It deserved better reviews, although it's too much like Equilibrium.

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2009)

Saw it in Bangkok last Sunday. The first impression: the negative reviews don't do this film justice.
Before seeing it, I was expecting nothing but a series of relentless, silly action. But the actions itself came out to be much more than that. Compared to the other two big budget actioners(Wolverine and Star Trek), the special effects in the movie are more genuine and never compromised the film's credibility. All the stunts and terminators' mechanics are well combined and polished NEATLESSLY by CGI. All the action sequences are well placed and nearly perfectly choreographed. They may be intentionally compared with the old Terminator films on the aspect of originality. But let's say it's 21st century and Terminator should learn to fit the audiences on certain new standards.
Terminator Salvation is quite a surprise from a director famous for bad movies like Charlie's Angels. Again TS is not compromising at all. It succeeded in bringing John Connor to life as THE war hero. The first two movies took great advantage of the formula of sending a cyborg to past to eliminate John Connor. The audiences can blend the fear for the post-apocalypse future and the cyborg crisis in a modern time in their mind. However the formula didn't work the 3rd time as the time-line of the movie marched forward and audiences found it difficult to follow all those time traveling paradox stuff(especially in the TV series). In previous entries, the adult John Connor was simply a plot tool who wields USA national flag and takes for granted human's victory. This, however, becomes a major hinder of new entries in the series. It seemed to the audiences that John Connor would never grow up into that anticipated savior in bone and flesh. The screenwriter had definitely done their homework on deciding Connor's role in this movie. They finally figured a way out for the series--tuning him down. This is really very wise because it gave Connor more space to develop and brought the details around him to a level of credibility. Yet, the wiser thing is that Connor is not the core character. This may give you a minor let down because you'd expect something out of Christian Bale. However, he merely gave something similar to Batman plus a little more dry speech, dry shouting, helpless sense. Not his fault anyway. The movie's core character is Marcus the Terminator, who thinks he's a human. Sam Worthington presents Marcus with heart and worth a nod.
The only drawback of the film is the plot is a little too much like Equilibrium, which ironically also stars Christian Bale. The whole idea of the resistance wanted to end the war once and for all plus Skynet's conspiracy of using Marcus as an unconscious spy is totally recognizable. Even the twist get unfolded in the same way as Equilibrium, by showing you a changing CGI face on a big screen. Still, this is a forgivable flaw and the movie is well directed to the conclusion.
8/10 A must-see in the summer.