Terminator Salvation is a flawed movie, and while Christian Bale’s John Connor was underwhelming, a T2 reference helped redeem the character.
John Connor by Christian Bale in Hi Terminator was a disappointing interpretation, but a Terminator 2 reference helped redeem his view of the character. It’s no secret that the terminator The franchise has seen better days, and its downturn is by no means recent. All terminator movie since Judgment Day has elicited mixed reactions at best, and at times downright hostile. It may be the curse of initial greatness, but the bar for what counts as good terminator film tends to be set quite high.
In the case of Hi Terminator, there was at least a decent amount of hope on the part of many franchise enthusiasts, for two main reasons. The first was that a terminator The movie set entirely during the future war between humans and machines had a lot of potential as a concept, and it was something a lot of people were hoping to see happen. The second was the casting of Christian Bale as John Connor, as Bale was hot after his starring role in The black Knight. For all the anticipation, however, Hi Terminator ended up being both a critical and commercial disappointment.
The largely negative reaction even extended to Connor de Bale, who didn’t feel like someone the Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl versions of the character would have grown up into. Still, there’s one particular scene that gives Connor de Bale his finest moment, involving the resistance leader reminding Terminator 2 using a boombox playing “You Could Be Mine” by Guns ‘n Roses to attract a Skynet Bike, aka a Moto-Terminator. As a sneaky nod to a memorable moment from James Cameron’s hit, the track’s inclusion gave longtime fans an Easter egg to enjoy and showed that Hi Terminator was, for all its flaws, deeply rooted in franchise lore.
As references to terminator 2 go, this particular moment is one of many to be found in Hi Terminator, but what helps make it work is its relative subtlety. “You Could Be Mine” is heard only briefly in Terminator 2, when John and his friend Tim are heading to the mall, a place where John will later find himself caught between the T-800 and the T-1000. Although the song also has a music video link with Terminator 2this video had long since dropped in the past in 2009.
Christian Bale’s John Connor choosing to use “You Could Be Mine” as part of his strategy to take down the Moto-Terminator helps connect what had been a fairly gruff one-note characterization to the more innocent John played by Edward Furlong. It helps to establish that, as different as this older John may sound, he still remembers his childhood adventures and likely chose this song because it brings him a certain level of comfort in hearing it. It also brings some much-needed levity to an otherwise grim action blockbuster. Plus, the music presumably reminds John of both the mother he lost and the unlikely father figure he found in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reprogrammed T-800, the one he’s probably still missing all these years later. late. It’s far from enough to save Hi Terminator like a movie, but it certainly helps save Bale’s John Connor from being a complete write-off.
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