Weak plot, no respect for source material, etc.

Rating: 3/10 (21 February 2017)

This is such a frustrating movie on many levels... where to start?
Its mood/tone is so inconsistent, it basically drops you off halfway through the film. The first half is dark and gritty, and if you're in the right mood, you might actually get quite immersed - at least if not being too nit-picky about smaller plot issues.
But before the final third or so, the filmmakers' childish obsession at dropping a "cool" reference to a certain scene in the second film absolutely shatters that tone to pieces. It's the single scene I will always remember this film mostly for, and I'm sure you know what I mean when you see it.
(T3 was goofy, and at least for purists, surely quite disappointing too, but at least its tone was more consistent. Despite all its silly explosions and one-liners, it thankfully didn't drop a bomb like this in the middle of it all.)
The mood and "the fourth wall" now - not just broken - but violently torn down in a "WTF??" manner, it's all just downhill from there. And that's exactly what makes it so frustrating: for far too long into the movie, you're lead to believe that it could at least be decent.
Instead, it's just more "cool" references and nonsensical plot advancements from here on, that are all the more glaring now, after the first big one that I talked about. And of course, loads of mindless "hollywood style" action, that could be mildly entertaining, if you could build another wall - of indifference towards the film - in time. I couldn't.
All I could think of was how good the film could have been; hundreds of millions spent, with lots of skilled people on board, it still looked and sounded good (mostly), but it was impossible to appreciate, when every second scene just tried to reference or imitate stuff in the earlier classics - poorly, with no respect.
If you've never watched a Terminator movie before, and don't mind a terrible plot that doesn't make sense, if only there's lots of explosions and million-scale CGI, then you might consider TS passable. Everyone else (especially fans of the first two installments) will get a ruined movie night, and then some.
For me, this is easily the worst Terminator movie, with all five (so far?) included. 3/10