Subpar, lacks scope and a sense of urgency.

Rating: 4/10 (1 May 2010)

Terminator Salvation had so much promise but delivered so little that it left fans of the franchise wondering "WTF just happened here?"
The epic battle between man and machine is the core element of this movie franchise and I felt no scope or sense of urgency from the resistance or its leader John Conner. The previous three films built this movement against the machines as humanity's last hope, and John Conner's survival of utmost importance. Yet every time we witness a battle between Skynet and humanity there is never more than a handful of Terminators engaged at a time. Many of the battles had fewer than 5 or 6 enemies engaged at any given time and in taking an informal inventory I count maybe a dozen machines on screen throughout the film. In the final assault on Skynet Central in San Francisco we see John Conner infiltrate the installation in a series of 30 second cut scenes and his only encounter is an inept T-600 who has less competency than an Imperial Stormtrooper. Here is Skynet's HQ and we see one turret through the Marcus sub-plot, a few automated construction vehicles and one T-600, AND THAT"S IT?!? Where are the thousands of Terminators that this complex is capable of producing? We're well into the war and Skynet should have legions of Terminators out and about yet we only see one on the premises? C'mon!! We were never treated to a truly epic battle that would have given us a scope of what the resistance was facing. I believe this was a simple matter of economics. The powers that be just did not want to spend the money to do this lest it threaten their bottom line.
And what about the resistance? All we saw of them was a few humans scattered around the globe huddled around their radios waiting for Mr. Conner to blather on about the war. Nothing inspirational, no underlying code to initiate maneuvers against the machines, just a monotone rant on how "they are the resistance." After the previous 3 films I was expecting a little more from the resistance that what I was given.
This movie was a prime opportunity for the film maker, and the franchise, to really flesh out the war between man and machine, the struggle for humanity's survival. A stage to witness epic battles, where resistance fighters face insurmountable odds and, through HUMAN ingenuity, find a way to prevail. We never really get to see the scope of what the resistance faced on a daily basis. All we saw were a few encounters with a handful of Terminators and that was it. The Matrix films set the bar for the man vs. machine scenario in modern film making and that bar was completely ignored in this case. There was more scope and a sense of urgency in Kyle Reese's dream(nightmare)flashback in the original Terminator then there was throughout this film.
I have a feeling that the Hollywood "machine" wanted a huge return on a minimal investment. They were banking on the fan base of this franchise to carry them to the bank. Why else would they go with a music video director, very few CGI sequences and no epic battle scenes to set the tone of what the resistance faces? Given the state of Hollywood today, where originality has disappeared and the quick return is the mantra, it's no surprise this movie didn't live up to its expectations. This franchise deserves the attention to detail and storytelling that James Cameron breathed into it instead of this underfunded, community college filmmaker's interpretation of it.