Really damages the reputation of the series

Rating: 4/10 (30 June 2010)

This movie was laughable almost from the beginning. I thought T3 was fairly good - at least it captured the spirit of the first two - but this came over like someone had accidentally given $100m to someone fresh out of film school.
The direction is terrible and often illogical, there's virtually no excitement in scenes which Scott/Cameron would have torn up the screen with, and the acting is hilarious (everyone seems to speak in a gruff monotone). What the hell is Christian Bale doing in it? Did he sign the contract drunk? The female characters are largely pathetic. There are plot holes all over the place (why is John Connor so horrified by the technology that gave birth to a half-human half-Terminator, when he's already seen the T-1000 and T-X?). The whole thing is obsessed with being 'dark' and 'gritty', which it manages nowhere near as well as the 10 minutes or so of 'future' scenes in the first film 25 years ago.
Apart from the effects, and the new 30-foot tall Terminator, what is good about this film?