The beginning of the end.....again?

Rating: 4/10 (26 November 2009)

This post might be a bit late in the day, but I got the urge to write this post after walking to work and seeing the DVD advertisements plastered all over the City. The immediate picture that flew into my mind was ' Oh that's the film were Christian Bale lands a helicopter on a terminator and shoots it once in the head and it dies' as if Arnie would ever let that happen.
The point that I want to make here is that the Terminator Franchise is a good franchise, its an original Tech Noir 'no pun intended' idea, the first and second films were classics in their own Sci Fi rights. But, what comes with a big name franchise, in an era were film makers and studios are struggling to put out eye catching titles is that originals and sequels become prequels, watered down shadows of their former selves, the inconsistencies are frightening which lets the viewer down badly.
The most irritating parts of this film for me was the fact that John Connor manages to destroy a terminator by firing one shot at its head, I mean, c'mon! SKynet manages to create a proto-type with a human heart????? For the worlds largest and most calculating military computer, missing a design flaw that even my granny could have realised is just poor. And when Connor is listening to his mothers tapes from god knows how many years in the past, it looks like he's taking a self help pyschotheraphy course.
I think one of major plus sides was that Arnie did show up (albeit in CGI, still it was a nice touch).
In addition to my little irritations of this film, I also had to laugh at the terminator eels in the water ( Never thought Skynet was that elegantly creative ). The massive flying cargo plane with its very own Transformer. The high speed terminator bikes that have a extra 'go to 10 line' which programmes them to destroy anything playing Guns & Roses.
I think the overall picture is that nobody has actually moved the whole Terminator story forward in a great leap of faith. The same happened with the Alien, first to were great, then it really went down hill rather quickly.
What we have, is the franchise moving forward in really small baby steps, too small to make any story development ( i.e. Will Skynet win?) and to make this film more than just a crash bang CGI buy it on DVD release. Forgive me for bringing this up, but wasn't Terminator 3 meant to be the beginning of the end. It had the nuclear explosions and John Connor being led under ground by Arnie. So, does this mean that Salvation is a sequel to a prequel, so you could say its a sprequel?? Answers on a post card.
I think it left fans of Terminator, like myself, starring at the big screen after the end credits, pondering two things:
1. What just happened in that film? 2. Why?
Well, that's me had my say, and by that I mean I probably wont buy this on DVD.
C'mon guys at the Studios, have some balls and give us a film worthy of Mordor :)
Peace