Lacks heart

Rating: 5/10 (23 September 2009)

So. I more or less enjoyed the movie, but it just lacks heart. It is a Terminator itself: a flawless, eye-candy, well-oiled machine with great photography, great sets, great special effects, great sounds, great designs, great CGI Arnold, great music, but no heart. That kind of movie doesn't work without a heart, technics is just not enough! "Terminator 2" was the best of the series, because Cameron added a heart to his machine, like he added a heart to the Alien franchise. "Aliens" is pointless without its heart. I don't like that kind of flick because of drooling Xenomorphs, but because of a working chemistry between Ripley, Newt and Hicks, and even the other Marines. So a heart and character chemistry is what can save an action flick from being boring and/or shallow, and at least get some praise for the critics, which is always great for an action flick. Films are not made like in the 80s or the 90s, but that doesn't mean good movies cannot be made anymore.
The character development for "Terminator Salvation" is nonexistent. John Connor and its raspy voice and facial paralysis is boring, and you cannot attach or relate to him. He can die or live, it doesn't matter. He's just bland. The CGI Arnold was a good surprise for me, but again it's too anecdotal and Connor's reaction to the familiar face is everything but true to his background. I love Christian Bale's work, he made so many great movies, but this time he doesn't give his best (although it's obviously not entirely his fault, having little to no creative input as an actor). Connor's relation with Kate is anecdotal; they don't share a strong, deep moment of privacy together, there's no reference to her pregnancy, and her three lines don't make her believable. Good thing that Kyle Reese was not an annoying Anakin Skywalker-like teenager, so I guess the team remembered that no matter young a prequel character is, you have to avoid making them silly children or dumb teenagers. So he was OK, strong enough, not annoying at all (at least for me), but lacked depth. His only more or less deep sentence in the Terminator ship was really out of place, and one sentence doesn't catch up for the lack of everything else.
It seems that the team wanted to cover many subjects, so in the end they ended up with many good ideas, but wanted to keep them all. So in order to keep all those things in a 2-hour movie, nothing ends up fully finished but barely skimmed through, trimmed and half good or half bad. I think they should have left behind some stuff, and expanded only the best, to not end up with this feeling of an over-the-top, unfinished movie.
Blinding the audience with overwhelming special effects to cover the lack of heart will not dupe the hardened spectator. Giving this to McG was like giving the X-Men franchise to Brett Ratner. They are not incompetent, but that's just not their kind of thing. They should stick to making comedies and let people who can really relate to that genre do it. Of course, the screenwriters and the producers are the first to blame.
So yeah, "Terminator Salvation" is an eye-candy failure. You can enjoy it, but just forget it's a sequel to two great James Cameron films.