When tech trumps storytelling we're in for a bad movie

It’s been a quarter of a century since I first saw James Cameron’s film Terminator, but I remember whole sequences as if I saw it just last week. More importantly I remember how I felt when the terminator arrived at Sarah Connor’s house and her roommate couldn’t hear him tearing up the place because she had her Walkman on. Turn down the volume! He’s right behind you! I knew right there that I would love that movie.

In contrast I saw the McG-directed sequel Terminator Salvation just last week, and I forgot it even as I was watching it. Terminator Salvation — even the title is full of itself — might be an adequate action movie for the hearing-impaired. . .if Terminator and Terminator 2 had never been made (Terminator 3 is another subject altogether). But if T1 and T2 had never been made, Terminator Salvation would have no reason to exist.

It’s the sort of conundrum that makes me want to go back to the time before McG was conceived, and convince his parents to turn Amish. That way they would reject modern technology and McG would not become a movie director. Of course, that is the kind, less efficient option.

We’re talking about a hack who makes Michael Bay look like a thoughtful chronicler of the human condition. Underscore “human,” a word not likely to appear in the same thought as “McG.”

Between Terminator and Salvation, digital technology has completely changed the way movies are made. The special effects in T1 and T2 might seem quaint today, and yet they are much more entertaining movies than TS. They’re smarter, more engaging, more affecting. For starters, they’re coherent.

Before his long post-Titanic hiatus, James Cameron was renowned for his technological prowess. If he wanted a particular shot and the available technology could not produce it, he rigged up something new.

However, he never lost sight of the fact that technology is merely the means to an end. That end is the telling of a story using the medium of film.

This is a simple truth that has escaped McG and many of his contemporaries, who seem to regard the display of technology as the goal of filmmaking. (George Lucas of the abominable Star Wars prequels is their godfather.) That’s a more charitable explanation than basic incompetence at storytelling. Their movies are essentially 90-minute advertisements for high-tech gadgetry. The story becomes a flimsy excuse to sell an idea of “awesomeness.”

Terminator 1 is the story of a young woman — a wimp — who discovers through a bizarre series of events that she has a destiny. She rises to meet that destiny. The indestructible killing machine, the soldier from the future, the chaos and destruction — these are the instruments of her destiny. Sarah Connor the human stood at the center of the story.

By the end of the movie she is alone, pregnant, driving along an empty stretch of highway towards a future she knows will be horrific. But she’s ready for it. Terminator 1 should be required viewing for little girls, to tell them that the very thing that is supposed to be their weakness — the maternal instinct — is the source of their power. And they can fight.

I never cared for Titanic, but Cameron is secure in my affections because of his female characters. There’s Linda Hamilton firing a shotgun with one arm in T2 and Sigourney Weaver in the loader battling the mother creature in Aliens. There’s Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio calculating their chances of survival in The Abyss and deciding she has to drown. Look who survived in Titanic.

The women are furniture in Terminator Salvation, the story of a man who has been raised to believe he has a destiny. Apparently this puts him in a life-long bad mood. His plan for fulfilling his destiny is to shout all the time. Months ago the most-viewed video on the Internet was the one of Terminator Salvation’s John Connor, Christian Bale, shouting curses at the cinematographer. When you see the McG movie you understand why he is furious. In the first place he is completely in character, if John Connor in this movie can be said to have a character. I guess Sarah Connor never told her son to keep his voice down, or maybe this is the only way he can be heard above the din of metal and frequent explosions.

Or maybe Bale, usually a fine actor, realized that not only was he in a McG movie, but he was being shot by that cinematographer. Everything in this movie is in desaturated browns; there is nothing to look at.

We get it: the future looks rusty.

There are a lot of people in rags running and firing guns, and a human-cyborg hybrid who makes Arnold Schwarzenegger’s earlier incarnations seem like the soul of wit and charm. There are tons of killing machines, including unmanned motorcycles and a gigantic terminator. As far as I can tell, the gigantic terminator exists because the Transformers 2 movie is coming soon, and McG is trying a little one-upman ... one-up-inhumanship.

The indestructible machines, the soldier who will travel to the past, the chaos and destruction — these are the instruments of John Connor’s destiny, and we don’t care if he fulfills it. There is no center, just the bare outline of a story. What we have here is a trade show, only louder and more repetitive. McG and company have forgotten that the Terminator movies turn on the difference between men and machines. Treason! They have sold us out to the machines.

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