Terminator Salvation: The Official Movie Prequel is a great warm up for one of the most highly anticipated films of all time for sci-fi fans and Terminator fans in particular.  This prequel, while having only a brief cameo by only one of the major characters of the film, does a great job of setting the stage and atmosphere for the film.  Taking place in 2018, mere months before the events of the film, the story involves two groups of Resistance Fighters from different parts of the globe who are working on a major offensive against Skynet.  One in Detroit, Michigan, in America and one in Arut, Niger in Africa.  The Detroit group is tasked with bringing down the aerial defense net around a Terminator plant in order to set up a bombing raid by the Resistance, while the Arut group is tasked with the bombing of an open pit uranium mine used by Skynet to mine fuel for their human extermination machinery.  There’s plenty of action and battles with Terminators, Hunter Killers, and the like along the way all set against the decaying backdrop of 2018’s terrifying post-apocalyptic world.

It’s not the action or the introduction of new Terminator versions such as the snake-like desert infiltrator Terminators nicknamed Sidewinders that makes this prequel so good, but the characters and their conflicts with their fellow survivors en route to their working together, and leaving behind their personal, political and racial differences to fight for the survival of all mankind.  Particularly, each Resistance group has at least one major internal conflict due to left over prejudices from the pre-Judgment Day (as the day Skynet caused the nuclear war is called) world.  In the Detroit group, the conflict is between the young African-American William, the group’s chief communications officer and the older Caucasian Jackson, a survivalist who unwillingly joins the Resistance group. In Arut the conflict is between Lysette, a French doctor, who worked for the uranium mining company before Judgment Day, and Yusuf, an undocumented migrant worker in the mine, who was refused medical treatment due to his undocumented status by Lysette’s employers.  All of these old prejudices must be worked through, and in order for their plans to work, they must learn to work together. 

This coming together of all creeds, religions and races as equals in order to battle Skynet and survive is the overriding theme of the work and the film.  As the opening sequence of the graphic novel prequel shows, all nations and peoples have equally been devastated without prejudice by Skynet.  Series artist Alan Robinson tales us on a visual tour of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, USA; Washington DC, USA; Beijing, China; Agra, India; Moscow, Russia; Sydney, Australia; Rio De Janeiro, Brazil; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Paris, France; and of course, Detroit, USA and Arut, Niger.  Robinson also accurately portrays the different characters and their ethnicities with great care.  He also nails the look of the T-600 model Terminators and the Hunter Killers quite well.  Perhaps most striking though are his opening panel shots of the aforementioned, ruined cities’ major landmarks.  This opening sequence does well to establish the theme that in this post-apocalyptic world at war for the survival of the human race, that we all, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, and race are in it together.

Overall, it is this theme of cooperation, and the setting aside of prejudice to accomplish the great goal, in this fictional case, of survival in the face of annihilation that makes the Terminator tales, of this prequel and Terminator Salvation, such thematically important works.  They drive home the point that global catastrophe would force all of mankind to unite, undoubtedly, but suggest that we should realize the mutual good we could be doing for all, if we’d work together now, in the real world, before a "real" Judgment Day.

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