Possibly the best way to trash a great franchise

Rating: 2/10 (30 May 2009)

This movie was horrendous. Watching previews and revisiting the trilogy over the past year or so has made me excited to see this, only to be let down extremely. TS was less than sub-par for a few reasons:
1. Marcus Wright - The character appears to be going somewhere, and appears to have a lot of depth. This is about all you'll ever know of him though. In some form of sick and twisted reverse-dramatic irony, the entire movie plays out without him once explaining to anyone in any way about his past. In one scene, he fixes a car and the radio turns on, blasting "The Rooster" by Alice in Chains. He shuts it off quickly and said "my brother used to listen to that". We as audience members sit and wait for some sort of flashback or something, but nothing! That's all you get, and he never brings it up again for the rest of the movie. Sadly, he is the most "human" character of the film. Everyone else is so fake. He seems to stay true to his personality.
2. One liners - The Terminator franchise NEEDS them, sure. I won't argue that. BUT, having Christian Bale say "I'll be back" when it didn't even make sense was stupid. I still have to say "Come with me if you want to live" is probably the best one liner of the franchise, and it wasn't disappointing to hear it here. I feel like the placement could've been better, but I was actually expecting that one.
3. John Connor - I totally didn't expect to see God in this film, but here he is. John Connor not only doesn't have any personality, but he's also invincible. Everything goes right for him at every moment. He manages to survive every situation, and climbs to the top ranks of "The Resistance" in about 15 minutes real-time, from the moment he jumps from a helicopter and enters a submarine that he doesn't know the location of (yeah, I don't know how that one worked either).
4. Characters - This movie introduces probably about 12 to 13 characters who could potentially star in their own movie, but doesn't develop a single one. Kyle Reece, Marcus Wright, John Connor, that weird old lady at the 7/11, Helena Bonham Carter's cancer patient character, all of them. I just saw this movie a few hours ago, and I could not tell you one significant thing about any of them, except for the fact that Christian Bale shouldn't have played John Connor.
This movie is a disgrace to the previous three films. even T3 was better than this crap. It's probably the top of my list for worst movies I've seen this summer, right above Night at the Museum. That should be a good indicator of how much this movie sucks.