huge letdown - a far cry from the Terminator I know

Rating: 2/10 (27 May 2009)

I am a huge fan of the first 2 terminator movies. I thought the third was pretty lame, especially because the end of terminator 2 makes any sequels impossible, but this takes the cake. I thought this movie was pretty boring actually, and, given my reverence for the originals, kind of off-putting.
The main problem is the plot. To put it plainly, it's not very interesting or exciting. This is probably because the trailers for the movie ruin the big twist that Marcus is actually a robot. Going in, I thought that because they revealed this so casually that it wouldn't have been a major plot event, but in fact it's THE major plot event and it doesn't happen until about two thirds of the way through. While I can normally accept a predictable or weak plot, I will not accept a plot that exists simply as a means to eat up minutes of screen time between action sequences, which is exactly the case here.
A major problem with the movie, in my view, is the way that the action exists within the framework of the movie. There is so much stuff in here that makes absolutely no sense at all. I don't mean this in the way that you might look back at a movie on the drive home - I mean that it obviously doesn't make any immediate sense. I feel like they didn't think things through all the way, and the results undermine the movie's impact. For example, Kyle Reese is apparently number 1 on Skynet's hit list, and when he is herded through a prison line, completely unaware and defenseless, he is identified by a machine and.... put in jail. You would think that ultra-precise evil robots would just kill him, especially because 1 minute before they killed some humans in the same line, but no, he has to be in one location long enough for John Connor to come rescue him. While this adds another half hour in run-time, it sure doesn't case the machines are particularly formidable opponents.
Another sequence that I found particularly amusing/terrible was at the beginning when JC and company need to steal some valuable files from Skynet, so they go down this huge hole in the ground, go through some sewers at the bottom, and find a single computer (because I can really imagine terminators sitting around at a laptop at the bottom of a well, or using a laptop at all), which just HAPPENS to be located directly in front of a prison with human survivors. All of this is unprotected of course, because any self respecting evil computer system that managed to wipe out modern civilization and churns out bad-ass killer robots would OBVIOUSLY do this.
Even beyond these structural/conceptual problems, the action itself is unimaginative. The effects are competent, but not applied creatively and the result is completely forgettable. In Terminator 1 and 2, James Cameron used the technology of the day to create effects that blow me away to this day. In T2, Arnold splits the T-1000's head in half and it instantly reforms in one shot - part of the tension of the movie was that it would keep coming back to hunt them. In this, some humans run from robots and get away, or they shoot them and the robots fall over and the humans get away. Wow! How exciting. There wasn't anything here that impressed me very much, but then again, McG is no James Cameron, that's for sure.
On a side note, there was some fan service in the movie that I recognized and appreciated. However, I have heard "I'll be back," and "Come with me if you want to live" enough times in my life, thank you. I laughed out loud when a terribly animated Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up at the climax of the movie for a few seconds, presumably just because the people involved thought it would be cool and dramatic, as opposed to completely hysterical.
As I'm sure you have surmised by now, feel free to skip Terminator Salvation, unless you really, really, really feel the need to hear Christian Bale's batman voice one more time.