoot an emotional scene. Later I think I got it: according to the logic of “I’m important,” John isn’t going to refuse when someone offers him a new heart. The whole movie spends so much effort keeping him alive—he can’t suddenly have a burst of humanity at the end and leave the hope of life to somebody else, can he? So he might as well shamelessly take it, guilt-free. Which means this scene’s lukewarm treatment is actually logical. It’s not that the director can’t do emotion; the script simply wrote John as this kind of rotten bastard.
II. Skynet, the Brain-Dead Network
In the earlier Terminator movies, Skynet was terrifying. In this one, Skynet is brain-dead.
For example, the Moto-Terminator makes a spectacularly cool entrance (even though its firepower is lousy): during a high-speed chase, lots of car debris flies across the road ahead (a blatant Michael Bay-style set piece), and the Moto-Terminator instantly calculates the debris’ trajectories, avoiding it with a ground-hugging slide that only appears in motorcycle racing when a bike takes a huge turn. The Moto-Terminator seems pretty smart. But the second time it appears, John merely stretches a rope in front of it and makes it tumble through the air several times. And he doesn’t even wait until it gets close before suddenly pulling up a rope—the rope is already set while it’s still a long way off. Somehow the Moto-Terminator suddenly becomes brain-dead: it can calculate high-speed flying car debris, but it trips over a rope that has been sitting there in plain sight.
If Skynet using fake weaknesses to lure humanity into attacking it counts as having at least a little intelligence, then its Marcus plan is a one-hundred-percent brain-dead plan.
First of all, this plan could actually have ended the moment John’s dad was captured. Skynet plainly puts John’s dad at the top of its hit list, and after capturing him it has a thousand chances to kill him, yet for some reason never does. Saying it wants to use him as bait to lure John into the net doesn’t work either. In the first three movies, Skynet’s method of dealing with John is to go back in time and eliminate John or eliminate the conditions that would allow John to be born. In other words, although the Terminator series never quite bothers to explain its time-travel theory directly, it is clearly of the Butterfly Effect variety: change the past and the future changes with it, so whether this future John lives or dies is irrelevant. Kill the John in the past and the one in the present disappears too. If killing the past John has no effect on the present John, then what were all those robots doing when they went back in the first three movies—taking a vacation? So using his dad to lure John to his death makes no sense. And even if Skynet wanted to lure John in, it could simply have secretly executed his dad first. Once the man is captured and goes completely off the radar, John is going to come rescue him sooner or later anyway. Apart from Marcus, Skynet has no other mole, so was it really worried about the news leaking out?
And one step further: even if Skynet did manage to lure John in at the end, it somehow failed to prepare enough troops for this “meticulously planned” trap! In the end, John and Marcus encounter only a very limited number of T-600s and T-800s. This is Skynet’s San Francisco headquarters! Are all those T-600s we saw earlier outside playing cards now?
One step further: even if Skynet had complete confidence in the T-600s and T-800 inside the base, once Marcus connects to Skynet and sends the message to John, can’t Marcus’s mission be considered complete? At that point Skynet should simply shut him down while he’s connected. But Skynet actually lays the entire plan out for Marcus. Marcus was still completely in the dark and had no idea what to do; this little revelation directly makes him switch sides. And Skynet has absolutely no control over the product it created, so all it can do is watch helplessly as Marcus goes off to save John.
I’ve never seen a computer this obnoxiously stupid.
After watching this movie, I feel full of hope for humanity’s future. With robots this dumb, losing would be pretty embarrassing.
III. Miscellaneous
A few scattered thoughts before I wrap up.
On the Details:
Judging from the boring publicity before the release, this movie gives the impression that it cares deeply about details. From the mysterious release of robot design drawings and scene concept art right at the start, it leaves you with that impression. In reality, the film’s attention to detail is mostly confined to some of the production design; the more important plot construction is unbelievably slapdash. Besides the Moto-Terminator example mentioned above, here’s another: when John finally rescues the hostages from headquarters, he has them go straight outside to get into vehicles. But outside, the place is guarded by heavily armed T-600s and similar machines! And John plainly rode in alone on a motorcycle; he went to considerable trouble to avoid the patrolling machines outside on the way in, so where did these vehicles come from? Sending the others out at that point is basically sending them to their deaths, isn’t it?
On the Homage:
Like the third installment, this one also pays tribute to the first two Terminator movies.
The classic line “I’ll be back” is delivered by John this time. It feels a little forced and gets a laugh, but it’s still better than the third movie’s cringe-inducing “she’ll be back.”
The old man’s line “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves” also returns, again spoken by John himself. It appears at the very end of the movie, and what it really means is: “We’re making more sequels.” But after so many sequels, all they’ve ultimately done is repeatedly prove the immortality of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Also, anyone who says this movie wasn’t inspired by Transformers can beat me to death and I still won’t believe them. The “Harvester” looks exactly like something from Transformers, for starters. The Hydrobot copies the tail of Scorponok, and the scene where the Moto-Terminator slides down the Harvester’s leg is virtually identical to the scene where Scorponok springs out of Blackout’s body. So after watching it, I thought that the Terminator Transformers spoof someone made online not long ago had real potential. Since we’ve already got AVP, making a TVT someday shouldn’t be asking too much, right?
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