Please, stay in your homes. Don’t panic. Hollywood has unleashed giant, murderous robots on the planet and while this may sound appealing, don’t expect too much from this year’s silver screen incarnations. Both “Terminator: Salvation” and “Transformers 2″ are bitter disappointments but for different reasons.
“Salvation” is a lifeless hunk of filmmaking that adds nothing to established Terminator lore. It merely revisits the futuristic setting and titular killing machines; a mediocre film with a big budget. “Transformers” however is an entirely different beast. Imagine a series of flashy, 30-second commercials cobbled together, running for 150 minutes, and you’ll get a vague idea of what you’re in for. Images, sounds – all of it – mashed together into thin slices, piled sky high.
Both films lack the key ingredient that made their original incarnations so popular: charisma. It’s difficult to sit through a movie where the machines are so well-rendered but lack any personality. Re-watch the original Terminator films and it’s easy to see why they’re so memorable.
