On the couch

DVD Review

After the events of the last few weeks the option of getting away from it all seems like an alluring one, doesn’t it? And there’s nothing better for getting you way, way, waaaay away from it all than this week’s offering of two of the year’s biggest science fiction releases, Terminator Salvation and Star Trek.
The two have alot in comon – both deal with Earth’s future, albeit one possessing a slightly more optimistic outlook than the other; both bear the weight of fanboy expecataion and are looking to shake the monkey of disappointing antecedants and finally both star the fresh faced Anton Yelchin.
So, similarities listed, where do the two roads diverge? Not, as it happens, in a yellow wood, but more in the presence of grime. And a sense of humour.
But for a few instances – a Guns and Roses musical cue in particular – Terminator Salvation is about as poe-faced as films come. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, given Terminator 3’s cringe-inducing scenes featuring Arnie in a number of “hilarious” costumes and situations.
Under the stewardship of McG the audience is introduced to Terminator: The Wilderness Years. The year is 2018 and the war against the machines is raging. John Connor (Christian Bale), however, isn’t the Messianic figure the previous films built him up to be. Not yet anyway.
While Connor begins the flick looking for salvation in the form of a potential mega-weapon that the resistance think could “turn off” Skynet, it quickly turns into a chase movie as Bale tries to beat the computers to a teenage Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) to stop them killing his daddy-to-be before he can be sent back in time to keep his date with Sarah Connor.
There’s far more twisting and turning to the story but, while McG has quite the flair for action spectacle, he sacrifices a lot of the sense of impending doom that made the first two films so striking.
It’s also odd to say that Christian Bale isn’t in the top two performers in the film. He makes the top three but his brand of brow-furrowing and shouting can’t compare to the desperate humanity of mystery man Marcus (Sam Worthington) or tough teen Reese.
Terminator Salvation is easily McG’s best showing as a director and its spectacular action and perfectly imagined post-apocalyptic world nearly make up for the slightly cookie cutter story.
Considerably lighter in tone and aspiration, JJ Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek was even more heavily anticipated by the internet (obsessives) faithful.
The Mission Impossible: 3 director manages to tread the fine line between giving the geeks what they want and making the movie accessible to first time Trekers.
Starting back when the Enterprise crew are still cadets and less, the story races through the obligatory origin speil at warp speed, quickly establishing Kirk, Spock and McCoy before introducing that great Trek staple – the villian with the funny-looking forehead.
Eric Bana takes bad guy responsibilities as the unhinged Romulan Nero, a badass with Vulcan genocide in mind. Like Terminator, saying too much about the plot would ruin it, but suffice it to say that Abrams finds a neat (as in tidy) way of sidestepping years of novels, TV shows and fan fiction and makes the Trek universe his own.
Elevating Star Trek from quality actioner to “Carlsberg-don’t-make-franshise-reboots-but-if-they-did-yadda-yadda-yadda” status is the obvious attention to detail and humour in the script.
Kirk and Dr McCoy (Karl Urban) are pretty much funny in every scene they share, as is late arrival Scotty (Simon Pegg).
All the classic catchphrases are referenced and a rich vein of nerd-lore underpins the story for the long term fans. But Abrams never wallows in his cleverness or takes the mickey out of what has gone before and instead pays tribute to a great sci-fi series while still delivering a fantastic action film that any movie fan can enjoy.