Good film, not reaching the high standards expected of it (spoilers)

Rating: 6/10 (9 June 2009)

James Cameron had skilfully left a lot of this war to my imagination in the previous films, setting the scene with brief sequences of brutal laser guns n' skulls future warfare, and dialogue from Kyle Reese in T1, who painted a picture of a cold, dark, nuclear winter, where every humans purpose was to survive and fight the ruthless machines. No time for relationships, no time for entertainment, just fighting in the hope the world would change into something better.
It was to my great surprise then, that Terminator Salvation opens in the daytime, sunlight galore, with many of the buildings somewhat intact (in an L.A. supposedly hit with multiple thermonuclear weapons - the kind that melted Linda Hamilton's flesh off from 5 miles away).
The film jumps pretty quickly into the action, and starting a trend that lasts the whole film, most of the character development of John Connor is done through intense action scenes. John is the head of a division of the human resistance, taking orders from a central government holed up in a nuclear submarine. That part of the story turns out to be quite interesting, and a plausible explanation for how John Connor is able to rise to overall leadership status without any formal military or political title from the past.
We are introduced to the second most important character, Marcus Wright in the opening scene of the film. Marcus, who from the very beginning (unless you're 12) is clearly a terminator, embodies the muddy boundary between intelligent machines and humans. As such, he is an attempt to redo the exact same thing Cameron did in T2, when John Connor befriends the T-800 sent to protect him. Of course, it is now 2018, and John hasn't hung around with any robot friends in a while. This may be why he has such a difficult time not nuking Marcus, and why the painful and cheesy "you're not so bad after all" decision lingers for half the film. The time taken to drag this along could perhaps be better spent removing anonymous Kate Connor's neural net processor, enabling her to express human emotion.
Probably the only character given a shot at possessing a personality by McG is Kyle Reese. Kyle is a teen in 2018, and sports the same mullet and trainers that he had in the first film. In fact the attempts to reference at least half of his behaviour to Terminator 1 are tiresome, sometimes resorting to straight in your face robbing of entire sentences from the script. Bad, but at least they try with Kyle; he shows glimpses of the born soldier we knew in T1. If John Connor hadn't played his favourite GnR tune to lure some motorbike terminators in his direction, you wouldn't recognise a shred of the cheeky, street-smart youth from T2.
This copy/paste trick isn't limited to people either; there are quite a few nuggets from the old films thrown in for fun. One that works is Marcus Wright surveying L.A. in the same manner and place that Arnie did in his very first scene. This rewards the avid Terminator fan while hinting at Marcus' background, and made me feel smart. One that doesn't work so well is John Connor's "I'll be back" line, which doesn't make sense in the context of this film, and was probably the worst line in the first Terminator anyway (why not just drive the car straight in there Arnie, no need to talk!). McG even goes as far as including a CGI Arnie in one of the final scenes. No thanks.
With the human interaction in the film being noticeably lacklustre (bear in mind I'm a huge Schwarzenegger fan, so I'm usually pretty resistant to spotting robotic dialogue), the entertainment has to be found in the visuals. Unfortunately, where in previous films (T3 fully forgotten at this stage), edge of the seat tension was created largely by the fear of what might happen, McG says no to suspense and unleashes and endless assault of action in your face. If you were being interrogated by McG and Cameron in Guantanamo, James would use Chinese water torture to slowly break you down to a blubbering mess, whereas McG would beat you about the head with a baseball bat, probably killing you before extracting any information. McG does not disappoint when it comes to massive explosions, and the action scenes are well put together, intricate and good looking. However that terrible/awesome feeling of "He can't be stopped! Humanity's screwed!" was not relived at any moment in this. Its just not scary when a T-800 meets his number one target, the death of whom is his sole reason to exist, and throws him across the room instead of pulling his heart straight out and stepping on it.
I was reasonably pleased with the overall storyline, and if you ignore the usual inconsistencies it kind of made sense. The overall plot never had to make sense in the Terminator series anyway, the time paradox made sure of that. Where this film needed accuracy however, was in the minor details. They had a touch screen in the middle of Skynet for example. Yes, a touch-screen, made so human fingers could easily interface with crucial systems. Why not make it difficult for John Connor and use an old-timey keyboard... and swap some of the keys around to really screw with his mind! Its possible to go on for hours with the little annoying mistakes. In T4 the errors are so widespread its clear that McG just didn't get T1 or T2.
Comparing this film to the first two was always going to be an extremely critical approach, but McG didn't get anywhere near a respectable effort. Very good action and a decent plot, but atrocious character development, countless small inaccuracies, poor visualisation of a potentially amazing world, and a general lack of class keep this from being the great redeemer it could have been.