Don't try to figure out the rules for this alternate reality

Rating: 7/10 (2 June 2009)

For special effects fans, this edition of TERMINATOR looks pretty cool on a big screen. For action movie buffs, there certainly is enough killing, sneaking around, and being chased to satisfy all but the shortest attention spans. However, for devotees of serious science fiction, SALVATION is no BLADE RUNNER. In this latest franchise offering, the machines seem pretty dominant (just as the zombies had become by the time DAY OF THE DEAD was released in that franchise). The only explanation offered as to why some of the few remaining humans are imprisoned rather than being killed instantly is that these captives are needed by the machines to better engineers their genocidal final-solution mechanisms. Meanwhile, wildlife is even scarcer in this alternate reality than surviving humans, indicating the machines have no interest in preserving bioforms on planet Earth. Given that attitude, what keeps the machines from using one of the 93+ readily available environmental contaminants capable of quickly wiping out life on earth without damaging any of their own components? To them, this should be just as much of a no-brainer as one of us using Weed-Be-Gone in our front yard. If the machines aren't smart enough to come up with such a simple tactic on their own, it is totally implausible that they've had as much success against humans as this movie series suggests.
Where would I like the TERMINATOR series to go? Well, PLANET OF THE APES would be a neat concept, were it not for all of the people running around in tacky ape suits. One movie that successfully (if briefly) portrayed dominated humans was SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, in which Billy Pilgrim spends part of his time in a zoo cage for the amusement of his alien captors. FIDO had the novel idea of presenting collar-controlled zombies as robotic conveniences for the triumphant human race. Why can't someone make a movie in which the zombies curb their appetites, and enslave the surviving humans, or a TERMINATOR movie in which the machines control humans for their own benefit, instead of mindlessly slaughtering them?