Indie Film Journal

TERMINATOR SALVATION director: McG; starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin

Back in 1984, James Cameron’s low budget sci-fi action film The Terminator seemed to be just about the coolest movie of its time. Borrowing heavily from two classic episodes of the television series The Outer Limits—“Soldier” and “Demon With a Glass Hand”— Terminator offered the mind-bending tale of a time-traveling killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent from the future into the present to kill a woman whose son would lead a rebellion against the machines that overthrow mankind. Much like Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, The Terminator kicked off a science fiction franchise that started out strong, hit its apex with the sequel (both Terminator 2 and Aliens were directed by Cameron), and then lost much of its energy—only with the Alien films, there were more sequels and spin-offs to measure the downward spiral. (more…)