Good effects and killer robots make for an average action flick

Rating: 4/10 (24 May 2009)

The thing is, the Terminator franchise used to be much much more than average. The first Terminator was well acted, exciting, and original. The second Terminator was revolutionary, very exciting, and had an even better story to tell. I didn't bother with the third Terminator, but I can tell that it was a large step down from the first two movies. And now we have...Terminator Salvation. Is it terrible like some viewers have declared vehemently? Not really, but it's a major disappointment. If this had not been a Terminator movie, I probably would have liked it a little better.
To begin with, the story was pretty laughable and riddled with plot holes. I could go into every little one, but the most blatant of these plot holes is at the end when John Connor strolls into SkyNet's headquarters and gets attacked by a grand total of THREE terminators. There was a whole factory of them being made, and yet John Connor only had to fight THREE. Puh-lease. On a related note, why didn't Skynet program Marcus to be an ACTUAL sleeper agent and attack John Connor himself, rather than making him go to all the trouble of luring John into a trap at their headquarters? Has Skynet ever heard of Occum's Razor? Apparently not. Besides being filled with gaping plot holes, it was also a fairly conventional story. Moon Bloodgood's character falling in love with Marcus was not that compelling. John being saved by Marcus in the end was predictable. John ignoring the top brass and saving the prisoners anyway was foolhardy and also predictable.
OK so the story was weak, but Christian Bale was awesome at least... right??? Oh how I wish it were so. I am a huge fan of Bale and I have seen several of his movies, but this is probably the worst performance I've seen from him. He was nowhere near as good an action hero as he was in Batman Begins or even The Dark Knight (where he had a fairly wooden performance, but some good lines). He basically had two modes in this movie: solemn or yelling. Heck the robots probably had more personality than him. Moon Bloodgood as the main heroine was forgettable and didn't fit well in the movie. Helena Bonham Carter had a brief role in the film, but was still not that inspiring as the Doctor (and I guess the incarnation of Skynet later too). Sam Worthington had the best performance in the movie and portrayed the troubled ex-con Marcus pretty well. However, it certainly wasn't good enough to salvage this mess.
Alright alright so who cares if the plot is thin and the acting is bad if the action scenes are intense and exciting? Well the special effects for the robots are certainly top notch. McG DOES know how to direct action sequences at least. The scene with the giant robot with the cage attached to it was particularly fun to watch. Yet, even the action scenes felt more lackluster than they should, and I think I know why. If you don't give a rat's ass what happens to the characters in the story, it doesn't really matter whether they're fried by a giant robot's laser beams or dropped into a river...now does it? Overall, this film could have been so much better. It had a good score by Danny Elfman, some nice nods to the first two movies (I'm looking at you superimposed Ahnald), good special effects, and decent action scenes. It even began somewhat promisingly with the prison scene set in 2003 and the assault on the Skynet base in 2018, but then it quickly degenerated into mindless action and John Connor yelling every other line. What a shame.
Entertainment: 5/10
Quality of Film-making: 3/10