Disgraceful

Rating: 1/10 (23 May 2009)

WARNING! I will ruin this movie for you
I've seen all of the Terminator movies (all in their respective days) have read most of the comic book adaptions and have snored my way through the recent T.V series. And yes. Some incarnations were obviously better than others (to me) But, this turd of a film could not be further from the mark. And when I actually bothered to look up "McG"s body of work I can't say that I'm surprised. Gap commercials, music videos, Charlie's Angels... At what point did the financiers of this movie say "wow, we have to get this guy to direct the movie" But, I can't put all of the blame on one person. The entire creative staff has obviously gone to the Michael Bay school of film making...and failed. I only have 1000 word to work with...sooo...I shall list my gripes in point form.
1. Within 10 minutes of the title shot, this movie fired off one of THE BIGGEST Clichés IN WESTERN FILM. "It's too quiet in here (dramatic pause) It's like they're waiting for us" Seriously now! Is this the best writing that Hollywood can come up with? If this was an attempt at humour...it failed...just like the rest of this movie.
2. Giant Robots!!! Loud noises!!! Almost all of the battle sequences in this movie played out like a stylized ripoff of Transformers. There were big walking robots, big robot sound effects, big robot guns and aircraft, big robots riding the robot aircraft, motorcycle robots... They even had little stabby robots that swam around in the water. And they all looked like something out of a cheesy mecha flick. All glossy and pointy looking. These are not the cold, machined gun metal designs that set this series apart from all the others.
3. Chase scenes...chase scenes....followed by more chase scenes. #&#$ off with this already! How much time did these people fill with these blown out, CG'ed chase scenes? Foot chases, car chases and even air chases. "How do we transition from our crappy battle scene to our feeble attempt at character development?" Oh! I know!" Yep...you guessed it...
4. Even more clichés... Yep...Just about all of them. I'll have to make sub-points for this.

The irrelevant love interest cliché.

The conflicted double agent cliché.

The antagonist's fatal flaw cliché. "Let's just leave all of our nuclear power cells laying on a big table. They'll be OK"

The incompetent villain cliché. No, a hydraulically powered mechanical assassin would not simply shoot/crush/eviscerate it's victims. But, would merely toss them around, fire it's weapons erratically and then stand underneath precariously placed heavy objects, blast furnaces etc...

The (pathetically mangled) hero's sacrifice cliché. "Oh no! John Connor has been impaled through the chest with a ragged piece of metal! And, his heart is just about to fail! Here, take my perfectly good cyborg heart...that has just been crushed repeatedly with a giant metal casting....and then nearly punched out of my chest by another cyborg"

Need I go on?
This movie is big budget Hollywood hackery at it's best. And I still can't believe that it made it off of the script. I hope that the persons responsible for this mockery are ripped apart by wild dogs.
Thank you and good day