A weak installment in a great franchise

Rating: 5/10 (1 July 2015)

*WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* Terminator Salvation has a pretty bad reputation, but I'm a Terminator fan, so I absolutely had to watch it. Well... it's not all bad. I am not against shaking up the formula; eliminating the chase format the first three had all had was a bold move. That's not to say it was necessarily a bad choice, it could've worked, it just... didn't. I did like the decision to show us some of the war with the machines, but unfortunately the war we are shown here is like five years after the start. Seeing John Connor organize a resistance would've been a lot of fun, but instead we just get some generic war stories that involve John Connor (y'know, the leader of the resistance) having to commit mutiny to save his father and subordinate, Kyle Reese. This movie has absolutely none of the fun of the originals, I know Terminator 3 gets heat for tossing in too much comic relief, but at least it didn't take the whole thing so dead seriously. There's no humor to liven up the proceedings, and what's worse, there's no heart or soul to this movie. The whole thing is just so bleak and depressing, and the washed out color scheme only adds to the effect. Well, what about the cast? I was really excited to see Christian Bale as John Connor, but his talents felt really wasted here. He had little more to do than talk in a deep voice and brood. And then finally at the end he got to actually do something, but even then it was all just soulless action, there was no character to it. Who would've though the role of John Connor would be so thankless. Bryce Dallas Howard plays his wife Kate Connor, and she's perhaps the most like able character. I don't know why, she just seems to have so much more soul than the others, because she's never just demoted to blasting Terminators with machine guns. She gets to support John throughout his struggles, and the actress does it well. Of course, we can't forget to mention Sam Worthington's nearly emotionless performance. Yes, he's a Terminator, and he plays the part of an emotionless machine perfectly, but not in a good way. I didn't care about this character, or his totally replaceable girl friend, so the main story of the movie was unrelateable to me. The sub plot with John and Kyle wasn't too bad, I had some interest in that, but the entire Sam Worthington arc was just boring to me. But to be brutally honest, the John Connor story line wasn't even all that good. For one thing, having John not actually be the resistance's leader is pretty lame, and also the entire operation to destroy the machines's stronghold just feels so by the numbers. It's just like someone will say, 'hey, we need to do this!' and then they do it. Next scene! There is almost no time for any character development or any passion to be put into this movie. Well, surely a Terminator movie can at least have some good action right? Let me just say that if you thought Arnie on the crane in Terminator 3 was over the top, you won't last five minutes in this movie. The final battle where John fights the Arnold Terminator was good, but it just kept going on and on and on... Until I just got bored. In a fight involving Christian Bale as John Connor and a CGi recreation of Arnold Schwarzenneger as a Terminator, I got bored. That is actually impressive. I'm sorry to hate on this movie so much, I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't get invested in this movie whatsoever.