Meh

Rating: 6/10 (28 May 2009)

I have to say, I found this film a little puzzling. The first thing that struck me as a little bizarre is the immense stupidity of the machines; they can apparently be ambushed with little more than a boom box lying in the middle of the road, and it took Skynet a freaking eternity to finally try to kill Kyle. I mean seriously--if killing Kyle was all it would take to end the human resistance, why in the bloody pus-spewing hell didn't the plethora of machines that came into contact with him just grind him into a bloody paste? It boggled my mind a bit. I was expecting to see a truly chilling tale of cold, calculating machines, not just a bunch of skeletal drones throwing themselves around uselessly. Also, Skynet struck me as behaving very emotionally for a supposedly "cold" and "calculating" entity.
Another thing that left me scratching my head was the character of Star. Throughout the film it's hinted at that she has a sort of sixth sense concerning the machines, but it's never explained and winds up looking like a lazy deus ex machina move.
And the cheese...oh my. As soon as Kate states that John's heart is too weak to withstand his injuries, it becomes painfully obvious that Marcus is going to donate his own. The movie up until that scene won't stop bashing the viewer over the head with the fact that his heart is human. Also, pretty much from the first moment Marcus was introduced, I thought "oh, he's a machine". I mean...he fixes all kinds of machines, he's practically bullet-proof, and he somehow takes on a Terminator scout by hurling a tire iron at it, while speeding down a highway, while the scout is zipping all over the place. He's a machine. It's never a mystery. The movie plays out the revelation of this fact as though it's some huge plot twist, but I was just left scratching my head.
And, frankly, the whole "machine with a soul" theme has been done so very many times before (and much better). In fact, it was done in the second Terminator movie. Do we really need to see this again? Really? Well, all my griping and bashing aside, this is actually a pretty enjoyable movie overall. Yes it's predictable, occasionally cheesy, and the machines are idiots, but the action sequences actually leave you believing that the characters are in real danger. The CGI is also really good; there wasn't a single moment in the movie where I was distracted by being struck by a really bad or just awkward CGI effect. The acting is great, the cinematography is great, etc. etc. Also, the big reveal about how John's entry into Skynet's sanctum was orchestrated through the beginning makes a lot of the incompetence of the machines early on in the film a little easier to swallow.
And seriously--who didn't love seeing Arnold again?