Does nothing for the Terminator franchise storyline.

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2010)

I will do this in point form;

In short, not a great movie, but if you're into action with little supporting plot, then you will probably like this.

The main disappointment with TS is that there was a lot of potential and a lot of the work had already been done in the previous movies. Unfortunately this movie flushes most of this potential down the drain.

This movie is better than T3, (not hard), but nowhere near as good as T1 and T2.

Lots of action and chase scenes. But without a strong supporting story, they just seem superfluous.

The main thing that stuck out for me in this movie was how ineffective skynet was despite it's awesome technological advantage. E.g. Skynet captured Kyle Reese, but for some reason didn't kill him despite him being #1 on the Skynet hit-list. Why? Same with John Conner. All a terminator has to do is crush his throat, or break his neck, crush his skull, etc. However, it looks like terminators are programmed to toss their victims around like a cat playing with a half-dead mouse. Another example is at the petrol station where a monstrous robot seems quite inefficient at killing a few humans getting away in rusted old cars. And then it has a real hard time stopping Marcus getting away in a tow-truck where it suddenly loses it's ability to aim. This lack of logic for the sake of drawing out action scenes just ruins a movie for me.

There seems to be many inconsistencies with weapon damage and terminator robustness. In some cases a grenade launcher will just blow off some skin, but next time around has the ability to blow a terminator several meters backwards through the air.

What is the point of this movie anyway? The main point seems to be to save Kyle Reese. But it would have been better if the movie ended with John sending Kyle back in time so that at least it gave you a sense of purpose or closing a loop in the story. Instead, the movie is centered around saving Kyle (which Skynet had many opportunities to kill anyway) and then they blow up some part of Skynet.... and that's it. Ummmm, OK, and...? How did this movie add to the Terminator story or answer questions? In fact a Terminator 5 movie could be made by virtually totally ignoring this movie altogether.

Why would John Conner let Marcus go knowing he is Skynet built? Marcus knows the location of his base. Surely a real-life John would realize that Marcus was built for infiltration. In this respect John just pulls down his pants, bends over the table and says "come and give it to me Skynet". The same goes with the female pilot, Bloodgood. She knows Marcus for two days, and when she finds out he is a cyborg, decides to rescue him because she believes "he's human". Never mind the fact he is a cyborg with computer chips in his head, he seems like a nice guy. With this type of thinking it's amazing there is any resistance left. Absolutely illogical.

In T3, Arnie's terminator says that he kills him, but is reprogrammed and sent back to protect him. But in this movie this same apparent terminator is blown up in the nuclear explosion.

Another illogical thing is the terminator motorbikes. John is able to capture one, reprogram it and then ride off on it like a normal motorbike assuming that for some illogical reason the bike has a seat, pedals, and controls that would allow a human to ride it.

Time travel is not mentioned or hinted at in any way that I recall. I may be being picky, but just another example of how the movie doesn't address any of the storyline in the previous movies.

Security at Skynet at the end seems very lax. OK we see Marcus disable one or two security measures, but overall, infiltrating Skynet seems like a walk in the park.

John is mentioned to be considered as a prophet by some, but there is no explanation or story related to how John obtained this status. He is simply introduced in the opening text as such.

There seems to be many dead-ends in the movie. E.g. What's with Kyle's mute side-kick? Seemed like a pointless character. The old woman in the petrol station also seems to be a character who is introduced who goes nowhere. There is no explanation as to why skynet is taking prisoners. I assume as workers, but I don't recall this being explained. The love interest between Bloodgood and Marcus also seems to be pointless, other than her illogically rescuing him. What was her intention? To run off to Las Vegas and get married to him?

Overall a very, very, thin storyline and doesn't do much for the Terminator franchise. I can only rate it for it's pure action entertainment value.
If you want your brain to take a rest and be entertained by eye candy and explosions, then you just many like this movie. If you're a real terminator fan I believe you will be very disappointed at the lack of storyline.