One Filmmaker's Journey...: Salvation Terminated...

Well, I went to the movies Saturday and… much like homemade stew – Star Trek is even better the 2nd time around. To all the haters out there, this is the best film of the year… I said it. Best… film… of… the… year.

Of course, I did not originally go to see Star Trek again. I went to see Terminator Salvation…

Let me set the record straight. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a feces fragment left lingering in the hot Arizona sun for the summer. Terminator is like sitting there watching the feces fragment linger in the hot Arizona sun for the summer.

TS was not… horrible. It was just… Ugh. It had no inertia, no movement… great special effects- but useless to the lifeless story.

No spoilers here. John Connor= wussy. Just like all other incarnations. Moon Bloodgood was totally underused and Bryce Dallas Howard… was she even in the movie? Anton Yelchin (Chekov from Star Trek, by-the-way) and Sam Worthington were the only actors that had any material to even attempt to act with.

OK...

***ONE SPOILER***

There is no tub sex… or sub text… in this movie. The boring first few seconds, clearly establish that Helena Bonham Carter is blatantly dying from cancer. Then, it had to be acknowledged and pointed out. Later in the film, it gets even more screen time. Apparently the target audience for this film is the brain damaged. The film spells everything out. Nothing is left to your mind for interpretation.

With this movie, I realized how McG directs…

Alfred Hitchcock used to spend a painstakingly amount of time on the storyboards for his films. When he was done, he was reported to say that the movie was complete… all that was left was to put it on film. He felt that as long as his storyboards were followed correctly, that anyone could capture the images on film.

After about the 1st 30-seconds of the film, myself and my companion began spitting out the film that was being paid homage to in the shot and/or scene. (Anyone that listened to the Charlie’s Angels director’s commentary knows that every shot in every scene comes directly from a film that he has seen.) From Apocalypse Now to Terminator, from T2 to Mad Max to Iron Eagle, from Planet of the Apes to The Transformers to Mission Impossible, from Battlestar Galactica to Cloverfield to I Am Legend, from Blackhawk Down to X-Men Origins: Wolverine… The list could go on… Pretty much, unless it was a Kevin Smith movie, Terminator Salvation paid “homage” to it.

Back to Hitchcock’s method… I figured out how McG directs. He pulls all of his DVD’s out and goes through them until he finds the shot or full scene he wants, then he records that and then moves on. When he is done, he simply hands his crew his homemade film and tells his crew to go shoot it.

Once again… if you feel the need to go see Terminator Salvation (or X-Men Origins: Wolverine) buy a ticket for Star Trek then go see whatever you want. I don’t believe in stealing the movies for free, but if you pay someone- then you are not technically stealing from the theatre. As for the studios and production companies… Everyone involved with the making of Star Trek should be rewarded and encouraged to make more; the people involved in the making of Salvation and Wolverine should be penalized and pushed to retire, to hopefully never darken our lives with such dreck again.

Don.