Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series Review
Machinima – (pronounced /məˈʃiːnɨmə/ or /məˈʃɪnɨmə/) is the use of real-time graphics rendering engines (a game engine), mostly three-dimensional (3-D), to generate computer animation. That’s what Wikipedia defines as Machinima. A strange and foreign concept to most and a truely strange concept after watching Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series.
This is a short six episode story told before the events of Terminator Salvation. I was walking through Walmart and saw this DVD on the $3 rack. Being a huge Terminator fan, I could not pass on the intregue that hit me. I didn’t know what Machinima was, but thought “Hey, worst case scenario, its anime” and picked the disc up. Its an official Terminator release with Moon Bloodgood reprising her role as Blair Williams from last year’s Terminator Salvation.
At first glance, I see through the ruse and understand that its just a cheap tie-in to help promote the then new (when it originally came out) Terminator Salvation. The reason I opened this review with the definition of Machinima is because you need to know this information going in, otherwise, you WILL be disappointed. The facial animations and general look of the show is on par with a low budget Xbox 360 game running in-engine graphics. The voice over work doesn’t match the mouth animations and the majority of the six episode arc is spent with the characters hiding behind chest high walls. Ok, that last part may be a bit of an exaggeration, but a predominant portion of the show IS spent with characters shooting things or being shot at. Sticking true to Terminator fashion, there’s only about 5-10 minutes worth of actual story in the whole arc.
There’s simply not much to say about the story. If needed, it could be declared non-canon and the Terminator series wouldn’t lose anything of necessity or value, much like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but Blair doesn’t die and she doesn’t destroy all of the Machines. Status-quo maintained! The biggest issue with Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series, is its inexplicable application of the Machinima film style.
Machinima, as a style, is pure novelty. It’s a “Hey look what we did!” way of getting attention, kinda like the guy that made a mural of Conan O’Brien’s face out of different colored Cheetos. After finding out what Machinima is I immediately remembered watching Red Vs. Blue and the WOW episode of South Park. Then I realized that the creators of this project just don’t get it. You don’t watch Machinima to appreciate the art of the project or the dramatic feel of the setting, you watch it because its funny. It funny seeing characters you are familiar with having conversations with each other in a crappily animated video game setting.
This project does nothing funny and tries really hard to be taken seriously. Its hard enough for real CGI movies to be taken seriously. That really wasn’t achieved until Avatar. To expect that, out of an “art style” that prides it self on looking crappy is nearly impossible. Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Also, the real root of the Machinima craze was the idea that stories could be told using an in-game engine, by using the terrible first person angles created by placing you character in just the right spot on a map, and by working with extremely limited tools to make something special. Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series does none of these. The camera angles are extremely scripted, not pulled from a first person viewpoint and its very clear that while the graphics may have been created with a video game engine, the footage was not. If you don’t take hours upon days setting up a shot with 4 different consoles/computers LAN’d together and you are not making a Machinima film! You are making a shitty looking CGI pic, and that’s exactly what this is.
Finally, why is this at Wal-mart? This should only be sold at specialty retailers that cater directly to the audience that appreciates Machinima. Your average Terminator fan is an 18-35 year old male that likes to see cool explosions, guns and awesome graphics. That’s a large swatch of the population and most of them don’t know and don’t care to know what Machinima is. This explains the $3 price tag. I promise you this is how most purchases went. Dude buys DVD thinking “hells yeah, Terminator! and it has that hot chick in it too!” He gets the disc home and pops it into his player. He sees the absurdly animated CG and is immediately disappointed. He fast forwards through a few episodes to see if there’s any digital nudity, and upon not finding any, he takes it out and goes back to the most recent Jason Statham film. The DVD then ends up being sold for a quarter at his mom’s garage sale.
Verdict: The Very Definition of Fail!!!