This is the fourth in a series of high-budget, low-expectation films begun by The Terminator (1984; dir. James Cameron). Helmer McG and his creative team show themselves capable of exploiting the cinematic spectacle for a few powerful sequences – a battle along a desert highway marries Mad Max 2 (1981; dir. George Miller) with a sense of the epic missing from the similar Transformers (2007; dir. Michael Bay) – but too much of the film is purely perfunctory, relying on over-the-top sound effects and a whole spate of digital imagery that brings into question the validity and necessity of computer-generated images in cinema.

Modern cinema, especially the films of Hollywood and its imitators, has an over-reliance on digital manipulation that not only borders on the pathological but, whereas there is some argument to suggest that realism has no place in cinema, this practice denies the audience (and filmmakers) an essential sense of ‘the real’ – which is intrinsic to the success of a film. Terminator Salvation, Avatar (2009; dir. James Cameron) Australia (2008; dir Baz Luhrmann), The Lovely Bones (2009; dir. Peter Jackson) – reviewed here – or even The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007; dir. Andrew Dominik) rely on post-production techniques that belittle the power of the filmed image, and insult the work of artists and technicians who worked before the advent of computer technology to meet the same results through tangible and altogether more successful means.

Producers, directors and technicians who indulge in these practices hide behind their insistence that computer-generated imagery keeps costs down – this is bullshit. High-end commercial films today cost just as much, if not more, as they always have. The true reason for their increased reliance on CGI, which infects even the simplest productions, is born out of the media professionals’ anxiety at affordable, home-grown technologies: now anybody can shoot almost anything they want on broadcast-standard equipment, using real locations and real people. The mass audio-visual media, which constantly seeks to widen the gulf between their privileged positions and those of us they deem consumers, has added the saturation of digital post-production work, which represents a highly skilled and totally undemocratic profession, to its arsenal of elitist, hierarchical practices.

Terminator Salvation, and any other film that rejects the real world in favour of spectre-like illusions, further decreases the likelihood of modern cinema audiences feeling empowered enough to attempt film-making themselves, unless through the restrictive avenues offered by mainstream media education, which supports this . Anyone seeking honest alternatives to this widespread attitude of indoctrination through indifference should actively disregard digital manipulation in cinema and television, reinvesting time and effort in ‘the real’. Imagine a film like this with 99% real effects and locations – watch Lawrence of Arabia (1962; dir. David Lean), Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972; dir. Werner Herzog), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977; dir. Lewis Gilbert) or countless other pre-CGI films and you’ll understand cinema needs that tangibility to be truly powerful, and perhaps also why the MAVM would rather ignore that fact and retain the creative power for themselves.

Terminator Salvation at the IMDb